Welcome to YouTube Millionaires, where we profile channels that have recently crossed the one million subscriber mark. There are channels crossing this threshold every week, and each creator has a story to tell about YouTube success. Read previous installments here.
If you know Family Fun Pack, you’re probably pretty surprised to see them in a column called “YouTube Millionaires.”
If you don’t know Family Fun Pack, well, here’s why it’s surprising: The Pack, aka parents Kristine and Matt and their six kids Alyssa, David, Zac, Owen, Chris, and Michael, are just slightly above the usual one million subscriber mark.
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And by “slightly,” we mean by 9 million or so.
That’s right–this is one of our occasional 10 million subscriber installments of YouTube Millionaires. We started these back in 2020 with Chad Wild Clay, and since then have brought on a couple more channels to mark their crossing of the diamond threshold.
For Kristine, Matt, and their kids, 10 million subscribers is a milestone 10 years in the making. Kristine uploaded Family Fun Pack’s very first video back in 2011, and the thing is, it wasn’t actually supposed to get views. She’d taken a video of twins Zac and Chris putting themselves to bed and wanted to send it to her mother-in-law. But, back then, attachment file sizes were finicky, and she couldn’t figure out how to email it. So she popped it on YouTube, sent the link to her MIL, and thought nothing more of it.
Until it started getting views.
Now, a decade later, Family Fun Pack is Kristine and Matt’s full-time job–and then some. They now run nearly ten additional channels (including Always Alyssa, which we featured on YouTube Millionaires back in March) and have more than a dozen employees.
We sat down with Kristine to talk about Family Fun Pack’s evolution, the chaos of management, and where they’re headed after the big one-oh.
Tubefilter: For anybody who’s reading and may not be familiar with you, can you give us a little background on who Family Fun Pack is?
Kristine: I would say Family Fun Pack is…We have a family channel on YouTube that does everything from travel to daily life and parenting. Every once in a while, we do games, and challenges, and fun stuff. We focus a lot on travel, and vlogging, things like that.
Tubefilter: How did you originally come to be on YouTube?
Kristine: We uploaded a video to share with my in-laws, and I didn’t know that I didn’t put it on unlisted, and I put it on public, and the video went viral, and then the channel basically was born.
Tubefilter: When did it go from, “Hey, we had one video accidentally go viral,” to “This may be a new career for us”?
Kristine: I would say around probably, I think it was 2015, maybe between 2015 and 2016. We already had a million followers, but I didn’t personally think it was anything. I was just like, “YouTube’s a joke, that’s not a job, we’re doing this for fun.” I looked at people on YouTube like, “What are they thinking?” We kept working even after we had a million subscribers because we felt we needed a real job. Not realizing this is more than a real job. [laughs]
Tubefilter: Yes, certainly time-consuming! How have things evolved from the production side for your whole family?
Kristine: Back in the day I did 100% of the editing myself, and it was very difficult. But little by little, we found some editors we could trust, which was just really hard at first for me to do. I didn’t like anybody’s editing. Now, I edit 0% for the videos. I mean, I edit TikTok and things like that, but other than that I only film, and I’m still just as busy as I was. You’d think I’d be like, “Wow, look at all this free time, hours I’m not editing,” but it’s not true. I’m just as busy, if not more. That’s changed.
Tubefilter: How many people do you have working with you now?
Kristine: Oh, gosh. In different capacities, a lot. We’ve got literally a lot, but editors-wise, we have thumbnail artists, and then we have, let me just look at Dropbox really fast, I’ll just count them. Two, thre, four, five…Oh, we only have 6 editors right now, we need to bring on more now.
Tubefilter: Only 6.
Kristine: Yes. That’s not enough. If they could keep it up, it would be great, but they can’t.
Tubefilter: I know you run several different channels, so roughly how many videos are you producing every week?
Kristine: It used to be a lot more. It’s interesting because YouTube’s changed a little bit, even just in the last few months, where your short-form content is just going crazy, and long-form content can barely do anything. We still do upload regular long-form content, but not quite as frequently.
I’m going every other day with the uploads, but if I need to miss a day, I’m not like, “Oh, no,” I’m just like, “Whatever, we are skipping a day.” As long as we have content, we’re still uploading a full YouTube video every other day. Then trying to also put Shorts in. On the off days, and then if I don’t upload for a couple of days, I’ll put YouTube Shorts on instead.
Tubefilter: How significant has Shorts become for you?
Kristine: It’s interesting. Shorts helped us reach 10 million. We noticed how we got 4,000 subscribers, I think it was, on just one short video.
Tubefilter: Oh, wow.
Kristine: It has helped us to post our content. However, it doesn’t pay you. Shorts don’t pay the bills. It’s like a two-edged sword, I guess, you know what I mean. You’re getting these great views, and maybe some new followers, but you’re not earning any money.
Tubefilter: Do you feel like you’ve seen people cross over from watching your Shorts to watching long-form, or is there a break there?
Kristine: I don’t know, actually. I’m not sure about that.
Tubefilter: Okay. I’ve heard yes and no from other people, so I was curious.
Kristine: Yes. I don’t know. The interesting thing is, a lot of our fans…I used to be offended by this comment. People would say, “Oh, you’re my whole childhood.” “Oh, I used to watch you all the time,” or “I would cry when I couldn’t watch you 24/7.” Things like that. I used to be like, “Used to?” But then I realized people grow up, kids grow up, their interests change, but they’re still subscribed, a lot of them. It’s been interesting. Like on TikTok, people are so happy to find us.
Like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I finally found you again. I used to always watch you,” and also these really nice comments about how we made their entire childhood good, and they had all of our videos memorized, and they’ll bring up specific moments. “Does anyone else remember rainbow bowls they used to use?” Everyone talks about these rainbow bowls that we have in one video, which were not even that great, but I guess they made an impact on people.
Tubefilter: Apparently! What’s your growth on TikTok versus YouTube shorts? Have you noticed, is TikTok faster? Is YouTube shorts faster?
Kristine: TikTok, though I have to say they inadvertently deleted my account–
Tubefilter: Sorry, wait, wait?
Kristine: –two or three times in a row, and I had almost a million followers when this happened. This was in, I guess 2021, or 2020. Then they gave my account to a fan. I’ve used our family account. I stepped away from TikTok, and I was like, I’m done. They do not care about the creator at all. I was verified, it wasn’t like I was just any old person running an account. I was a verified user making money every month with almost a million followers using my handle, and they gave it away to a fan. That’s not cool.
I stepped away, and I was like, forget this. Then I was like, I don’t know if we can stay away from short-form content, and just completely ignore it anymore. This year I signed up for a new TikTok account. It’s just Kristine Pack, it’s just my name. I’m not verified. I opened the account, I think about a month, a month and a half ago maybe. We already have about 105,000 followers on there. We put a couple of videos up that have gone viral on there as well.
I had one that I just posted last week that has 5 million views. Another is, some music videos that are just doing really well. I realized that our kids’ singing is extremely popular. My personal route right now is using TikTok as a platform to help my kids get noticed for their music. I’m putting around my stuff on TikTok. My most important content for me is the music content just because I think it’s a good future for my kids, if they can do music, and they want to do it, then maybe this will help them.
Tubefilter: Sorry you’ve had such trouble with TikTok. That’s rough. As you were saying, you have legacy fans who have been around for years, and years, and years. It’s been a long journey to 10 million subscribers. How has it been for you guys to hit that number?
Kristine: Oh, man, it’s been so long, so anticipated. We’ve been thinking about it and talking about it, and it was my life goal. When we were at 5 or 6 million, I literally never thought we’d get 10. I 100% never anticipated. I was just like, “Whatever. We’ll reach 5 or 6 million, maybe even 7 million, but will never really get any better.
Once I got to like 8 and 9 million, I was starting to think, “Gosh, we might actually reach 10 million subscribers.” I am highly motivated by awards and things like that. I love having the Play Buttons on my wall. It’s my favorite wall. Anyway, I was just like, “Oh my gosh, I have to reach the goal now.” It was just something I really wanted personally. I was joking, I told my personal trainer that once we had 10 million, I was going to retire, and I’ll be done. Then we hit 10 million and it came a little faster than I suspected.
It was going very slowly based on the number on YouTube. You know how they project your growth? We should have already hit it in January this year. Then YouTube was purging accounts literally all year. It was so stressful watching our subscriber count virtually stay the same week after week after week, like zero new followers only because we get like 10 to 20,000 and we’d also lose 10 or 20,000. Every single week. It was so stressful. Then we finally did hit it.
