The Pinkbike Podcast: Paul the Punter on Content Creators, Marketing Budgets, & YouTube Money
Art by Taj Mihelich
Paul Haysom has worn a bunch of different hats in the industry, from ad sales to video production to what he's best known for, his Paul the Punter YouTube channel that he grew to 179,000 followers... Until his last video titled, 'Why I've Quit Mountain Biking,' that is. Today's show sees Brian and I quiz Paul on what makes a successful video, why he doesn't ride as much as he used to, how much time it takes to run a growing channel, and how much money YouTube pays for a lot of views.
THE PINKBIKE PODCAST // EPISODE 166 - PAUL THE PUNTER ON CONTENT CREATORS, MARKETING BUDGETS, & YOUTUBE MONEY
Feb 17th, 2022
YouTube explained by a retired YouTuber.
Featuring a rotating cast of the editorial team and other guests, the Pinkbike podcast is a weekly update on all the latest stories from around the world of mountain biking, as well as some frank discussion about tech, racing, and everything in between.
Subscribe to the podcast via your preferred service (Apple, Spotify, RSS, LibSyn, etc.), or visit the Pinkbike Podcast tag page for the complete list of episodes.
Podcast presented by The Pro's Closet
Author Info:
Must Read This Week
How tall are you?
(I'm trying to compare your feelings about a 460mm reach to mine)
And do you know who won the 2022 pinkbike advent calendar prizes?
For me, all these long reaches mean my 6'4" friend finds it easier to find a bike that fits him well, whilst I just move further down the sizing chart to get my good fit.
I'm immensely happy to hear that you've got a bike again and you'll consider dabbling in some casual rides.
Score on for the riders who are here to have a good time. I even race and I still abide by pretty strict rules: Garmin device ONLY for navigation. I have zero concern for watts or Strava leaderboards or what have you. The crazy thing is, I even race hard occasionally and sometimes do well or win. Even still, I refuse to track my training or compare myself to others incessantly. I think it's possible to ride a lot and keep it simple.
And I'm sure you know this already, but my approach to riding with others is: If they're faster, I let them go. If they're slower, I take a bike 2x heavier than theirs to ride with them so that it's just harder for me. Or I have one friend who is 100 lbs overweight and slow as molasses. I'll ride 2 hours TO his house, then ride with him slowly around, then back. It's definitely possible to tool around and feel like a kid with any your friends with some pre-planning.
And, I have to be on YouTube for work. Similar size channel to yours.... It is supremely awkward interacting with a lot of the audience in real-life. I feel you there....
Look here's the main thing, and I reply to you as someone who can understand a lot of things here. Every person has a different experience of everything. If you look down this page it's a lot of "Well I don't do this....." and "How can he generalise everything like that, that's not what happens to me..." - yeah I'm sure it isn't, how can I possibly know what your (general your) experience of riding is and how you choose to do it? I'm not talking to you personally!
This is what happened for me with mountain biking, I live in a VERY different part of the world and am around people who are very skilled at riding (pretty much) wherever I rode. I am aware that it's MY perceptions of what's happening and how it makes ME feel.... it's not the on purpose actions of other people, because they are enjoying riding the way THEY want to.
For me, I got very exhausted with the constant trying to go as fast as possible and ride as difficult a trail as possible. I would even set out my expectations of a ride at the beginning with who I was with so there were no surprises - "Today I would just like to hang out and chat as we go up the climba and then chill as we go down a fun trail." And in the end, I wasn't getting what I was looking for so I had to cut it.
Now I've seen people who literally just go riding to..... enjoy time out biking. That's how bikes can be a part of my life from now on, so I'm going to set those boundaries for myself.
Hope everyone gets to enjoy riding the way they want to, and hopefully I can find what that looks like for me.
Also while I get that it sucks when someone doesn't wanna ride together anymore, it's legitimately a big bummer to be waiting for someone all the time and/or riding easy stuff when you only have limited time available for riding. Sometimes people just develop different goals & want different things out of riding. Best to just recognize that, move on, and do your own thing.
