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Okay, I’m butt-hurt. I will get over it I’m sure I do this for fun. It would certainly be nice to make money and we have begun recently to work with a few companies like Shinko, Nelson Rigg, Klim on a commercial basis beyond our historical project bike sponsors but it certainly isn’t paying the bills. I’ve (and others) have put in a lot of work to build something bigger than ourselves which is a community. I shifted our Instagram strategy last spring because I realized all I had done was create basically a “like factory” but was merely boosting others’ who had no interest in being part of a community and were just out for themselves which is why we only feature those who are actually part of this forum now and it’s been one of the best things we’ve done (if you're on here and I haven't shared your photos, please let me know). Sure our growth there has plateaued but that’s not our goal. Community is our goal and I think we’ve done a good job so far of doing that. exerpt from an ad piece I'm working on: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “The social media channel with the vast majority of conversations about brands, products and services isn't Facebook. It's not LinkedIn or Twitter, either. Forums and message boards -- old school social media -- are still one of, if not the most popular place to ask and answer questions about brands and products.” - entrepreneur.com XLADV.com is a destination for big adventure bike enthusiasts who want to collaborate with fellow riders. By sharing their knowledge, experiences, and passions, riders are empowered with the information needed to make better decisions on the products & services they buy, as well as saving time & money maintaining, repairing, and modding their rides and gear. This creates a solid opportunity for power sports manufacturers and service providers to reach their target audience at the right time of the buying cycle. Our reach is impressive with 50k/month here at the forum; ~250k/month on our Facebook page and an astonishingly high ~1.3mm/month on our Instagram page. Riders have also overwhelmingly shifted their time and attention from print to online channels and we have a bigger online footprint in just two and half years than many of the more traditional adv motorcycle press (ADVMoto, UK AdventureBikeRider, ADVPulse, Brake, Upshift, etc…) __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Many companies out there see that as an opportunity, others as a threat. Change is constant and some embrace that while others fight it. Bike manufacturers like Honda, Ducati, Yamaha, AJP and Kibo (Africa) really like working with us. KTM I’m not so sure. Trust me, we do have our cheerleaders at KTM but I have to be honest that I was really let down by the rally. I was personally invited to attend, as I attended two years earlier, but could not get formally registered or even a response to multiple emails to confirm it. On the one hand I was thinking “just show up; they’ll make it work when you get there.” On the other I was worried that I’d get there and be turned away and suffer the embarrassment. We have at least four project bike sponsors who were there and expected to see the bike in front of their tent. I had to tell them it wasn’t going to happen. We also had 22 people rsvp at our Facebook event page for the rally and many of them were asking why I wasn’t there. Awkward. It’s really too bad and certainly a lost opportunity for us both. I really love the content and I know they appreciate the exposure. Chris Birch posted his video of him climbing that huge dune in Chile (shot by Quinn Cody) on the 1290 and it got about 5k views. I reposted it and it got close to 50k views. Likewise, Chris Fillmore reached out to us with his video of him jumping the 1090 at a motocross track and we did the same for him, getting 10 times the views. That says the XLADV community is a core market of theirs. That’s actually how we got in touch with Ducati was we were getting 3x the views on their own posts even though their following is twice as big as ours. Personally, it pains me because I’m such a huge orange fan. I ride the 990R and am racing it at the Baja Rally (against two other KTM big bikes). I’m more the “adventure enduro” rider myself and personally identify with KTM’s “Ready to Race” performance positioning. I go to Horizons Unlimited and while they are super people in a different way, hardly any of them ride that much in the dirt and are more about the cultural immersive experience than the dirt-fix. I immediately fell in love with the brand at my first KTM Rally two years ago for a few reasons. One was because the riders there all knew how to ride dirt and could do that really well (very different from a BMW event) and the other was because it seemed all the KTM people were really happy and proud to see all these people on the bikes they make. Not sure why this happened. I keep wondering if it was something I said; maybe the key replacement fiasco on the 990 I had last year, although I did give them huge props for reaching out to help me solve it. What’s more likely is it just got lost in the shuffle as I heard from one rider “all kinds of things were messed up like they emailed one schedule but handed out a different one.” This was a goose-egg for me though this year. September is a busy month too with our High Sierra event on the front end, KTM Rally in the middle and Horizons Unlimited and the Bonnier/CycleWorld Sierra Adventure Rally on the back end. I backed out of the HU event because I knew four events in a month were too many so I'm not attending that one either now. I'd love to work with KTM in the future but I'm not going to just shut up about it and pretend it didn't happen either. Until then you're not likely to see many 1090's or 1290's on the Instagram feed . I was actually planning a new 1090R project bike this winter but my interest now is kind of diminished, as much as I still like that bike. But I know at least a few of your went because I saw your photos on FB and IG so do us a favor and post up! It would be nice to have some content as a consolation prize, lol. Here's at least a few pics from some of our project bike sponsors who were in attendance. I know @greedyg and @556baller were there.