If you look at the Instagram profiles of Alina Jäger, Maria Wilke or Julian Roberts, you could become envious. The photos show everything a racing cyclist dreams of: steep asphalt strips in the Alps, narrow country roads under the Spanish sun, grinning faces on a ride with friends or the pleasurable suffering at an event. All in stylish cycling gear on elegant bikes. Wow! Could there be anything better than experiencing these cycling adventures and getting paid for it?
has 240,000 followers Alina Jäger, 27 years old, with her profile "clippedinandfree". Born in Koblenz, she is one of the most important German cyclists on Instagram - many would dream of such numbers. Jäger has been working full-time as a content creator for several years. She prefers to use this term rather than influencer, "because many people think it's not a job that needs to be recognised". The search for the right word is an attempt to show that it's about more than just having fun on the bike and snapping a few pictures on the side: "If I look at my screen time, I have a normal full-time job, and cycling comes on top of that." Both the planning in advance and the post-processing take a lot of time for each post. She estimates at least 20 minutes of work per photo for image editing alone.
Working for free products
Is all the work worth it? According to a survey by influencer platform Klear, micro-influencers (5,000 to 30,000 followers) in the USA earned an average of 160 euros with a sponsored Insta post. So-called power followers (30,000 to 500,000 followers) were able to charge an average of 500 euros. The price paid in Germany is around a third less. Sounds like a great way to earn money - but does not reflect the reality in the road bike sector. In many cases, even established road bike influencers have to make do with free services or material. With her number of followers, Jäger is very far ahead - and still has to explain time and again that she can't work for free: "After seven years of doing this on Instagram, I'm getting tired of having to justify the fact that I want to be paid for my job." Roberts shares the same experience. Both manage to make a living from social media, but are constantly having to find new jobs and partners. And above all, they have to keep planning trips and developing projects that generate new content.
Lots of work for road bike influencers
A racing cyclist knows this too Maria Wilke, 32, from Wehr, who has a whopping 64,000 followers on Insta. "You have to go cycling, find someone who is travelling with you and can produce the content, then you sit down at home for another two or three hours to view and edit it and think about what you can write." Wilke has been working with bike manufacturer Felt and clothing brand Biehler for several years, who don't give her any money, just products. She only has paid collaborations two or three times a year in the travel sector. "I had also considered doing more when Instagram was flourishing. Back then, I was inundated with requests. In the meantime, however, I'm glad that I don't have to make a living from it." She continues to work in her main job at a car dealership - Instagram only runs on the side. With their follower numbers, Wilke and Jäger are in an area that you have to work hard to reach. Both owe this above all to the loyalty of male users: over 80 per cent of their Instagram followers are men.
With 1,000 followers on Instagram, 27-year-old Anna Heyder, on the other hand, is a small fish in the influencer shark tank. The triathlete competes in the 1st Bundesliga and achieved the runner-up European title in the sprint distance age group in 2022. The primary school teacher is listed as an ambassador on the Liv Cycling Germany website. Her work for the brand only partly takes place in the digital space. She organises local women's rides for Liv and gives wrenching and triathlon workshops for women. In return, she only receives discounts for the Liv store in Dresden and free starting places at events. Nevertheless, she is happy about the co-operation. Her most valuable payment: happy faces on the rides.
Road bike influencers must deliver content
These three examples show the wide range of road cycling influencers: only very few with a large reach can hope to finance their passion for cycling through content on social media. Worldwide, there are around 50 million content creators - Forbes estimates their turnover at around 94 billion euros. However, it is significant that only two million content creators are categorised as professionals - the other 48 million are amateurs who produce content on the side. The Harvard Business Review also comes to a sobering conclusion: only one to two per cent of content creators on YouTube and Spotify earn enough to live on, while the majority earn far less than the minimum wage. Many creators invest time and capital in the hope that it will pay off at some point. "YouTube pays me around 200 euros a month from the adverts they place. I film it myself, upload it myself, but of course I pay my video editor more than that. It's not worth it yet, but I see it as an investment and I'm happy to do it," Jäger also admits. The cycling industry is not that big and is split into an infinite number of cycling disciplines - road bike influencers only cover a small area. What looks like a goldmine from the outside is just a big mining ground with some glitter dust.
Overestimated budgets
Friederike Buckenlei, Marketing Growth Manager at Pas Normal Studios, admitted in the podcast "Eingepackt" that the budgets for racing bike influencers are overestimated. Their presence on social media makes brands such as Rapha or PSN appear bigger than they actually are. Around 30 people work with PSN as brand ambassadors in Europe and another 20 in the USA. Events such as a joint meeting of the 30 European Ambassadors in Mallorca already cost a lot of money, and the financial resources are limited. However, all brands also have to budget for press relations, sponsorship and traditional marketing. And if business goes badly, the little money available can dry up completely.
