Sep '17 07

How to earn money - how to make money by riding a bicycle?




Thanks to crowdfunding websites, more and more often I get information on the news that someone is raising money for something. I want to go to a nice event, I want to win something, get it somewhere. I do not make this entry to stigmatize such people - this is not an envy entry (I hope). I would like to lightly guide all those who plan to run a public fundraiser. Perhaps something will think better, they will improve their plans somewhere. I do not have much experience in the subject. I run as one of the largest cycling blogs in Poland, but for parties like Bicycle Tips or Szajbajk I can not grow up to heels. Another target, different content. And as if it's cool, these Cycling Tips are kind of huge ... until you compare them to fitness blogs. Take some ridiculous, one from the cap, one of many, for example: Fit Matka Wariatka ... 3 times bigger than the biggest cycling blog in Poland. The first point: to remember that the ranges of bicycles are limited, and cycling is very limited #ColarstwoNikogo.



I will not give


san remo hotel

A classic hotel for journalists during the presentation of the new model. This one is somewhere near San Remo.



It was basically a zero point. The first point should be: if you open a fundraiser to be able to fully enjoy your hobby, you are luckier than every other person in Poland. And every second person in Poland is close to 20 million people. According to Newsweek: Poland is not a rich country. In extreme poverty last year, every 15 of her citizens lived in the so-called in the realm of poverty, as much as 43 percent. inhabitants of Poland ((...) the subsistence minimum for a single-person household was PLN 1080, and for a four-person family PLN 2,915). I would like to remind you that Poland is in the 30th place in terms of quality of life. Does this prevent us from reaching out to strangers for a new bike or grouping? Of course not. Remember, however, because the person entering the mentioned site will see the collection: help my daughter win with cancer, help fund Santa's presents for children from orphanage, join the training camp in Alicante for Krzysia, who needs good equipment, trainer, diet and so on.





The second question to ask. Why would someone give me something? Immediately I suggest: because I want to do something nice is not the right answer. You know, you can always hit a good man by accident, but generally life does not work like that. There is always something for something. Even if you have found a rich wife / husband / pensioner from Germany who support you, you must give back something in return. Here the most important issue of this entry appears: what can I offer. And again: the answer that I will ride your bike, and people will see it has little sense. Similar to how when I go to the boss and tell him that I want a raise, and in return my friends will see what a nice employer I have. Unless I'm Maciej Stuhr, then he has. Just like: You give me dinner for free, and I will sit with you at the pub - it would work.


pompeluna hotel

A single room where you sleep between bike presentations. This one is under Pamplona in Spain


The third one what can you give. Contrary to how it looks from the outside, companies do not give us stuff for who you are or for doing something great. Basically, the company generally does not matter if you win, until you are Michał Kwiatkowski, which will then be shown by every newspaper and television. The company wants to make sure what you got was exposed. By winning, you increase the chance for expositions because pictures, relationships, podiums and so on. Only in amateur cycling, nobody is interested in what the guest who won the race was driving. The more the guest who went very well and was 4 or 15 per thousand. They can see what the guy who was racing did not win, but has a profile with several thousand spectators on the Facebook. Either a guest who will later give an interview, or his report will appear in something popular. Present situations so that you can create a good idea for the company you want to collaborate with.



Because no


The moment I write these words, I was left with a week for a 2-week trip to the Azores. Having a large range I could not persuade any of the companies to lend me a cross-country bike for this trip. Life is not a fairy tale, if the only thing you can offer is to show the product to a narrow group of people.


merida press conference

Press conference of the protour team organized on the roof overlooking the Mediterranean. On the right, the guys from GCN are just shooting the material - the perfect place to be the king of the second plan


You must have something to support your words. Money is easiest to get from companies. Companies like numbers, charts, colors, powerpoints. It does not matter if you've improved something in the corpo, it's what you can do to prove it. A marketing lady who deals with you details usually has no idea what you're talking about. Some championships, licenses, noise sounds. He knows the numbers and things for that, which he has to show on the show as his success. As a young-educated-from a big city you're good at losing your position. Our company supports children playing football in Podlasie is a better topic than our company supports a visitor who wants to win the Polish Championship (especially if the competition will be watched by 5 people).


michael matthews giro

Most of the players are besieged right after the race. Then all of a sudden disappear and you stay, for example, you and Michael Matthews, who just put on the leader's shirt. This is your moment of truth


What else if this guy is watched on the internet by 20,000 people because he's showing something interesting. Not only that, the guest can show that when he pushes the picture with the product, this photo sees 30,000 people, and when someone types the text which buyer to buy, he pops in googles again, with a relationship he won while riding on the X company bars. Deep down I am not interested in who comes the Polish Champion, Michał B. I sometimes see myself for where I live and what I am doing, times are changing, but people still like Big Brother and life someone's life.



