How To Make The Next Great Motorcycle Blog
There's no good motorcycle content anymore. That's a) partially my fault b) a damn shame and c) a great opportunity for an enterprising enthusiast. Here's how to do it, do it right and make money doing it.
Just so everyone's on the same page: I have zero interest in ever again writing about motorcycles full time. Bikes are fun and all, but being the World's #1 Dog Camping Journalist is even funner. Man, it'd be nice to read about bikes sometime though.
I bounced this piece of fellow cranky old writer Sam Smith, just to make sure I wasn't totally off base. He told me to include the following three points:
Why bike journalism matters: Because motorcycles are awesome. Because we care about them. Because they deserve a larger place in the world and because more people should ride them. And because they're hard to get into and most people go about it all wrong, then get scared off instead of becoming life-long riders. Because riding a motorcycle means freedom and sticking it to the man and extending a middle finger in the face of people who say you shouldn't or can't.
Why It currently sucks: Because no one is even trying. Bonnier bought all the magazines, then just made them feel even more identical and even more like advertorial. Because a press release is not an article. Because no one's figured out how to make money doing it. Because the big brands are scared. Because no one's taking chances.
I'm definitely going to piss off my friends who write about bikes by writing this article. To them, I simply ask: Are you proud of your work? Are you doing the best you can? The best you could if your company actually backed you? Be honest.
What I miss reading: A review that really tells me what it's like to ride a new bike. Or one that feels free to tear it apart. And one that gets it right when it does. Amazing first person, life confirming adventures. Substantial insight into how new technology works. The real life stories of the crazy, awesome people who make crazy, awesome bikes. Stuff with attitude, articles with intelligence, content that really draws you in and really demonstrates how great riding bikes really is.
Yesterday afternoon, I sat down, opened a beer and my computer and just really wanted to spend an hour or so getting lost and learning something new about motorcycles. Maybe a really in depth review of the new H2R or an interview with the guy who designed it for Kawasaki. Maybe a story about doing something utterly insane with it. But, despite the big budget launch that just took place, there just wasn't any of that. Just some lame first rides in which various ex-racers competed to gobble the H2's knob with hackneyed metaphors. That's not just a shame, it's a real problem. If no one cares enough to make motorcycles interesting, then who's going to be interested in them?
So, I'm going to make this easy for you.
How To Get Started
At the risk of sounding like too much of a Gawker cheerleader, I'm going to suggest you start your budding bike blog right here on Kinja. Over other easy publishing platforms, it's almost toosimple, it's totally free and it will make your content easy to share across the main Gawker sites like Gizmodo and Jalopnik.
There is no more powerful traffic referral out there than that achieved by getting a story on the front page of a Gawker site. Not Reddit or Digg Twitter or Facebook or anything, but you can still use those too. Eight years ago, I launched a business on that premise and it's Gawker's traffic that was the main reason I was able to grow it into the most widely read motorcycle website only a handful of years later.
You could, of course, go through all the trouble of building your own website on Wordpress or something, then hope Jalopnik re-blogs the occasional story. Doing that will cost you money though and will never put the same number of eyeballs on your own stuff as them putting your stuff right on their front page will.
If you're business minded, you're probably spotting one big flaw here: by doing this on Kinja you're giving up the ability to sell your own display advertising. I wouldn't worry too much about that, there's extremely, extremely, extremely little money to be made from selling ads in the bike space and there's more effective ways to make more money more easily. But, we'll go into that below.
Right now, you should be worried about growing an audience. And that audience exists right here. A breakout, major scoop, most popular story of the year on a motorcycle site will be lucky to get more than 10,000 page views. Here's some incoherent ramblings easily netting 100k+here in the Gawkerverse. Yes, you really do have an opportunity to be more relevant than everything that exists currently in the motorcycle space.
What Content Will Be Successful
If you make compelling, interesting, unique, original content, they will come. There's no point in copying what else is out there or even using it as a model for what's possible. Not only is there a serious dearth of quality in motorcycle content right now, but as an upstart, you're not going to have the same access as all the lazy old men who write bike reviews. That's ok, it just means you need to work harder and, you know, actually be creative.
