Grant Hilbert, a farmer from Iowa, does not consider himself a social media influencer or a gamer, but just a simply corn and soybean farmer.
Now, he operates two YouTube channels. One, where he uploads daily vlogs of him on the farm.
The other, is where he shows himself virtually farming.
Farming Simulator is a video game world where you handle real-life equipment and crops, and basically the player farms.
His success did not happen overnight, though. With seven years of hard work, he gained a little more than a million followers on YouTube, bought 250 acres of Iowa dirt, and was one of the first people to break into farming using video games.
“I knew there was big business opportunity in YouTube. Personally, I’d never been a big YouTube watcher and I didn’t have a huge gameplan...the key was recognizing what people wanted to watch, and Farming Simulator caught the attention of YouTube viewers. It lined up perfectly with my passion for agriculture,” Hilbert told AgWeb.
Hilbert said after graduating high school in 2016, it was time to kick it into high gear.
“The summer of my graduation, before college, I had a bunch of time on my hands. I posted Farming Simulator clips on YouTube almost every day and the channel began to grow even more.”
The day of his graduation from Iowa State University in 2020, he had gained subscribers in the seven figures.
Views = revenue. By the time he was a senior, a single post would get 50,000 to 100,000 views in just one day.
He eventually bought his first farm in December of that year, buying 120 acres, followed by more purchases in early 2021. That totaled 250 acres valued at $1.8 million.
Hilbert also started a software company called SquadBuilt Inc, with sights set on a farming simulator game called American Farming. The game is based out of the Midwest with a concentration on American farmsteads, cow-calf operations, farrow to finish, and many more. The game is set to make its debut soon.
Story via Chris Bennett with AgWeb
