PewDiePie originally registered a YouTube account under the name "Pewdie"; he explains that "pew" represents the sound of lasers and "die" means death. After forgetting the password to this account, he then registered the "PewDiePie" YouTube channel on 29 April 2010. After he dropped out of Chalmers, his parents refused to support him, and as a result he funded his early videos by selling prints of his Photoshop art, as well as working at a hot dog stand. On having to work at the stand, PewDiePie stated, "the fact that I could make videos was so much more important to me than [that] I had to spend a few hours a day doing a job that wasn't that prestigious." Five years later, PewDiePie recalled, "I knew people were big at other types of videos, but there was no one big in Gaming, and I didn't know you could make money out of it. It was never like a career that I could just quit college to pursue. It was just something I loved to do. And here we are five years later and it's exploded." By December 2011, PewDiePie's channel had around 60,000 subscribers. Around the time his channel earned 700,000 subscribers, PewDiePie spoke at Nonick Conference 2012. On 11 July 2012, the channel reached 1 million subscribers, and it reached 2 million subscribers in September. In October, OpenSlate ranked the PewDiePie channel as the No. 1 YouTube channel. That December, PewDiePie signed with Maker Studios.