News: You should aim to break every news story. No one else is putting in the effort to do so, which is all it really takes — hard work. This is going to be both your low hanging fruit and your biggest driver of traffic.
To do it, you should seek to develop a comprehensive, multi-language RSS feed of all the editorial motorcycle sites out there. Do the same for the bigger forums, again making sure to include markets like Thailand, Germany, Italy, and the UK, where bikes are both a larger part of the overall culture and where they're produced, designed and sold in large numbers. Create google alerts for important new models, under all the logical permutations of their potential names. Identify major influencers and subjects on Twitter and create columns for them on Tweetdeck. Identify the big, influential Facebook groups around motorcycles, across the world, and check in with them daily. The general idea is to create your own spider web that's capable of capturing all information around motorcycling as it falls through the Internet. Spend time doing it and continually mining it and you'll own motorcycle news.
And owning the news is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. Be seen to be the place where news is broken and be the site that people want to read and people will send you scoops. There was never any subterfuge or intrigue involved in gaining any of my sources, people that work at motorcycle companies are motorcycle enthusiasts and just liked my work and wanted to help out.
Look at news as more than just new bikes. You should also be covering tech innovations, exciting new gear, shake ups in the world (Audi's Ducati purchase for instance), political stuff and just anything that's interesting and ongoing around motorcycles. Then go deeper.
Reviews: You're not going to have access to test bikes not only to start with, but for quite a while. Likely years and years. The manufacturers are all staffed by people who are either ignorant of the media space, scared to take risks, or more typically both. And, the only press fleets are in SoCal, so if you live literally anywhere else, you might as well give up on the idea of testing mainstream motorcycles ever. There's also nothing worse than a badly written, amateur hour bike review that lacks perspective and insight. Writing a professional review takes perspective and expertise. Both exist in the space right now, but not paired with talented writing and the freedom to tell the truth. That's sad, but there's not going to be much you can do about it to start.
Where the opportunity here lies is to tell first person stories around interesting, unique bikes. Why hasn't anyone flown down to New Orleans yet to take JT's bonkers Bienville Legacy for a spin? Do that, take some awesome photos. Get drunk with JT after and come back with an awesome story. I did that with one of his previous bikes back when I was getting started in this world and it remains one of the best stories I've ever told, even if I did get sued over it.
Do the same with a friend's oddball classic bike and tell us what it's like from the perspective of 2015. Find custom builders near you and do the same with their work. Try and get some seat time on a famous race bike. The opportunity here is to tell great stories about interesting bikes, not to try and compete with CycleWorld for launch access.
Technology: You know what's interesting about bikes? All the stuff that makes them work. Which, by the way, is totally changing as we speak. So tell us about it. Call up the engineers designing the stuff and ask them questions. Get access to their sketches and ideas and diagrams and test procedures. Explain what makes it great, explain how it works and explain who it's going to change the bikes we ride and the ways we ride them.
Personalities: Motorcycling may not be a terribly lucrative world right now, but it sure is an interesting one. You will have no dearth of crazy people to talk to and you'll find access to them fairly easy. Email Pierre Terblanche and ask him what the hell he's doing at Royal Enfield, a company that hasn't designed a new bike in 50 years. I bet he'll respond to that email and I bet he'll tell you exactly what he's planning.
Features: You can do some neat stuff on a motorcycle. Go do it and tell us about it. Seek out people who have done their own neat stuff and tell us their stories too. Go places, do things and take good photos along the way. Not only will this be good content, but it'll inform your growing knowledge of the world and help shape your budding expertise and perspective.
Racing: Don't bother, no one cares. And modern racers are perhaps the least interesting people in the entire world.
In general, you should seek to make motorcycle content that's interesting to a wide audience. Yes, geek out on them, yes treat your audience with respect as the smart, knowledgeable people they are, but don't chase only the audience you see on bike forums or on existing motorcycle sites; that's simply a very, very small group. The wider world is interested in bikes, it's your opportunity to fulfill that interest with interesting content.
And please don't just copy someone else's work. There's way too much plagiarism in bikes, something that results in a swirling descent into poorly-informed, badly made, toilet-worthy bike content.
Make something you can be proud of, without caveats.
