A petrolhead who started filming supercars on his mobile phone has made enough money from YouTube to buy his own 187mph motor.
Paul Wallace, 23, now has 55,000 subscribers who have helped rack up a staggering 65 million views on his ‘Supercars Of London’ channel.
It has earned the young entrepreneur enough money in advertising revenue to pay the deposit on a used Audi R8.
Scroll down for a video of Paul showing off his Audi R8
The budding businessman has now taken delivery of the high performance car with monthly YouTube revenue funding repayments and running costs.
It is a far cry from when, as a 17-year-old, Paul would borrow his mum’s battered old Ford Focus to make trips into London to film sports cars.
The car, which retails new at around £80,000, has a 4.2-litre V8 engine which gives it a 0-62mph time of 4.6 seconds and a top speed of 187mph.
Paul, who paid £50,000 for his six-year-old model, said: “It is incredibly overwhelming to have got the Audi, it is a dream come true.
“It is all my Christmases rolled into one and I can’t wait to share my adventures and journey with the rest of the world on YouTube.
“It is surreal knowing I started this all from filming supercars, and the thought of people filming me is quite bizarre, but owning a car like this is what I have always dreamed of.
“I picked the Audi R8 as it does everything a supercar should. It looks amazing inside and out, it drives fantastic and sounds brilliant.”
Paul, who still lives with his parents in Watford, Herts., was studying business management at Winchester University when he noticed the money-making potential of YouTube.
He started uploading more and more videos to the online giant and the revenue slowly started to pour in.
The page is now dominated by Ferraris being revved aggressively in traffic, Lamborghinis being seized by police and gold supercars speeding through the poshest parts of residential London dominate the channel.
His most viewed video is of a convertible Lamborghini being driven in pouring rain in London with the roof down.
The video, titled ‘The dumbest rich man in the world’, has now been watched 11.7 MILLION times.
That is double the viewing figures of a typical episode of Top Gear and has netted Paul around £9,000.
He has uploaded 11 videos with one million-plus views while 23 have been viewed in excess of 500,000 times and 90 are in six-figures.
The budding businessman pulls in YouTube revenues of between £1,500 and £1,750 a month, which covers repayments on the Audi, insurance, tax, fuel and general running costs.
Paul also earns money by providing social media help to a number of other automotive companies and also updating his own website, www.supercarscene.com.
In total, there are currently 685 videos on his YouTube page, totalling 34 hours. Around 50 million minutes have been viewed – the equivalent of 95 years.
He added: “Since leaving University, I got my hands stuck in working 7 days a week from 9am-4am in the morning.
“What makes a ‘high view’ video is usually being in the right place at the right time, capturing something unique and exclusive which involves a story or ‘two sides’ for people to comment, share and choose a favourite or form an opinion.
“My favourite all time video is difficult. Being such a big car fan, seeing so many of these rare cars on the road is good enough.
“I re-watch a lot of my videos just because i love seeing and hearing the cars and reliving the experience.
“I now intend on customising my R8 and making it unique. It won’t be to everyone’s taste but as long as it looks good in my eyes.
“I hope to wrap the car, fit a custom exhaust and add a few bits here and there. All of it will be featured on the Supercars Of London YouTube channel.
“I won’t just be stopping with the Audi R8. My dream car is the Lamborghini Aventador, so I have raised the bar and want that to be my next car.”