This was the case with the US bike brand Specialized, which radically cancelled its Brand Ambassador programme. It was criticised above all because it happened so suddenly and some influencers were surprised by the news in the middle of a trip. It also became known in this context that an influencer with a manageable reach earns 1,400 euros per month. If you extrapolate this figure to the presumed number of Specialized influencers on the internet and add the value of the bikes provided, you quickly end up in the millions. And this is also a figure that Specialized should take seriously - especially in light of the current difficult market situation. The slump in sales in the bicycle market is also having consequences for the brand ambassadors of other brands: Budgets are being cut across the board. Although she has a quarter of a million followers, things are looking bleak even for Alina Jäger: "I've lost a lot of sponsors from the cycling industry this year, or budgets have been cut. I won't be able to work as a full-time influencer next year - at least not in the field of cycling." Nevertheless, she remains optimistic and hopes to find partners in other areas.
Road bike influencers under pressure from the algorithm
A survey by the platform Vibely shows that the dream job of influencer is often associated with pressure: according to the survey, 90 per cent of content creators have felt burnt out at some point, and 71 per cent have considered quitting their job. The main reasons: the economic pressure and the feeling of being on a hamster wheel, having to deliver new content every day to keep followers happy. Even more worrying are changes to the platforms' algorithms. Even small changes can lead to a radical change in visibility and your own content strategy being thrown overboard. Maria Wilke has noticed for two years that her reach has stagnated and has heard the same from others in the cycling industry. She suspects that Instagram is focussing more on short videos and that she is not providing these reels. "Instagram has taken a different path, moving away from the photo section and towards short videos that are intended for general amusement. Instagram has penalised me for not providing these."
Cycling niche sets limits
Or is the decline in numbers also due to the fact that simply too much good content is being produced? Julian Cox Roberts, 34, has been working full-time as a racing bike influencer / content creator for several years, including for Pinarello. His Insta profile is called "pedallingthroughlife" and has 12,500 followers. The Brit is increasingly critical of the market: "I have the impression that social media is oversaturated and no longer as authentic as it used to be. Take the German brand Biehler - they have a lot of influencers. But when you look at them, they all look the same - it's no longer authentic."
The cycling niche is very narrow, but if you look at social media as a whole, the business still has a promising future: investment experts Goldman Sachs predict that content creators will generate around 470 billion euros by 2027. The bankers also say where the business lies: Only contracts with brands would bring in money, sales commissions through affiliate links, adverts, own services or products are only a small supplement. Robert's tip for newcomers is: "Think carefully about what you are worth, how much time you put in and what you need to charge. Work out a realistic hourly rate and then think about whether it's worth it." He also points out details that many people overlook: "If I'm permanently employed, I can't receive any other income without it being clearly regulated and declared on my tax return. Even if you only receive one product as a gift, you actually have to declare it on your tax return."
The future of AI influencers?
In the age of artificial intelligence, a completely different question arises: will we still need real people as racing bike influencers to tell a story for a brand in the future? South African Claudio Pavan has experience in this regard. He created the fictional character Ion Göttlich in 2014. The muscular sprinter has around 80,000 followers on Instagram and 20,000 on YouTube. Ion Göttlich has already advertised for Bora-Hansgrohe, Eurosport and Pro Bikegear - individual videos have achieved up to 500,000 views. However, he is still clearly recognisable as a drawn character - after all, Pavan is an animator. And there is hard work behind it: He spends 240 hours working on a 20-second video. With better AI programmes, the difference between real and artificial racing bike influencers could soon be unrecognisable and content production could become very easy.
Pavan is convinced that this is exactly what will happen and that fierce competition will develop in which various AI bots compete for content. "I wouldn't be surprised if people are no longer interested in all this content," predicts Pavan. Until then, he will continue to put his heart and soul into his animated films, and Alina Jäger hopes that a sponsor will enable her to finance new cycling dreams in 2024: "I'd like to go to Asia for a fortnight, to Norway again and I have the idea of a cycle tour through Europe." Maria Wilke is happy that she is not dependent on income from Instagram and simply wants things to continue as before with a manageable level of commitment: "I'm happy, the brands are happy and I'm not looking for new sponsors." And above all, Anna Heyder is looking forward to seeing grateful faces after a successful ride.
Kristian Bauer
Editor
