First of all, this is a theory. I have no proof nor am I jealous of anyone's success, ambition or friendship circle. Second, not sure if this has been discussed yet so here goes.
As a small time blogger writing 2 times a week, I'm surprised to find that I get little over 45,000-50,000 visitors on a good month. Knowing the size of much bigger and popular cycling blogs like Fat Cyclist (written by Elden Nelson) or BSNYC for instance (Eben Weiss, who also released a book lately) we can easily extrapolate these numbers. Perhaps they get 80,000 or 100,000 readers in a month? Maybe 200,000. Who knows. But it must be significant.
The point being that I find it curious the decision from Johann and Armstrong to befriend these two big time bloggers. Elden has been raising money for LAF for a long time so its not surprising his bias and affection towards Armstrong. Eben, the one who went anonymous for a long time snobbing at bike culture, Craigslist ads and other cycling stupidities was one of the last people you'd expect to jump on the Lance bandwagon.
We know that Lance has traveled to NY to meet and ride bikes with Eben in Central Park. We also know Johann made a grand public announcement to invite Elden into the Radioshack training camp for helping raise so much amount of money. In the end for all his 'services', he was given a TREK bike. This is not new to him. He is open in stating that he gets schwag from companies and I do find in that a bad taste.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that's not the issue. Living in the suspicious atmosphere we are now, do you think it is possible that the Hog and the cowboy might be seeking to form "strategic" partnerships with bloggers especially that these two are so big into social media? "We'll pay you x amount for ad sales, we'll give you nice bikes, we'll put a good word for your upcoming book... you make sure you don't write one negative thing about us and if something comes along that targets us, write something in return to refute it."
It will be quite degrading if this is actually happening, but the truth is out there.
As a small time blogger writing 2 times a week, I'm surprised to find that I get little over 45,000-50,000 visitors on a good month. Knowing the size of much bigger and popular cycling blogs like Fat Cyclist (written by Elden Nelson) or BSNYC for instance (Eben Weiss, who also released a book lately) we can easily extrapolate these numbers. Perhaps they get 80,000 or 100,000 readers in a month? Maybe 200,000. Who knows. But it must be significant.
The point being that I find it curious the decision from Johann and Armstrong to befriend these two big time bloggers. Elden has been raising money for LAF for a long time so its not surprising his bias and affection towards Armstrong. Eben, the one who went anonymous for a long time snobbing at bike culture, Craigslist ads and other cycling stupidities was one of the last people you'd expect to jump on the Lance bandwagon.
We know that Lance has traveled to NY to meet and ride bikes with Eben in Central Park. We also know Johann made a grand public announcement to invite Elden into the Radioshack training camp for helping raise so much amount of money. In the end for all his 'services', he was given a TREK bike. This is not new to him. He is open in stating that he gets schwag from companies and I do find in that a bad taste.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that's not the issue. Living in the suspicious atmosphere we are now, do you think it is possible that the Hog and the cowboy might be seeking to form "strategic" partnerships with bloggers especially that these two are so big into social media? "We'll pay you x amount for ad sales, we'll give you nice bikes, we'll put a good word for your upcoming book... you make sure you don't write one negative thing about us and if something comes along that targets us, write something in return to refute it."
It will be quite degrading if this is actually happening, but the truth is out there.
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