How To Make Money
There's no money in display advertising in the motorcycle space. You could spend three or four years chasing manufacturers, then eventually net yourself what they'll call a "trial buy" which is really just a check for $5k for a solid month's advertising, an amount that's a total insult and which will never increase. Or, you could join an ad network, but those will only pay you a $1-2 CPM rate by the time it's all said and done; you're effectively just making someone else money.
As an indication of how little money is spent on ads in this world, everyone seems to be aping the BikeEXIF tiny little ads thing nowadays. Those are typically sold at $50-200/month depending on the site we're talking about; an amount that even in volumes of 8 to10 spaces just doesn't merit even the minimal effort these require.
Your best bet to earn real money, do so from day one and without having to spend all your time trying to sell ad space is going to be affiliate. Amazon will pay you 3-5% of any purchase made after following a link from your site to theirs (even if you're writing about a helmet and your reader ends up buying a box of crayons). With real traffic, that's potentially real income, all without having to put on a tie and go to sales meetings or promising to write nice things about someone's shitty bikes or products.
That's the great thing about an affiliate model, it gives you the freedom to work for your readers. If you're seen to be transparently testing and recommending stuff in their interest, then they'll trust you and buy the stuff you recommend as a result. It's an ideal arrangement between outlet and reader; foster trust and profit from it.
Kinja is a great platform to run affiliate from, as an independent publisher. It's easy to seamlessly include the links and the potential for real traffic creates potential for real profit. There's no reason you can't do the same on a different platform, but again, doing so would just be adding unnecessary complication and barriers.
You'll need to be covering products that are available for sale online, of course, but riding gear, tools and all that stuff can fit seamlessly into a larger editorial view of the motorcycle world. It just so happens that Amazon's next big conquest is going to be motorcycle gear and their inventory of it will be increasing dramatically this year, so that's good timing for you.
RevZilla also operates an affiliate program that's very beneficial to independent publishers. It's an invite-only thing, but if you're making an awesome bike site, I'll bet they'll want to work with you. Doing so will be more profitable than just working with Amazon and you'll be informing readers about products sold by the company they want to buy them from.
How much you're able to make obviously depends on how well you're able to accrue eyeballs, your ability to retain them and how well you're able to integrate affiliate into your larger editorial picture. That'll take some trial and error and some experimentation, but it'd be reasonable to expect to be earning $2,000-$5,000/month from it within your first year.
The overall traffic potential in motorcycles isn't super great, sadly. But even with an audience of, say 500,000 uniques (a reasonable goal), you could get your affiliate earnings over $10k/month. And at that point you could make this a full time job.
If you're able to do that, you won't need my advice anymore. But, allow me to give you one last recommendation: Don't sell out. If you are able to beat the odds and make a successful, standout publication then other entities will come courting. Take it from me, you are better on your own than you are with a boss or a business "partner."
I've probably managed to piss off a lot of people by this point. So, let me close on a positive note. If you accept this challenge, if you sit down and start making great motorcycle content, then I will put my money where my mouth is and help you. Impress me and I will open my Rolodex to you, make introductions on your behalf, answer your questions and maybe even write you the occasional article that's rude, insulting, disrespectful, but also totally accurate and something that needs to be said. And I'll do that for free.
So who's going to do it? Who's going to write something about motorcycles that's actually worth reading?
IndefinitelyWild is a new publication about adventure travel in the outdoors, the vehicles and gear that get us there and the people we meet along the way. Follow us on Facebook, Twitterand Instagram.
When I get my motorcycle license (after I finally get around to filing my taxes), I will regale the Internet with "How to Suck at Riding a Motorcycle," the misadventures of a notoriously clumsy newbie. Get excited.
Really interesting article. Its defintively worth to think about. Wanted to publish some of my language "skills", yes there are really some people, who said that, anyway. Only Problem I'm German, much less reader, and my english is not for publishing any good text. So if someone of you can speak german as well, please contact me ;)
Wes, you're one of the few moto-journalists I will read. I disagree at times with you, but I never consider your opinion inferior to mine. I'm an MSF instructor, a motorcyclist for 2/3 of his life and I honestly feel like hanging it up more times than not.