But I will give you the WOW effect


[pullquote] No matter how much time you spend on something, what counts is the effect [/ pullquote] Where do you get these people from? The biggest heads are wondering about it, but the answer comes down to one: buy. As I wrote above, nothing in life is free and to do something you usually have to invest - both time and money. You have to take a chance, spend a lot of time creating content that people will be interested in and then advertise. You can do great things, write interesting texts, but what if you do not know about it. I feel uncomfortable every time I start advertising a fanpage or entry. I feel like I'm going into someone's home and saying: Hey, look what I'm doing, it's cool. Unfortunately, the world works, you have to pay or count on a miracle to break through. I spent only PLN 3,000 on advertising on Facebook. And I do not really sponsor much, and I think it's quite effective. If I risked it and released it 3 years ago, today probably the blog would be several times larger. Because if a steady increase in people is on the blog 1% per week, the more people you have, the more new ones appear.


giro decoration

... and then I go in, all in white


Although I do not know what law I give here any advice. The number of companies that turn to me with any proposal is negligible - if I was running a blog for profit or collecting free stuff, I would have been depressed for a long time. And I'm not surprised - I can not give them a lot to me. If a well-known actor, say Maciej Stuhr, throws a picture with Krosse, it will be 32x more advantageous for the company than when I put it on.



How to visit?


The basis, therefore, is to prepare a statement: why I. As in the CV. Borrow a bike from a friend's shop, or even from a buddy. He will describe it in the net somehow interesting. Take a nice route, also describe it. You do not even have to leave the house, remember that your Sunday loop may be the destination of people who live far away from her. Come to events, show up, talk to people. Make a charity action for some noble purpose - invite known people to it. Charity activities organized for self promotion may be morally questionable, but still better than their lack.


cycling interview

The basis is to be in the right place at the right time, and if you do not know what to say, say something funny.


The best advertising media are not the best and those who sell the best. If you regularly come on the 20th or 40th place on the race around the Tatra Mountains, you do not have to be less interesting than the winner. Talking about it interesting in the breakfast TV you can still be a guest who accomplishes the impossible ... 200km bike at a time, in the mountains ?! Viewers will not know that there are a lot of people who do the same as you, only better or faster. There is almost always a guest who will do the same as you, but better. Well, unless you're a master in something, then you have it easier.



Who to visit?


[pullquote] If you write to a newspaper, someone pays you for it. If you run a blog, you also think that someone should pay you for it. Yes it is not. [/ Pullquote] Only if you are a master does not mean that whatever you deserve. Plus having the title of Polish Champion is such that someone can put you on the poster "Polish Champion uses Y wheels" (and does not have to add that it is a champion, but only road, only mountain, only in age category and just 15 people) . Because you can be nervous, why someone throwing their calf collects more likes than you, who sit and for hours you will refine your picture from the trip, bike description or race report, but it does not work. It does not matter how much time you spend on something and what effect you achieve. These two values are not directly related to each other. And what effect you achieve is judged by people, not you.


movistar lunch

You may think that everyday clicking on the toilet in Spanish Duolingo does not make sense ... until you discover that people in Movistarze speak only Spanish so they do not talk to anyone.


If you want to reach the maximum number of recipients you do not write a technological argument about the fiber structure and the complicated wheel manufacturing process you got, just put a picture of this wheel on Pitoniówce, you say that he is brilliant and is great and everyone is happy. You saved time, people saw the message, the marketing lady will get excellent numbers, people who pay you from marketing will see beautiful charts. Believe me, hardly anybody in the marketing is checking exactly what opinion the blogger has, it can not be shown in the presentation. Counts are numbers.



Where to go, whom to know?


Let's go back to being. If I knew blogging and released a book, the first chapter would be: Where to go, who to know. By staying in places, you meet people who will help you one day. Because they work in various professions, they know other people who know others. There is such a theory, it is called the theory of six circles. Wikipedia explains this:


"The relationship of persons can be graded: If a person knows another directly, he is one step away from that person; if a person is in a relationship with another through the means of someone directly known, he is two steps away from that person; and so on. The number of intermediaries between two people in the entire human population on Earth does not exceed six degrees of remoteness. "


In the case of fejsbuka users, on average somewhere between 3 and 4 passes of the hand (research in lengldz). The more people you know in the environment, the better. Be nice to them, create positive relationships. I do not know if someone is interested, but my first major cooperation is a series of unpredictable events - the company Rose, on which I currently ride a bicycle (here's an entry about itwhy this bike). Here, dear diary, this is the story.



