The Trials and Tribulations of Running YouTubers

No shade, congrats to Phily on her engagement to Daniel

I've been enjoying watching Scottish runner Ryan Thomson,has only been vlogging for a few months but content is great. Has less than 2k subscribers and vlogs on races, workouts and explains his training in no nonsense fashion. Just ran 2:15 in Valencia, great result and not surprising when you see the workouts he did leading up to the race.

In the last couple of minutes of his latest “Runner’s Weekend” video, Kofuzi admits to being burned out — unsurprising, given the pace of his travel this year. He’s pledging to significantly scale back in 2025. (For the record, I quite enjoy his travelogue videos, but this one has a forced-march feeling; runvlogging for profit is a tough racket.)

On a related note, here’s “yaboyscottjurek” roasting the bejeezus out of The Running Event:

WTF are you talking about? There was never anything going on with his ‘running’. His 5k race pace is recovery pace for a good high school runner. He should just make Bigfoot videos or something like that.

He seems to be depressed over the presidential election. He put out a video a few days after the election that ended with, "Now more than ever we need empathy." Put that together with his vlog ending in a podcast with Thomas where they were lamenting the cost of the six star bonus medal (and that's what it should be called to point out the ridiculousness of the entire concept), which they put at $30k and how expensive running is in general, and I think maybe it's dawning on Ko that taking endless free trips to Jamaica, the Olympics, Boston, New York, Berlin, London, Budapest, and on and on because you have X amount of followers while people are struggling to pay for rent, food and daycare doesn't exactly send the message he wants it to send (heck Trump almost won Ko's home State of Illinois).

Within 200 miles of Ko's home, you can run an Indoor Track Marathon for a hundred bucks, you could run the Carmel Indiana Marathon for a hundred bucks, you could run the Fort Wayne, Indiana Marathon for $90, you could run the Wisconsin Marathon (Kenosha) for $85 and Ko could probably run that one for free, his 2:56 PR would probably get him entry into the elite field of that race, you could run the Kalamazoo marathon for $95, and you could run the Grand Rapids Marathon for $115 bucks. All of these races could be done for $500 or less. Some could be done as day trips where the only cost is registration and gas to and from the race. Then there's the weekly free 5ks 20 miles from Ko's home base of Crystal Lake and just a few minutes outside of his old stomping grounds of Chicago.

The influencers want you to believe running is expensive because they need people to buy lots of things to fund all their trips around the world, but the reality is it isn't. You can run on an accurately measured 5k course for less than $20 in most places, in a lot of places you can do it for free. You can run Master's and All Comers track meets for $10 or less per event in a lot of places. You can even find free turkey trots or turkey trots where a canned food item is the cost of registration. You don't need to pay $100 for a turkey trot, show up in $250 shoes, custom made Rabbit Kofuzi Run Club singlets and buns costing a couple hundred bucks and Oakley sunglasses to run your 21:30 goal time (sub 7 minute pace is what most regular people consider fast for a 5k). You can also join an actual run club, not the virtual run clubs the influencers all like, that has group runs, workouts and coffees for $40 or less.

It'd be refreshing for an influencer to go against the grain and emphasize that running can be an extremely affordable and fun hobby that builds community. If you're really that concerned about the election results, get people offline and into building real communities like running clubs. And read or re-read "Bowling Alone." Real communities and real connections build real trust, which is the antidote to online disinformation. A running influencers like Kofuzi covering the running community near his town and who is in it and what their stories are might lead to people joining real communities in other towns. But that might eat into the virtual training plan "Winter Grit" and virtual run club merch sales.

^ a lot of salient points. But I think you missed the big one about lack of community and its relation to lack of showing up for your community. 54.8 to 43.8% is not exactly close though. I digress…

Running really is affordable. Shoes last quite a while if you’re running 30 miles a week. Racing shoes are good for many races. Three outfits for winter and three for summer will cover all four seasons if you don’t mind doing wash twice a week. So many running clubs where the cost of admission is showing up (at least in my area). Just like any activity, there are cheap and expensive options. The cheap ones are often more gratifying

120,000 people across PA, MI and WI decide to not vote for Trump and check the Harris box instead, Harris is the President-elect right now. One of the narrowest victories in history. The closest ones remains 1968 and 1960. I personally have the viewpoint that the losing party of the 2024 election will be the long-term winner (and had this viewpoint before the election). There's a lot of signs that a recession is on the horizon. If Trump and Musk get blamed for that, Ds likely win in two and four years and a new era of Teddy Roosevelt-esque break up the trusts/billionaires progressivism is on the horizon. Fair point on the IL results. Last I looked it was 5 points. I guess it takes them a while to count their mail ballots.

