Brevard resident Anthony Russo is a YouTube star with nearly 3 million subscribers – Florida Today
![](https://www.floridatoday.com/gcdn/authoring/authoring-images/2023/12/20/PBRE/71992121007-you-tuber-anthony-russo-1.jpg?crop=3428,1929,x0,y58&width=660&height=372&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
You might think playing video games for a living is a pretty cushy gig.
You’d be wrong, says one man who actually does that.
“It’s really hard,” said Anthony Russo, a 27-year-old Melbourne resident who has been working at it for the last eight years. “It’s similar to the NBA. You have to train so hard and you might not make it, but you definitely won’t make it if you don’t attempt.”
Russo, known on YouTube as RussoPlays, said some luck and an enormous amount of hard work behind the scenes propelled his YouTube channel to nearly 3 million subscribers. His channels, he actually has several, focus mainly on him playing the popular video game Roblux and offering commentary as he plays.
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The father of two young girls said at his peak in March 2022 his channel was getting 43 million views a month, which translated into a YouTube paycheck of $150,000. To sustain that, Russo was posting two 15- to 20-minute videos each day. The video-sharing and social media platform pays creators based on how many viewers they get.
“It’s essentially like I’m the producer, editor, director, actor, lighting guy, sound guy, I’m all the things,” Russo said. “I have to record the video, do the graphic designs, edit it, upload it. It’s a lot more than just pressing the record button.”
He works in his home studio designed by local company Ambiance Viera . There are soundproof walls, three large computer monitors, a massive gaming desk that he can raise and stand at, microphone, professional lighting and even a green screen that pulls down from the ceiling.
Hanging on the wall are his “play buttons,” plaques sent by YouTube for hitting certain milestones like one million subscribers and again when he hit two million. A third one will likely come in the near future.
But it wasn’t always this way for Russo, a local boy who graduated from Viera High School in 2014, at a time when YouTube was fairly new. He decided to forgo college, and instead opted to make a real run at this YouTube thing.
“I was making YouTube videos super early on, before you could make money from it,” he said. “I just liked entertaining, being stupid with my friends, making jokes.”
He said he tried all kinds of videos before focusing solely on Roblox. Some were skits with his friends, some were him by himself being funny, some talked about Pokemon, which Russo has a passion for.
“In the beginning I was getting like five views a video, and it was all me from different accounts I set up,” Russo said.
That’s when luck came into play. He made a video of himself playing a specific Pokemon game on Roblox and capturing a rare character, which got a lot of people’s attention.
The first day the video was uploaded it got 50 views. That quickly jumped to 1,000. Over a week it got 20,000 views.
“It started going so fast after that,” Russo said. “At the time we had our first daughter on the way. People kept telling me I need to get a real job, but I knew I was going to make this thing work.”
He struck while the iron was hot. He taught himself how to better edit videos. He started going to industry conferences to learn more and network. He started doing tons of research on SEO and analytical data.
While Russo is self-taught, more and more instruction on how to make money on social media are available online.
Southeast Technical University in Ireland is introducing a new, first-of-a-kind college course of study. ‘Bachelor of Arts in Content Creation and Social Media,’ known better as ‘How to be an Influencer’ is a three-year course that will delve into topics like digital marketing, video and audio editing, critical cultural studies, and creative writing.
The course description reads: “Do your family and friends complain about you being on your phone all the time? Well now is your chance to put all that screen time to good use by proving that you can have a successful and exciting career using your digital devices to connect with millions of people across the world.”
Heidi Edwards is the associate dean for the college of psychology and liberal arts as well as a professor of journalism and mass communications at Florida Tech. While the Melbourne university doesn’t have a course like the one offered at Southeast Technical University, social media is incorporated into some of the courses offered.
Edwards said some of her students have started blogs or some kind of social media, which they have had some success with.
“It’s not impossible, there are people out there making a good living, but it’s not an effortless thing for most people,” Edwards said. “It’s important to emphasize that while some influencers can get a lot of following with what is seemingly very little effort, most of the time there is something behind that that is more. There’s a lot of work, looking at audiences, understanding what will resonate.”
These days Russo gets recognized quite a bit while out in public. He appreciates when fans chat with him.
Many times he’s asked for tips on how youngster can follow in his footsteps. He always tells them to keep working hard at what they want to achieve.
“Set a plan A and don’t think about anything else,” Russo said. “You can manifest it.”
Spitzer can be reached at [email protected].
![Brevard County resident Anthony Russo is a YouTuber who has millions of followers with Roblox, an online gaming platform and virtual game creation system. Photos taken at his home, where he has a room set top for his YouTube channel RussoPlays, which has almost 3 million subscribers.](https://www.floridatoday.com/gcdn/authoring/authoring-images/2023/12/20/PBRE/71992120007-you-tuber-anthony-russo-5-c.jpg?width=660&height=437&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
![Brevard County resident Anthony Russo is a YouTuber who has millions of followers with Roblox, an online gaming platform and virtual game creation system. Photos taken at his home, where he has a room set top for his YouTube channel RussoPlays, which has almost 3 million subscribers.](https://www.floridatoday.com/gcdn/authoring/authoring-images/2023/12/20/PBRE/71992134007-you-tuber-anthony-russo-8.jpg?width=660&height=435&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
![Brevard County resident Anthony Russo is a YouTuber who has millions of followers with Roblox, an online gaming platform and virtual game creation system. Photos taken at his home, where he has a room set top for his YouTube channel RussoPlays, which has almost 3 million subscribers.](https://www.floridatoday.com/gcdn/authoring/authoring-images/2023/12/20/PBRE/71992121007-you-tuber-anthony-russo-1.jpg?width=660&height=394&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
![Brevard County resident Anthony Russo is a YouTuber who has millions of followers with Roblox, an online gaming platform and virtual game creation system.](https://www.floridatoday.com/gcdn/authoring/authoring-images/2023/12/20/PBRE/71992125007-you-tuber-anthony-russo-5.jpg?width=660&height=426&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp)