Growing up in poverty, 'IPodKing' now has money and a million online followers

Meet David Carter.

He grew up in impoverished Chester, Penn., tosses luggage for a living at the Philly airport, and has a wife and an 11-year-old son.

Carter also edits videos and games in a small studio in the basement of his brick Drexel Hill row house, and that's where we pick up signs of his other life as iPodKingCarter — more on the name later — who has almost 1 million followers on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, after beginning with a few hundred subscribers on YouTube in 2010.

And for all the parents out there who have told their children that video gaming is a waste of time, consider this: Carter says he now makes about $100,000 off it.

"I'm like anybody else in Chester, looking for a way out," said Carter, who grew up on the city's west side but graduated from nearby Strath Haven High School.

Carter calls himself "one of the most public gaming figures out there in my genre," mostly sport video games but also games like "Borderlands."

Carter is one of many media influencers and video content producers who have gained millions of online followers in recent years with the explosive growth of e-sports, or competitive video games. Driving their popularity are companies like Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard and Take-Two Interactive, whose collective stock is worth $75 billion. There's also an ecosystem of marketers, gamers, PR experts, and social media engagers.

This summer, Comcast Spectacor will begin constructing a $50 million e-sports arena in South Philadelphia, near Lincoln Financial Field and Citizens Bank Park, for its Fusion team in the e-sports Overwatch League. Even broadcast and cable channels now air video game competitions.

Carter mostly plays the video game "NBA 2K" and there are other influencers who are bigger: Chris Smoove boasts of 4.9 million followers on YouTube compared with Carter's 560,000. CashNasty has attracted 2.8 million and Kristopher London, 1.8 million.

Still, Carter's audience is among the largest nationally, said Ronnie "Ronnie 2K" Singh, director of influencer marketing for the "NBA 2K" game developed by Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., which also markets "Grand Theft Auto," "Borderlands," "BioShock" and "Red Dead Redemption."

"Kids are looking for information and they are not looking at magazines or editorial or even social media for it. They are looking on YouTube," Singh said.

Singh said that "iPod used to make at least five videos a week. A lot of these guys, as the game gained popularity, the community would share the videos," which built their online audience and the potential for advertising.

Carter, 31, said he makes his money mostly through advertising inserted into his YouTube videos. He also recently signed with Facebook, which is launching a gaming platform. He has drastically cut back on his hours at the Philly airport so he has time to produce his videos and interact with his gaming audience. Carter recently flew to Los Angeles to review a new version of the "Borderlands" video game at the W Hollywood hotel so he could post videos on his channel and a Facebook gaming basketball event.

Carter said he restricts his videos to gaming and clean language.

"If you are dropping a lot of f-bombs, you won't get a lot of ads," Carter added. "You can't just go out there and say anything you want anymore."

As with many kids of his generation, Carter began gaming with Nintendo's "Mario."

He also was fascinated with technology and became one of the first students in his high school to listen to music on an iPod. Around 2003, Carter was partying at a classmate's house in Wallingford. "The house was going crazy," he said of the dancing. "There was like 30 kids in there. I believe it was chaperoned. But it was just the vibe was getting killed because the CD kept skipping."

The next Monday, "everyone was saying 'iPodKing,' 'iPodKing,' " he said.

Carter's dad, David Sr., runs a silk-screening business for clothing in downtown Chester. "I expected him to go to college," David Sr. said, "but we couldn't get the controller out of his hand."

Carter instead decided on a job at the airport. Baggage handling paid well and "gave me time to, you know, do stuff on my down time, whether it was watching gaming videos, study gaming, [or] learn how to edit videos," Carter said. Other airport perks included free air travel for gaming events and networking.

He also discovered like-minded gamers among baggage-handling co-workers.

"Everyone at the airport used to play 'Call of Duty,' " said Rob Bennett, 31, of North Philadelphia, also an airport baggage handler. "There were like 10 to 20 people and we'd do it after work. Then [Carter] said he would start streaming and he would do YouTube videos. He got more followers and more followers. He just took off with it."

Early on, YouTube commenters told Carter that he should do voice-overs with commentary. So Carter did. Over time, his YouTube channel evolved into tutorials, entertainment, and news videos. He also plays "NBA 2K" online.

"If I'm coming out with news videos, every single one of those videos are hitting 100k plus, everybody wants to see the news," Carter said. "They want to hear about the info, they want to instantly click it, click, click, click."