What Is Dope as Yola’s Net Worth?
Thomas Araujo, professionally known as Dope as Yola, is an American social media star, entrepreneur, and YouTube star who has a net worth of $500,000. His content centered around all-things marijuana, strain reviews, and joint rollings are what propelled him to social media stardom.
Dope as Yola was born on September 6, 1989, in Merced, California, U.S., and has a younger brother and one older sister.
He is of Mexican and Polish descent.
Yola was raised predominantly by his mother, and as he recalls, life wasn’t financially easy, so he was a thin child due to a lack of money.
Over time, their situation changed, and with that came more access to food.
As such, he developed an unhealthy relationship with eating and gained weight quickly.
He spent most of his life battling his weight, and as an adult, he began taking it seriously.
When Yola was in high school, his mom caught him selling marijuana and skipping school, so she kicked him out of their home. He moved to Portland, Oregon, to live with his father.
Since he has no friends in the city, he ended up spending his time working out and competing in weight-lifting competitions.
This was around the same time he ramped up his marijuana sales as a way to earn an income as a teenager.
He ran into legal issues when the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) started an investigation on Yola when they were tipped off that he was shipping large packages of illegal mushrooms across the border.
Yola was never convicted, and the DEA closed the case when they failed to find sufficient evidence.
During his time living in Portland, he was also working as a pizza delivery person to supplement his income. He used this time to increase his marijuana sales as a secondary source of income to help pay his bills.
He went into detail during an interview with “No Jumper.”
“I used to be a pizza guy, and I would sell sacks during my pizza shifts, so I’d put my scale and my weed in my bag. And I’d walk up to my homies and sell them weed and leave. It was the best thing ever. I’d keep my sign on after work because who the f*ck is gonna pull me over? No one ever pulls the pizza guy over, ever. So, I did that for like three years, and I would do it to have a check, so they know how you’re paying rent and for your car.”
By the time Yola reached his early 30s, he had decided to quit doing drugs entirely and focus on his health.
He also feels that his career takes too much time in his day to be spending it using drugs.
YouTube
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When he first ventured into YouTubing, his videos consisted of him smoking marijuana with little to no audio.
For the first few years of his online career, he struggled to get a large following, but that didn’t concern him.
He was uploading videos once every eight months or so just for the fun of it. Over time, when his audience grew, his videos transitioned into tutorials teaching his audience more about proper rolling techniques and types of marijuana.
Yola graduated to Instagram once his YouTube following grew, and his content stayed the same.
The first four years went smoothly, and his following grew substantially.
Once he hit the four-year mark, Instagram started permanently deleting his account due to the content he posted.
They continued to close his accounts so many times that as of the time of writing, he is onto his 25th new account.
He also runs an apparel company under the name “Just Clothing,” and the business’s Instagram account also gets shut down regularly.
He contacts their administration department to rectify the issues as he believes he is not behaving outside of their terms of use, but they refuse to deal with him directly.
He even went as far as driving to their headquarters in Fresco, California, to no avail.
From this, Yola decided to focus more of his energy on YouTube to battle this, as the platform left his page alone without issue.
Podcast
On August 31, 2020, he jumped on the Podcast bandwagon and started his own under the name “Dope as Usual Podcast,” which can be found on YouTube.
The channel is centered around interviewing other digital celebrities and musicians. It currently has over 174,000 subscribers and contributes substantially to Yola’s income.
During an interview, he was asked when he decided to start taking YouTube seriously and how he knew it would be lucrative.
“I would say like 2016. So almost from 2013 to 2016, I was just making pictures on Instagram, f***ing around. And then like 16, 17, I moved here because I was like ‘there’s gotta be more I can do. I gotta do something else; I wanna so more.’ It was before I ever talked on camera, actually. I’ve never talked on camera until 2018, late 2017. I did a story every time on my phone.”
He also said, “That’s when I started making more informed content. And that’s it, man, as soon as I started talking on camera and telling stories and shit, that’s what blew my whole f*cking channel up.”
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Girlfriend
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Dope as Yola started dating his girlfriend Rosie in 2011.
The two got engaged in 2021.
Net Worth
So, how much is Dope as Yola worth?
Araujo earned most of his wealth from hosting his podcast and selling merch on dopeasyola.com/shop. His YouTube channel is not monetized.
Therefore, social media star Dope as Yola has an estimated net worth of $500,000.
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