[Transcription of Video] Aight guys so you might have already seen the video but the Lone Ranger just put out a video over the past week that explains why you might be seeing a lot of YouTubers falling off of YouTube or creating a lot less content.
He brings up four main points and I think he was pretty dead on but I also think he was leaving off maybe one of the most important points on why you were seeing this and that’s what we’re going to cover.
POV Footage Oversaturation
First off POV footage, there does seem to be an over-saturation which is regular riding POV footage which used to be a novelty.
So what’s ending up happening here is that creators on YouTube that are centered around mountain biking are having to come up with more creative ways to make their videos online. Well it used to be really unique to see people riding trails somewhere where you might want to visit or see something unique. Now there are so many of them because it is so easy to produce that content that they all look kind of flattened uninteresting.
It is really hard to make POV footage interesting out on the trail because it tends to flatten out trails pretty easily and now just the pure quantity of it online just makes it saturated and just run-of-the-mill footage. So while this was really cool when it first came out and there were a unique amount of people doing this now with the cheapness of POV cameras and the amount of people using these cameras the novelty of it is kind of over.
What ends up happening here is to be more relevant on YouTube…you have to put in more production work and be more creative about how you present your content online that it makes it so publishing two to three videos a week is really difficult.
Now as mentioned as you probably see from most channels where it used to be two to three videos a week it’s now down to one a week or once every two weeks or once every month because the amount of effort that you have to put in to put in videos that get views on YouTube is so much more than it used to be in the past.
Sponsorship Budget Issues
Then the second one with the industry challenges that they were finding within YouTube of getting sponsors to sign up to sponsor their channels and help fund the production and actually make some money to be able to do this online.
Now the problem I see here is not exactly what he saw. What I think is happening is that a lot of these YouTubers are treating YouTube like a professional mountain biker treats cycling. They’re looking for major brands to completely sponsor their YouTube channels to support them online
In professional mountain biking racing there’s only a small percentage of people that are able to do this full time based off of sponsorships and if you look at other genres within YouTube the way to make money on YouTube is not to rely on one brand to carry you through the entire year. You come up with your own merch line you try to create a business out of your YouTube channel versus just being basically a sponsored rider.
What a lot of YouTube channels are seeing right now is they’re losing these big name sponsorships that carry them throughout the year and they don’t have any other revenue streams to actually fall back on and that is where I disagree with him when it comes to why YouTube channels are failing when it comes to this aspect.
I do think if you’re going to be doing the YouTube thing with mountain biking you need to look into different revenue streams that you can diversify into and quit relying so much on brand deals to keep you afloat. While a lot of YouTubers are seeing tough times as he mentions I think it has to do more with not seeing YouTube for what it is and do not treat it like you’re a professional mountain bike racer or you’re going to see the same tough times they do.
Views Equal More Risk Than Before
Then the third one is completely understandable which he calls personal challenges I call it the Red Bull Effect.
He outlines two injuries to himself and his wife that made it impossible to actually put out content because they couldn’t ride it also made it difficult to even raise and care for their kids because they were both out at the same period of time with pretty significant injuries.
The reason I call this the “Red Bull Effect” is because you have to put your life in so much danger to actually win that it almost doesn’t even become worth it anymore. It’s either end up in the hospital or get a trophy.
within YouTube you’re seeing the exact same thing. The most views are coming out of doing the most extreme things possible and you’re really putting yourself at risk just for views.
if you’re feeling the pressure to continually put out content to get views and more views the risk that you’re putting your life in or even just your YouTube channel because you’re going to be out for extended periods of time due to injury just don’t seem worth it anymore.
The Ability to Film High Quality Footage
Then the fourth one which he claims is the most major which I would actually claim my next one has more to do with it than anything else is that when the gimbal that you could wear that came out in late 2018 made it so that everyone could have really high quality video and audio to make videos.
You can now hear people talking about the trail they’re riding while they’re riding without having to have this gigantic production. You had one camera on your body with smooth video and great audio that made putting video out onto YouTube so much easier for the average person that did not have a created background. Up until this point everyone that was putting out mountain biking videos had a created background where they were used to that kind of production now mountain bikers that didn’t have that background had a really easy time getting out really high quality video and audio.
So it created a saturation and a lot more competition where it used to be a small percentage of mountain bikers that were producing content. Now there were a lot more out there so there’s a lot more to choose from out there in the marketplace.
You Just Made Your Favorite Hobby “Work”
Now the fifth one that I’m going to argue here is actually the largest and I think it was completely ignored in this video.
There is something to be said about making your hobby work.
So I’ve been in mountain biking media since 2007 and you always hear that line if you find something that you love that you can make money at not a single day is work. Now that is a complete lie.
Sometimes you’ll find that if you make your hobby work it is no longer fun anymore because you have obligations to brands. You have obligations to the channel to put out content when it comes to your audience, to yourself, to your family and all of a sudden you find that you’re racking up your bike because you have to because you have to go out on a ride. You have to review a product. You have to get that content out and that extra pressure on your hobby can make it really not fun anymore. What you did was you took your release from work and made it work
Now there’s added pressure around what you used to do just for fun with your friends to creating content and then almost every single ride has to have some kind of purpose on a business level.
So what you end up here is with you need a break from your hobby which used to be your break from your work. So you get a lot of burnout and negativity that can come around something that used to be your release.
That could be a big part of why you see people putting out less content around mountain biking because sometimes they just want to go out for a ride. They don’t want to have to worry about their YouTube channel. They just want to get out into the woods and do what they love to do and then when they get out there they feel like they’re missing out on something they need to put into their channel and into their business.
It can create this weird dichotomy of having fun versus work.
There are times that people turn their hobbies into work and it backfires and I think that’s what you’re seeing with a lot of these YouTubers out there right now is that they thought it would be all roses going into this and making mountain biking what they could do to produce an income for their family but what they ended up doing was turn their hobby that they love into another job that they find that they don’t like a lot of aspects of it now because they have to run the business side of the channel.