Then, I’m not joking, that week something clicked in my brain, and I was like, “I’m done. I retired,” I didn’t want to post, I didn’t want to film. I was just taking this big breath of like, “Okay, I did it. Finally, I’ve hit my goal, I’m done.” It took me two weeks to almost get out of that funk of like, “No, no, no, you’re not done. Keep doing content.” I really, I didn’t upload anything on YouTube. I think I was like, “Gosh, I should do something.” I put some Shorts on the channel because I felt bad that I just wasn’t uploading. I guess I just needed a mental break.
Tubefilter: That’s not surprising. It’s been 10 years and 10 million followers. I feel like a break is warranted.
Kristine: I think we just actually hit our 11 year mark on October 5, actually.
Tubefilter: Other than needing a break, has anything changed? What we hear from some creators who hit a million subscribers is that they’re like, “Yes, we hit a million and that was cool, and then we just kept going and on to the next video.” Is that how you feel too?
Kristine: Yes. I guess the more millions we got, I think it did get a little less exciting, if that’s what you’re saying. We used to do really big celebrations, but I think in part we also weren’t doing the big celebrations because of the YouTube view counts. Just because we weren’t getting the views on it, we felt like, does anyone care besides us? I actually regret it. We didn’t do anything at all on YouTube for reaching 9 million subscribers. I actually wish we would have because…I just wish we would have, that’s all. It’s something that we should have celebrated, and we didn’t.
Tubefilter: Are you doing something for 10 million?
Kristine: We did a compilation. It was so stressful. Oh my gosh. Like I said, it came a little faster than we thought, 10 million. I was trying to get the compilation out on the day that we were going to hit it, and I just couldn’t do it. For the compilation, I went through every single video that I’ve ever filmed. That’s 11 years of content, including stuff that I’ve never even put on YouTube, stuff that I filmed of my kids just when they were little that I had never put on YouTube because I wasn’t a YouTuber back then.
We put a compilation together of all the best moments that I could find, but it literally was taking me probably 14 hours a day. I was just sitting there going through content trying to pick clips and watching through all these clips, trying to remember what my favorite moments were and everything. It was a lot of work.
Tubefilter: I can imagine. Yes.
Kristine: It’s a good video.
Tubefilter: That’s good. If you regretted not celebrating 9 million, it’s good to celebrate 10.
Kristine: The fans liked it a lot because there were a few unseen moments and then there were definitely all their favorite moments. We tried to include every big moment, all the birthdays, all the epic trips, all the things people really love that we’ve done. A couple of clips from challenges. People really like it when we do the one color of food challenge, that’s a favorite video. We included little pieces from those things too. Hopefully everybody could see one of their favorite moments in the videos.
Tubefilter: Do you have any other goals looking forward? Are there any cool projects you and your family are working on?
Kristine: My main goal, I mentioned, I want to start doing more music with the kids and doing what we love. I feel like we’ve been grinding, grinding, grinding just trying to reach this goal. I feel like, I said to my husband, “I don’t really care. I want to do what we love.” I want to not do what people want as much because sometimes you do what your fans want, but now I just want make sure I’m enjoying the content I’m making rather than feeling forced, I guess. If I don’t have anything to vlog about, then I’m not going to vlog. Whereas in the past if I felt like I had to vlog. That’s one change I’m making personally. I think it’s going to be for the better. Plus, we’re super busy. We have seven kids that are all playing club soccer. It’s just a lot. We’re doing a lot of stuff and we’re putting a lot into our kids with their music lessons and sports training and things like that.
We’re balancing it all. We’re not going to quit, that’s for sure. We’re not going to just walk away from our fans by any means. We’re just altering how we make our content. Just trying to make sure people are happy that we’re promoting positivity around the world and we’re super thankful.
Also, I can’t say I’m not thankful for YouTube. I love YouTube. I definitely love that platform. I’m extremely grateful for it. It’s made my life different than I ever thought it would be in a really great way. We always meet fans when we’re out and about and it’s always humbling to meet them and see how we’ve touched their lives and things like that. The notes we get from people, all that stuff. It’s been pretty awesome.
Tubefilter: Is there anything else that you feel like we should touch on? Anything you want people to know?
Kristine: I don’t know. Gosh. Honestly, just that we are super thankful. It’s hard to explain, honestly. It’s humbling, and we’re just thankful that we’ve been able to do this. Hopefully we’ve been able to impact the world for the positive. Hopefully we’ll leave a wonderful impact on the world and everyone that’s watched us.