A long story of my life


A day like any other, on the outside an average, lonely and depressive loop on Gassy. I have a blog that no one reads, photos of which nobody is watching. I meet two buddies whom I know more about than seeing. Word to word, it turns out that they are going to Livigno in a week or two. I do not know how it happened, but a few days later I'm sitting with them in the car. We have adventures, which is not a measure, I wrote it down herethe text may not be beautiful, but there are people reading too. After returning with some luck, I am again in a place where I do not know where I came from. We are there as well as the chief of a bicycle magazine. Someone mentions my text, someone finds the topic, I get several pages in the next issue. I sit at night trying to come up with something good, writing to the media is stressing me, because I do not take responsibility for my words anymore, I can not correct something or explain it by comment. Then months of drought.

One day the phone rings from another warehouse, but from the same people. I am writing some text, then a few others. For the first time someone pays me a trip to ride bicycles, look at new products, take pictures and write it down. I take vacation and I fly. It's Austria, murdering hills and bikes Rose. There, I meet the Polish distributor of the brand. Then I go to Giro to look at Merida and watch Canyona to Spain. I meet someone in each of these places, from distributors, mechanics and world-class players to constructors.


contador interview

Going to a safe one, you can enter places where you should not be. They will stop you three times, but once you succeed, that's enough.


Winter is coming, crop failure, nothing happens. I change my job, I have a month of vacation. We go to the Canaries, we do relationships and entries, the blog comes alive, because the competition is small. I am writing to you from Rose, whether they have any bikes to borrow, preferably two. One for me, the other for Panda or a friend, because how can I take pictures myself while driving. I get them for a month, I give in a state that I feel ashamed. The rationale is simple: we were with them in the Polish Tatras, the Slovak Tatras, the Slovak Paradise, in the Trinitarian legislatures, in the Krakow camps, on the act with Tomek Marczyński. Hardly anyone associates a company, everyone asks what this bike is and how it goes. I'm sipping fejsbuk with photos, for the first time I get a gallery for a few hundred likes. These are not outstanding pictures, but then I eat them (sample gallery, another example gallery). For the first time the blog entry (on which almost every photo has a Rose bike) has 10,000 visits in a week without promotion. 10k of entries is nothing but nothing, but the target group is narrow and the majority of visitors is a potential customer.

I am sending bicycles, but I have the perfect one caseif I decide to ask someone in the future. In the future, I use these photos more than once. Even in the current, September issue of Szosa, you can find them on spreads. In the picture there are mountains, but the second plan is a bike Rose - free advertising. If in googles you'll put Rose Cycling or Rose bikes or something similar, my entry pops up on the 1st or 2nd side.


A long-distance bus trip between the Route du Sud race in France and a presentation a few hundred kilometers away is the perfect time to capture your photos. When you have a blog, you have to make life. Blog at work, work at home, domować by bicycle.


Less than a year later I get for the first time in my life an invitation to present bikes as Hop Cycling, with an expensive hotel, food and these matters. For this I am for eternally grateful to Kross (here relation). Of course, I'm on it anyway financially lossybecause I have to take time off and go there, but I feel like I've won my life. It is a sign that it will be possible.



Lord, what are you writing about me here? What do you care?


tour de france helicopter

The moment in which, as a VIP guest, you are flying over the Tour de France peloton, the moment when you think that nothing better will happen to you ... is not true, of course.


Why is this story? It simply shows that the best option is to FIRST do something and then ask for it. Asking only referring to your future plans is doomed to failure. As in any field: you visualize the benefits for the company, supported by evidence. I guarantee you that if you have at least some interesting story and write an e-mail to several newspapers / magazines / anything that you have - one will publish or invite you. You can not write syntax completely, but you can tell interestingly? It does not matter, then there are proofreaders. Then ask for the article to be signed with your name and surname, and under this name the blog. Someone will click there, someone will share something there, someone will notice you - you just have to help a bit.



Too long, I do not want to read. Write how to get these freebies.


Do not be a brother, do not ask people for money that you do not need to live. Do not ask for things, just because you belong to hard work. Money is a result, not a job. Offer something in return, so that everyone will benefit from it. But no in return, you can go with me on a bike (unless you're Rafał Majka), and something that you would agree to yourself, being a marketing lady or a random man from the internet. Otherwise, you are the unemployed visitor who comes up on the street and asks you for a pipe. You bought it 10 minutes ago, after a day of listening about KPIs, ASAPs, deadlines, meetings, SCRUMs, downtimes, technical things told by people who have no idea about it and you do not even have the strength to ask him why do you want my pipe?


Meanwhile, I am finishing the post, because tomorrow at 4 am we are starting the charity set with Huzar at the other end of Poland, after which we return home straight away.


* I am sorry for all the ladies in marketing for this text

* all information provided here is mine whims and they may be wrong. Maybe I am doing something very bad myself and I am allowing this possibility. If so, I will be grateful for the commentary that corrects me.



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