Kevin O’Reilly (Call Me Kevin)

Kevin is a popular YouTuber.

He has more than three million subscribers on his YouTube channel by the name Call Me Kevin.

Introduction-

Kevin O’Reilly was born on 18 November 1993.

He hails from Cork, Ireland.

Kevin has a sister.

Dropping out of school due to stress-

In his fourth year of primary school, Kevin developed severe stomach ache which persisted for many years and due to this, he couldn’t regularly attend school.

Even after visiting hospitals several times, his illness wasn’t treated and he also started vomiting blood and suffering from ear canal pain.

At 13, after an abdominal scan, it was determined that the reason for his gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding was due to ulcers caused by stress and anxiety.

Thanks to the treatment, Kevin recovered a bit but the severe stomach pain reappeared in his secondary school due to stress and it couldn’t be successfully treated.

So, after convincing his parents, he dropped out of school at 16.

Video games, YouTube & Machinima-

As Kevin was homebound for several months while in his secondary school due to illness, he started playing a lot of video games on Xbox.

In 2009, he watched some gameplay videos on YouTube and was impressed by them and so he bought a capture card and started recording footage.

On 5 November 2009, Kevin started his first YouTube channel by the name zXNoRegretzzXz (later renamed to The Old CallMeKevin Channel).

His first video on this channel was the gameplay of Call of Duty.

Eventually, he started publishing skits on his channel which got noticed by Machinima and he got an offer to make some videos for Machinima and thanks to this, he started earning.

At around 66K subscribers, his channel got accepted into the YouTube Partner Program (YPP).

Becoming a successful YouTuber-

Kevin published a Machinima series titled- How to annoy and as this became very popular, he started earning good money.

At that time, he was 16 and had to drop out from school due to ill health.

After dropping out of school, Kevin continued working on his YouTube channel and started publishing Minecraft videos and thanks to this, his channel skyrocketed.

Thanks to this success, he wanted to become a full-time YouTuber.

Later, Kevin started publishing gameplays of Call of Duty.

At 18, he moved to Scotland and lived here for a year and then moved back to Ireland.

Quitting YouTube for a CeX store-

While living in Scotland, Kevin used to frequent a CeX store and was impressed by the gaming stuff there.

Later, he moved to Ireland and after working for a year and a half on his YouTube channel, he observed that the growth of his channel was on a downward path due to his lack of work ethic and as he was the only one working on his channel, he started suffering from loneliness.

So, Kevin decided to open a CeX franchise and surround himself with people to avoid the loneliness.

He was also interested in the second-hand market as he believed that it would be very profitable.

In 2013, Kevin opened his CeX franchise and at that time, he was 19.

For around three years, he profitably operated his franchise and also had around eight employees.

A terrible car accident which changed the course of his life-

On the night of 24 April 2016, Kevin was crossing the road on foot to return to his car after watching the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice film and unfortunately, he got hit by a car.

Due to the impact, he rolled onto the bonnet, hit the windscreen of the car and fell on the side.

Kevin suffered a lot of injuries and his friend called an ambulance and he got admitted to a hospital.

Selling his store-

As Kevin was struggling with the injuries, especially of his shoulders, he couldn’t work full-time in his store.

As he found it very difficult to lift the hardware and reach the higher shelves, he had to employ additional people to do his job.

In March 2017, as his shoulders were still painful and as Kevin wasn’t able to work at the store, it became apparent that he had to sell his store.

During that time, even though his business was staying afloat, he wasn’t making good profits and didn’t have any money left for himself due to the increased staff costs.

At that time, his medical bills were also increasing.

So, on 10 March 2017, Kevin sold his business to CeX for a reasonable price.

Call Me Kevin-

Kevin started his YouTube channel by the name Call Me Kevin on 18 October 2016.

And after selling his shop, he decided to publish videos on his channel as a hobby and in order to stay sane.

During that time, Call Me Kevin had a few subscribers and wasn’t earning decent money.

Kevin published a video onto his old YouTube channel stating that he is going to start working on his Call Me Kevin YouTube channel and thanks to this, around 8K people from his old channel subscribed to his new channel.

This inspired him to seriously work on his new channel and he started dedicating a lot of time and effort into his videos and started publishing consistently.

Kevin started by publishing videos on indie games, Garry’s Mod and some multiplayer games.

A successful YouTuber-

On 11 August 2017, Kevin published a video titled- Ouya Games In 2017 and this was his first video to become viral and thanks to this, YouTube started recommending many of his older videos to people.

As of October 2022, he has 3.06M subscribers on his Call Me Kevin YouTube channel.

And has 517K followers on Twitch, 274.8K followers on Twitter and 199K followers on Instagram.

Initially, his viewers used to support him through Patreon.

Currently, Kevin earns through a variety of sources like advertisements on his YouTube videos, selling merchandise and receiving sponsorships.

He also has other YouTube channels namely, Call Me Kevin Clips, CallMeKevin Stream Archives and Me Llamo Kevin (Spanish channel).

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Kevin O’Reilly?

Share with me in the comment section below.