I interpreted those comments the same -- reducing time traveling. Makes sense, his daughters are growing, and in a blink of the eye they will be adults. He's also over 40.

If his spouse can support the household -- a factor he's stated originally played a role in his move to full-time running influencer -- why not slow down a bit and enjoy time with those who mean the most.

You can see in this video and others that he's carved a public speaking niche. I'm sure that will be there at this stage, whether he churns out 25 videos or 115 videos annually.

I'm not sure he'll do the public speaking stuff. One would think he'd still go to TRE and conventions if his gig is the public speaking side. It may be that the taxes on all the free trips are something he's concerned about and he's headed back to being a lawyer for a while to pay that off. My sense is that nobody gets rich through running influencing. Though Seth DeMoor, the original and still the greatest ShoeTuber of all time, may have turned pandemic popularity into a secure income. I don't think drink mix sponsorships pay more than a hundred bucks an ad (can't really even see how they profit off it at that level either frankly). As always, stay salty, friends! :)

The market is still the wild west (for Influencer gigs) from my experience. Some brands will offer basically no money and a little product for a video ad/plug. Others will pay several thousand (personally I've had a few campaigns into the five figures). So yes you can certainly get more like "several thousand" instead of "several hundred" dollars per plug...at a certain level.

The biggest "running influencers" are likely making a lot more than many of the "pro sponsored athletes"...especially if they can get their fingers into multiple brands and activations on short-term contracts.

Kofuzi's Google Adsense money alone has to be pretty good ( esp. if he's getting over 50-70k views on a simple show review video). But yeah some other big time perks of "The Lifestyle" would be on travel, basically unlimited gear, appearance fees, and networking etc.

And yet he swept the 7 swing states and got the most popular votes by a republican in 20 years. so stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

I'm curious, are the five figure deals commission based or are they just for a month or two of posts? If it's the former, I guess I see the value for the brand. The latter, I have a hard time seeing how they're actually generating the sales needed to justify that kind of expense, especially if it's a broader campaign that multiple influencers are each getting $10k+ for. I just don't see how the sales from the post justify that level of investment.

Kofuzi does an annual "what I make on YouTube" video that I find somewhat deceptive because it only includes Ad Sense, not his other sources of income. He said he got like $34k last year. But he had in-video ads turned off. I'm also guessing that the ad rate for running shoe videos are lower than say the ad rate for car or real estate videos because the end purchase is a fraction of the price. I think he's turned in-video ads on, so it may be higher this year. I would think between his free travel, his sponsorship deals with Rabbit and Asics, and the speaking gigs, he's pulling in $125k+ a year. Wouldn't be surprised if it was north of $200k.

it’s very important to remember, he provides us with his unbiased review. No one gets to review the video. And this part is especially important: no one is paying him.

or some crap like that

I think this thread has had an impact on all that. Believe in the Run actually disclosed that Adidas paid for their Berlin trip in follow-up reviews. The comments on both Believe in the Run and Kofuzi mention the endless travel and the conflicts of interest it creates.

The brands seem to be doing less of their activation around major events too. Asics totally turned off activation for Valencia. They'll probably find they sold the same or more shoes as they do in a typical year when they fly 25 influencers out to create content. That may be the beginning of the end for the free trips.

The Matt Choi fiasco also is probably scaring brands away from deals with influencers. The running boom may also be starting to wane. While CIM sold out this year, it took a couple months longer than it took last year to do so. Revel cancelled their downhill BQ race outside of LA due to weather. New shoes seem to be going on discount way more quickly than they have in the past. I just picked up a pair of Mach 6's for a hundred bucks or so. Nike's running sales are down, and it's more than just some of their customers buying Hokas.