The moto-community in general has me up in arms and furious. Motorcyclists that won't stand up for motorcyclist's isues. Motorcyclists that don't want lanesplitting legal because they don't feel comfortable doing it. Motorcyclists who aren't against ethanol because they don't see a difference in their own vehicles. The list goes on... Apathy like this divides a group and makes it harder to have our voices heard.
I've contacted the AMA on numerous occasions (one time got me on the cover) and have been contacting my congressmen and congresswomen and everyone that con lend political help. This includes Pat Toomey who is co-sign for the Toomey-Feinstein Corn Ethanol Mandate Elimination Act of 2015. Also I have been working on trying to get fair parking in Philadelphia; currently you get 1/3 of an auto stall for automobile stall prices, or you can use an auto stall for 1 bike only, and only if parked parallel to the curb. I previously worked on getting Chelten Hills Drive and Tookany Creek Parkway open to bikes (Victory! Yay!), but i'm sick and fucking tired of being the only one to fight the good fight. I'm sick of paying an upcharge on my medical insurance when it doesn't even cover one bit of anything motorcycle related. I'm sick of seeing restaurants with "No Motorcycle Parking". When is someone that is not a motorcyclist going to support such an effort, let alone an ignorant motorcyclist that is fine with the status quo?
The last thing you want from me is a depressing blog about something in it's simplicity is so perfect ;-)
The last thing you want from me is a depressing blog about something in it's simplicity is so perfect ;-)
I would read the crap out of that honestly.
Just throwing this out there, my name says it all! I recently got into riding, and I agree there is a lot of information out there but nothing that brings it all home together in one RSS feed. Hmmm, I may have to try this.
I'd really like to see more vlogs and writing along the lines of this guy. I thought his review of the Triumph was fantastic. It was creative and informative, and broke away from the fawning for moar powwerrrrrrr.
Damn, that was really good! Thanks for putting that up.
excellent post wes.
this will restart the discussions i've been having with my riding buddies.
the wall i tend to bump against is the shear variety of rider types.
i ride a modern sportbike but really don't have any other friends that do. (we all know why)
i hang out with a vintage / cafe crowd, which itself is split between guys that have money to throw at drum brakes and bad suspension, and the guys that still do their own work.
then there is BMW ADV.
Harley.
then the genres of two-wheeled motorsports. a couple national series of both on-road and off-road. some riders are die-hard fans, others have never seen a race.
some are daily commuters, some are weekend warriors.
but i like the challenge, and will sketch out some ideas.
One of my friends and coworkers is a diehard Harley guy. Currently drives a Dyna, used to own a Sportster, family is all HD lifers. For months, he kept trying to convince me that the Versys that I wanted was "a chick bike" and "a sport bike" and "Just get a Harley bro!".
That changed over time. I just kept firm with my stance of "it doesn't matter what you ride, it matters *that* you ride." I looked at the entire Harley lineup. Nothing was compelling looking, or had the features I wanted. I looked at all of the American manufacturers' bikes and none of them were even remotely close to what I wanted in a bike, especially now that Buell is gone. I wanted a Versys.
It helped that I finally got my MSF course done and got my license. The first day I showed up to work on my roommate's '85 Shadow 700 which needed new tires at the time, he gained a lot of respect for me. Guy helped me learn how to care for my chaps (yes, chaps on a dual-sport. bite me, they're affordable). Recommended a good Bluetooth unit, even though he doesn't use one himself since he's in the local HOG chapter and they all run CB. Helped me install said Bluetooth in my helmet. Recommended good tires to replace the 20-year-old rubber that was barely keeping the Shadow rubber side down. Sympathized when I realized the fuel light on the Shadow didn't work, on the way to work 1.5 mi from the nearest gas station. Offered helpful gear solutions for comfortable riding without compromising safety. Made recommendations on gear and tactics to make the first (600-mile) cruise on the Versys (still a month out—arrrghhhhh!) more comfortable and safer.
We have our disagreements. He doesn't necessarily stick to ATGATT, he doesn't like full face helmets because they get warmer than a half helmet, and sometimes the "harley bro" attitude comes back a little. But we understand one another, and he's even offered me his keys more than once. I decline every time, but the unspoken implications of that gesture are more than enough.