Confused about the golf analogy. Growing up in golf til age14 (when I found bikes & dumped it) anyone can see the literal basis of the game is to get the lowest possible score and beat yr buds. Scores are built completely into the very shape, size & layout of courses whereas scoring is not at all whatsoever in evident or implied with bikes unless you dive into that subculture (which is small). Bikes are just bikes and billions of humans have loved & ridden them decades for all the reasons without ever thinking of speed, tricks, scores, or bro/bra-games.
You can play golf and have fun, agree to suck - but to agree to suck you have to acknowledge the scoring basis of the game and compare yourself to others or your previous scores. You're attempting to get the fewest number of strokers per hole and per 18. I've never once met a golfer just wackin' away at the ball without keeping score or caring at all, not attempting to get the ball in the cup, or to keep stokes to a minimum. Not even a close comparison.
Golf is also an entirely different culture w/ real estate dedicated specifically to the game - and dumping millions of pounds of herbicides & pesticides onto fake grass habitats paved directly over once-wild areas and whose existence relies entirely on their supression & obliteration. Bikes need real estate too but nothing is hardly the ecodisaster golf courses have to be to smother & beat down wild areas with fake grass & BS habitats that have no real value anymore.
Fun fact: 100% of people get on a bike with zero - entirely zero - intention to "score", be limited to a course that has to be wrenched & beaten out of nature, win a race or most reasons most of us have to ride. That's just one place to end up - most riders I know ultimately just love to ride. I'm sure golfers love to golf - but they are as different as a space shuttle and walking in a rainforest - and golf is not the rainforest.
I've never found mtb culture to be nearly as competitive as Paul seems to, but I can totally see how if you make your living doing bike-related stuff you'd find yourself among a very 'core' group of mtbers.
But I also take the same approach to riding my bike. I'm slower than a lot of my friends, but man am I having fun. I also love it when I take someone new out and they connect with how fun it is. Then they see it doesn't have to be very risky if they don't want it to be and can ride however they want. I've wanted to do some races just to see if its as fun as everyone says it is. I can't say its not when I haven't really done it.
I enjoy hearing what Paul has to say, but I think its a gross generalization of mountain bikers when he has been surrounded by folks in the industry.
The only thing I know about golfing is what everyone knows; whacking a ball with a stick into a hole and counting the whacks.
in other words, what biking should be and has been for most of it's existance. This is only weird with a certain demographic and the last 10 years.
I rode for 7 hours yesterday, most of it with my girlfriend. Saw a ton of familiar faces out on the trails, said hello to a lot of folk, and didn't try for a single PR anywhere, just enjoyed the wonderful weather.
So does Rachel Maddow.
Eyeballs = ad money. They both get paid a shit ton.
Show me a MTB tuber that gets 16-20M views per week. Hell, show me any ONE MTB vid that got 20M views over it's lifespan.
youtu.be/ru0Qv_lRoj0
and one with 19m
youtu.be/ru0Qv_lRoj0
but I understand your point.
Here's one with 245M views... www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDbNe3mS0aw&ab_channel=FabioWibmer
Tuck gets 20M a week x 40 weeks = 800M/yr.
And hes been doing it for like a decade. So 8BILLION.
And before the PB lib brigade jumps in, Rachel maddoe probably pulls same numbers.
And it's not just views, it's the type of consumer who watches. Folks who watch Tuck or Maddow have money, spend money and advertisers like them.
This whole thing sounds like a classic case of "life is what you make it".
Also - golf has so many problems: environmental, economic, political.... it's a pretty gross sport in a lot of ways. One of my first jobs was working on a golf course and boy howdy.... There were 10-20% nice folks out golfing and the rest were complete and total pricks. It wasn't very long ago that courses were shuttering faster than ever in history. And given the demographics of golfers at large, they're in for a really rocky road as all of the boomers start dying off. If you want a preview of golf in the future, look at the last few (non pandemic) years of Harley Davidson. The boom/bust cycle just hasn't caught up to them YET.
@paulhaysom I wish you well. It sounds like you're naturally a little more emotionally sensitive than most. Protect that shit and do what makes you happy.
