Gilbert Gottfried Made Millions Off Cameo And Left Hundreds Of Videos For Fans To Watch Posthumously

The recently-departed Gilbert Gottfried left behind a one-of-a-kind legacy in comedy thanks to his unforgettable stand-up routines, famously shrill voice and countless roles on TV and in feature films. Unless you're a regular user of celeb video platform Cameo, you might not be aware that he also leaves behind a very prominent stature as one of the site's highest-paid creators.

During his time on Cameo, Gilbert produced hundreds of hours of Cameo videos, a body of work that earned him millions of dollars.

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Cameo is an easy way for anyone with any public recognition to earn some fast money by creating homemade, personalized phone camera videos for anyone who can pony up their fee – in Gottfried's case, $175 per video. With roughly 12,000 Cameo videos to his name before his death at age 67, that resulted in roughly $2.1 million in earnings.

Cameo co-founder and CEO Steven Galanis recently told The Hollywood Reporter that Gottfried was one of the site's top performers, saying he's earned a spot on the platform's "Mount Rushmore." The comedian came to the site in late 2018, before it became as popular as it would be later, and he was known for the care and attention he put into each video.

In a THR interview in 2020, Gottfried spoke about his work on the site:

"I'll put extra effort into things…I'll look stuff up about what [the recipient of the video does] for a living and tailor my jokes to that…Then I lock myself in the bathroom until I finish taping them all…It's become my recording booth."

That attention to detail, along with Gottfried's own notoriety, made him one of the most requested and highest reviewed stars on Cameo. And as Galanis points out, these thousands of hours of video make up a significant portion of the comedian's body of work:

"Nobody posts 10 Instagrams or TikToks a day…But for people like Gilbert, this is by far the biggest social channel he's ever had. The pure volume of content he made is longer than all his recorded hours of stand-up."

Now, sadly, Gottfried's Cameo page has gone dark before his time, and it isn't known what will become of all the videos he made there. But there is precedent for such content to be preserved after an artist's death. Earlier this year, the widow of rock legend Meat Loaf (himself also a Cameo fixture) reportedly requested a copy of the singer's archive, which the site was "happy to provide."

Who is the highest-earning celebrity on Cameo? Click here for the surprise answer.