Just be the bridge, man. Not every Harley guy is a douche, and not every BMW rider is a pompous ass. Be yourself, and ride on.
I probably could do it, if I made a run at it.
1. I ride daily, as main transportation. (Have over 55K ridden miles.)
2. Am a decent writer and content strategist, from working in marketing.
3. Am good at making connections.
4. Have created a successful podcast from scratch.
I miss the old RA...that's why I now read Sean MacDonald's work on Common Thread (which I found from one of your replies to another comment when you first came back with indefinitely wild). I look forward to reading you occasional motorcycle articles.
My 0.02:
If person behind the next big motorcycle site is going to have a comments section, they'll have to get involved in it. That also means banning trolls and deleting their crap. Some of the best articles were made a lot better/more memorable ("Memorable" and "Online" is a RARE combination) by interaction between the author, community, and, sometimes, the subject. Weak sites are killed by trolls, or more likely, one nymshifting troll (Won't name him...). There's a reason why an awful lot of people who actually do real stuff that ought to be covered won't be caught dead in discussion sections.
Agreed, fostering a community is very important.
Yes, the comments at the Original HFL were incredible. Also, even the outliers like the infamous Tom were downright memorable.
"I simply ask: Are you proud of your work? Are you doing the best you can? The best you could if your company actually backed you? Be honest."
I LOVE THIS. I would love a boss that wants this.
wow. thanks for saying it... it seems like everyone writing (or making films) about bikes have been a broken record. I totally feel the same way... thats why we tried something different (if you don't mind me sharing a little film with you...)
I'm not going to lie, most of the online motorcycle content is absolute garbage. It almost reflects the typical trip you are likely to experience at any dealership or general big ticket motorcycle event. I really miss the days when HFL was just starting to land on its feet. My only other alternative is Biker Glory or Front End Chatter for decent content. Visor Down is hit or miss most of the time. Every time I check Ash On Bikes to see if new content might have been posted by a possible trusted colleague of Kevin, I get a little depressed at the absolute ghost town its become and it reminds me of his departure.
I mean, every press launch of the new R1 at Australia this past March practically read the same. I get that if someone bad mouthed the new bike, especially for the US models having the same old restrictions Yamaha has been implementing in their bikes since forever, they probably wouldn't get an invitation to another event, but come on guys! This is a $16k bike that's going to need a reflash out of the crate just to get on par with the exact same bike sold in Europe. Is no one allowed to be upset about this? Does the bike even come with anti-judder springs to keep it from rattling your teeth out when you leave a stop light a la the 2009 R1? Most online content just seems to serve as a longer sales brochure.
What about the ungainly H2R that no one asked for? Or the street-RCV concept, ya'know, with the dirtbike shift lever and faux display that had a lower redline than most liter bikes. Or how cheap and ugly the new beginner bikes look? What about the other side of track days? When you get stuck with control riders that have bad attitudes? I mean seriously, I've seen first hand people get killed over that kind of shit but how do I say 'Fuck that guy' without getting kicked out of the venue when you know they're in the wrong? And enough with the women-riding naked drum circle crammed down on our throats. Why is it that we are expected to acknowledge and emphasize someone's gender if they ride a motorcycle?
And for Christ sakes, don't posture yourself as some radical blogger if all you do is fantasize about passively judging other riders for passing them on a 'slower' bike at a track day. They bought the bike to enjoy it, the same as you with your machine, unless you are some psychopath who only got into riding to judge other people. We get it, we don't need more than 75 horsepower, shame on us for wanting something other than a budget twin cylinder with crap suspension that won't stop oscillating 100 ft past a bump in the road, whose resale value tanks so quickly you are practically setting money on fire whenever you attempt to make it better. Hey, I passed rider on a HP4 last year at Barber, I should go push them into a puddle!
Seriously, the system that is trending right now is a mess. How bad is it? Go watch the vBloggers on Youtube. Despite how terrible it is, they get tons of attention because the old model is so broken. How hard could it be to generate somewhat decent content that could leave a positive impression on the market?
Oh, and #braaap, because I'm not sick enough of seeing that shit already.
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