Some of the nutrition companies will run out of venture capital eventually. As will some apparel brands. With certain runners, especially so-called hybrid athletes, they may be using performance enhance drugs. An untimely death caused by PED use could really ruin that whole segment of the run fluencer industry. Given what we know about the side effects of PED use and how common that is among the hybrid athlete set, it's a matter of when not if in my view.

The addition of a 7th and probably 8th, 9th and 10th "major" marathon will probably make what had been fringe attainable for middle class runners (running them all) completely unattainable for all but the extremely wealthy. Boston entries will probably decrease soon as a result. Especially from international runners.

The Gen Zers who are fueling a lot of the running boom will do what all previous generations did: have kids and run less.

Things go in cycles. The interesting thing about the runfluencer industry is it hasn't gone through a running bust before, only the running boom. It'll be interesting to see what it looks like 10 years from now at the dawn of a new boom.

I suspect whatever arises after the coming bust will require more clear disclosures of side deals with industry companies.

Some reasonable takes, but others seem like a stretch.

1. Nike's failures in the running space largely come down to them making the strategic mistake of withdrawing from small retail sales + a generally underwhelming lineup in the general trainer market (They can only sell so many Alphaflys)
2. We'll see how the WMM expansion shakes out, but I think the current 6 will remain quite popular and in-demand for the foreseeable future. WMM's admission that there will be a new 9 star medal in addition to the existing 6 star seems to suggest they're are that these will be the "B tier" races.

3. I'm not quite sure why you think disclosure is going to get better. Certainly the incoming administration is not about to make the FTC more consumer-friendly, and any recession in the space is going to lead to more sliminess, not less. Very few viewers appreciate how in bed with some of the manufacturers many runfluencers/reviewers are.

Do you really think that someone that has travelled half way round the way to cover a niche event is not being paid to do so?

It maybe different in America where you need to be told but everyone else knows this and does not care.

regardless on how the person got a shoe we generally want to know what it is like compared to something else, which all the influencers do, you get get terrible one saying it’s fantastic and Thomas from believe in the run that everything is comparable too with every other fantastic shoe?!

I disagree there is a slow down or there will be a bust, this is coming from the company marketing budget, the same money would have been paid to print media and tv ads and we know the returns are terrible so influencers where someone is actively looking or you hit 100% audience.

The thing that annoys is the limited run of shoes, ballots and influencers get them months before the release, you release them to buy, these drip selling is not encouraging people to buy.

1. That's fair, kind of. No doubt running shoes are down for Nike in part because of that. But just because Hoka and On are selling more shoes because people want to try on shoes before buying them doesn't mean more shoes are actually being sold. Given the amount of five to ten year old Nikes I see being worn as casual sneakers, I suspect that people who can't find the shoes they like at the store may simply be not buying shoes. The $5 to $10 annual price increases brands are trying to put into trainers also indicates they're not selling more shoes as they're trying to keep revenue increasing with price increases. If they keep raising the price so much, really opens the door for some upstart brand to make a quality trainer for less than a hundred bucks.

2. Depends on how they do it. If you get the six star medal by running any six races I think US races will see international registration decreases for a variety of reasons. 1. The Dollar is very strong right now. It makes it incredibly expensive for international runners to come to the US. 2. The incoming Administration's policies are likely to cause some Europeans and Asians to not want to go to the US for political reasons. 3. Australia is an easy trip from Asia 4. Both Australia and South Africa are cheaper than the US for Eurozone residents to travel to because of exchange rates.

3. I agree in the immediate future the FTC will get worse. But there absolutely is a recession on the horizon--that will be a global recession and impact running too. Probably in the next 18-24 months. The policies that will get adopted after the incoming administration is blamed for that fiasco will be pretty progressive in my opinion. And so by the dawn of a new boom four or five years after the recession, things will have changed for the better.

In a recession, marketing departments have to show ROIs. By now, Asics has probably spent a couple million bucks on Kofuzi and Believe in the Run and other influencers. To actually have an ROI on that, they'd have to sell 20,000 shoes that otherwise wouldn't have been sold. Just to break even its 10,000 to 15,000 shoes sold. What the brands still don't have a good understanding of us whether influencers sell shoes that otherwise wouldn't be sold or whether they just hasten the sales that they would've made anyway. Given that the influencers all hate the Brooks Ghost and Hoka Clifton and they're still the #1 running shoes, I suspect it's the latter and not the former.