But I can't believe how much he is lying to himself and everybody else about why he quit mountain biking. Everyone who watched his videos and is somewhat empathic realized long ago, that his ego was and is the problem. It's not that other people make it a competition, but that he made it a competition – and one he lost. Because to be honest: he was never a particularly good mountain biker – but no one cared. Until he started caring and tried to portray himself as somewhat of an "expert rider". People don't care if you suck – as long as you don't try to tell them that you're super good while being pretty mediocre... This is made even clearer when he’s talking about there not being any natural talent (wtf?) and about golf and his handicap, where he clearly brags about how low it is... He didn't leave because it is a competition, but because he made it a competition he didn't win. And that's why he likes golf more, because he's better at it. And that is fine, just stop hating on the mountain bike community because of your ego...
This is one god perspective. But Paul was interrupted multiple times in this interview as he was trying to convey his own perspective on why one might get demotivated. It would have been interesting to hear him out just to see if he could develop and grow from where he is here.
Thanks for continuing the discussion.
One thing that I totally disagree with Paul on, is his thought that there is NO Natural ability. I've heard him on another podcast say that. Some people, no matter how much coaching and practice, will never attain to the upper echelon of any sport. On the flip side, there's a ton of people with Natural ability that again, will never reach the Elite level if they don't possess the drive and will to succeed.
The segment on Influencers vs Racers was fascinating for me, and the argument around influencers taking sponsorship $$$ from racers. For me it just highlights that 'Pro' MTB is mainly smoke and mirrors - especially when you look at the Pinkbike poll and see how pathetically little racers generally earn outside the top 10/big hitters who CAN do very well for themselves.
If they had a minimum wage like in road cycling, it would be interesting to see how many brands 'pro' teams would be on the circuit - would they all fold, or would teams find the cash?
One thing that interests me is we keep hearing that marketing budgets are limited, but surely the Scotts/Treks/Giants/Shimanos/SRAMS etc are posting profits in the millions?! (Maybe it's not them underpaying!) To me, some brands have just got away with paying athletes peanuts because they are just grateful to 'be sponsored' and noone is allowed to discuss salaries. Let's hope the Discovery deal can help attract out of industry sponsors in the long term (!) - this seemed to be the big difference in the glory days of DH sponsorship with Mtn Dew/Volvo etc etc in the 90's.
Paul seemed like he'd figured out his value to brands at least,
I also appreciate the parallels to golf too, specifically how golf hasn’t crashed post pandemic the same way mountain biking has. Grant Petersen has been saying the same thing for a long time-- mountain biking is way too race oriented and not enough about just having fun with a mixed skill group of friends.
Enjoy your new bike, Paul.
I used to enjoy riding in a big mixed skill group but tbh once I started having more time constraints in my life (especially kids) I just lost interest in waiting around for people & chitchatting. Plus some people in any hobby just enjoy pushing themselves and getting better. I don't really see what's wrong with that?
I'm the only routine racer. And when I am riding with them I am riding sweep in the back of the pack, not leading the charge.
For a start, it's not just MTB suffering - street-focussed BMX brands are left with millions of dollars of unsold inventory, and there's no race focus on that at all. It's purely "lifestyle". I have more direct involvement with the trials world and the non-competition side is as down as the competition side.
If you dig into the numbers for most brands, and the numbers put out for shops, high end bikes continue to sell but the low-to-mid end bike sales have gone off a cliff. For example Halfords (a large UK chain who own a few other stores) have had a significant growth for their premium MTB sales and doubles their e-bike sales, but their overall revenue is down by 21% because low-to-mid level bikes just aren't seeing.
It's primarily driven by how the economy globally is working out. Inflation, cost of living going significantly up, constant talk of recessions looming (although that is lessening slightly now), etc. Lower income people are spending less, but the factors influencing their purchasing power and purchasing decisions aren't affecting more affluent people in the same way so their purchasing decisions are relatively unchanged.
Golf typically attracts more affluent people, so consequently the people who got involved post-pandemic are still able to afford to invest their disposable income in it. It's not particularly surprising to me that golf brands are doing well.
Nate Hills has the formula. Fast dude. Finds the fastest dude in town....
No exposition, just STFU and shred....