Megan “MeganPlays” Letter is more than just a YouTuber.
Credit: Amanda Marie Photography
Megan “MeganPlays” Letter is a bit of a superstar to Roblox playing kids. With more than 3.3 million subscribers on her main YouTube account and over 1.4 million followers on the Roblox platform, she is without a doubt one of the most popular content creators focusing on the game. Her content brings in millions of younger viewers appealing to the main demographic of Roblox players almost in the style of a children’s TV show, with lots of bright colors and an excited host who can keep their attention.
Her success on YouTube has been relatively quick. As recently as mid-2018 she was a relative unknown in the influencer space, with just a few hundred thousand subscribers and a limited income that was not enough to live off. But after changing her content to the growing Roblox market she is one of the most financially successful YouTubers out there.
“I was able to turn a simple YouTube hobby into a seven-figure salary in the span of five to six years,” says Letter. “In August of 2018, I was making about 400 dollars a month from my channel. I was faced with the reality of needing to move on and apply for jobs that suited my college education. I felt I didn’t have anything to lose and made the switch to Roblox and seemingly overnight people seemed to love my content. In under a year I was able to go from 240,000 subscribers (September 2018) to 1,000,000 subscribers (September 2019). As of right now, I am sitting at 3,160,000 subscribers and 575,000,000 lifetime views. Right now I am averaging close to 40 million views monthly on just my Roblox gaming channel.”
For most content creators having a major YouTube channel with millions of subscribers equates to a full-time job and one that can take up a lot of time. But as her success grew Letter saw the opportunity to branch out even further. While still keeping her main channel active and successful she launched a number of other channels, a successful merchandise line and has worked with several brands for paid promotion on her content and creator codes.
“In 2019 we set out to start diversifying my brand with multiple channels including, Honey The Unicorn, Perry The Panda, a real-life channel and new for 2020 a live streaming channel and a Roblox funny moments channel titled BFF squad all accessible through YouTube,” says Letter. “The monetization we have made from these channels have alone brought us to a seven-figure salary through general CPM. Along with an additional seven figures in sales from merchandise based on my brand Stay Peachy.”
All of these areas are things that some of the biggest influencers are doing right now, but few manage to do it with the success of Letter. With YouTube constantly developing its platform, and the infamous algorithm, there is no guarantee that success on the platform will last for years to come, so diversifying as much as possible seems to be the smart move.
But Letter, and her husband Zach, have taken things in another direction that few other influencers have tried; launching a game studio. In mid-2020 Wonder Works Studio launched its first Roblox game, Overlook Bay, and it almost instantly became a hit on the platform, with Letter leveraging her massive audience to get players into the game.
“Our studio produces games on the Roblox platform for players of all ages, genders and interests,” says Letter. “Overlook Bay was our first release as a studio and it launched in beta July 27th 2020, grossing over $1,500,000 in revenue in just four short months. With our studio’s success, we were able to hire eight full-time employees and started producing a second game.”
There was a significant risk to this venture, unlike many of the other projects that Letter has created over the past few years to diversify her business. Whereas starting a new channel or even a merch line doesn’t take too much investment, launching a game takes a considerable amount of time and money, even if the marketing side of things was mostly done through Letter herself. If Overlook Bay had failed it would have been a big loss, but fortunately it has achieved more than anyone expected already.
“The investment to get our game Overlook Bay out to market was roughly $120,000 and nearly one year of work,” says Letter. “It was all worth it though as in our first 30 days of release we grossed over $350,000 in revenue in a paid access beta. Now that our game is free to play we’ve seen a steady income stream of $150,000 to $300,000 a month. We’ve doubled down with our gaming studio as we see so much potential on the Roblox platform. We now employ over eight full-time people and have an overhead of about $40,000 per month.”
The success of Overlook Bay has been massive for Letter and her business operations. Now, if YouTube were to drop off she has another major revenue stream that she can rely on, and for the time being, can enjoy being a part of two massively successful industries.
Letter now has multiple successful businesses.
Credit: Amanda Marie Photography
In late 2020 Wonder Works Studio launched its second game, Traitor!, and it is showing signs of taking off just like Overlook Bay. Over two million people have played the game, bringing in around $2000 per day, and the growth shows no sign of stopping. Combine that with the massive success of her YouTube channels and other ventures and Letter is one of the most successful influencers out there, building a Roblox empire in the space of just a few years.
For many influencers looking at Letter’s success, it may seem like an unachievable goal, especially with how difficult and time consuming running even one successful channel can be. But for Letter this was always the plan, to diversify her business as much as possible and make sure that she is secure even if her main channel falls off. It has taken a lot of work, but it has all paid off, and as far as she is concerned it is something she feels all top influencers should be doing.
“I think it is massively important for YouTube creators to step out of the box and try to diversify while they can,” says Letter. “If you think it’s too early to sell merchandise, it’s not! You never want to blink and feel like you’ve missed your opportunity to launch new channels, sell merch and really solidify who you are in your community. It’s as simple as creating a design to sell on teespring, where I think all YouTubers get their start. YouTube is a wild ride and can be over in the span of a couple of years. You will wake up one day wishing you did more for yourself.”
