Cross Country Tour.
 

*Please send serious e-mail replies "TimmyC123@gmail.com"

My friend and I are riding cross country and we were looking for some sort of sponsor. Just to help pay for spare tubes, new tires etc. Any ideas? We don't need anything to fancy, just a small company or something interesting to promote on the road via word of mouth/cycling jerseys etc. We will be able to confirm with photos and video and hopefully people telling the sponsor how they heard about them.

please help.

-timmy

We all dream of that, but the truth about it is, it just doesn't really happen. Touring is very self-gratifying and I have yet to find anyone who would pay me to do it (though it would be nice!). I wish you the best with that but I would also not rely on it.

how about you try your local bike shop...maybe they could hook you up with tires and chains and such at cost.

Good luck with that.

I've never heard of any cycletourist who managed to get sponsorship, but if you're successful, please do post back here and let us know.

This might sound unethical but I've heard quite a few people getting sponsorships by doing "charity rides". Seriously, they will use charity money to support themselves (and use the charity angle to get discount hotel rooms) then donate what's left over to charity. It's perfectly legal and in my mind, perfectly unethical.

I'm not saying all charity riders do this... but some do.

last time i got paid to ride my bike when i was 13 and had a paper route...

[QUOTE=mkauffman]We all dream of that, but the truth about it is, it just doesn't really happen. Touring is very self-gratifying and I have yet to find anyone who would pay me to do it (though it would be nice!). QUOTE]

X2
I would love to get paid touring :D

[QUOTE=xilios][QUOTE=mkauffman]We all dream of that, but the truth about it is, it just doesn't really happen. Touring is very self-gratifying and I have yet to find anyone who would pay me to do it (though it would be nice!). QUOTE]

X2

People confuse all the charity rides and tours with thinking that sponsors actually care about the riding part. It's just a means to an end.

I'm actually doing my Portland to Portland tour with a friend this summer for charity. All of the donations (we are just asking a penny per mile) will go straight to the Columbus Free Clinic (in Ohio) as I am covering my own costs. Even as a charity I am having trouble finding people to donate.

I'm not surprised. People are swamped with requests for donations these days. In one of the places I worked, just about every week someone was selling raffle tickets for this, or chocolates for that, or wanting donations for a walk-a-thon for some cause or another. And then there are the emails, letters, and people coming to your door. You could end up forking out hundreds or thousands of dollars for everything by the time it is all said and done.

I pick a cause/charity or two and stick with them ... and I think a lot of other people are starting to do the same thing. We just can't afford to support everything that comes along.

Also, many people dream of travelling around the world ... and many people are saving for their annual vacations or one big vacation. If someone comes along requesting sponsorship money because that person is going to travel across the country for a number of months (i.e. take what could be viewed as a big vacation) ... even if all the money will go to a charity ... people get jealous and "offended". They think, "Why should I hand over MY hard-earned money so that this person can go travel the countryside and have fun, while I stay here and continue to slave away at my job?"

Plus, I think, people are more suspicious now than they used to be. There have been so many email (and other) scams involving fake charities in the last few years. Also the books of many charities have been opened and it has been discovered that the money people have been donating to these charities has mainly gone to administrative costs, or directly into someone's pocket.

It's one thing to sell chocolate cover almonds for the local school, or bunches of daffodils for cancer, or whatever because people feel like they are getting something in return for their donations ... but to hand over money so that someone else can have an "experience of a lifetime" .............

I wish you the bests for your coming trip, but it's best to depend on yourselves. I know you are offering advertising in exchange for sponsorship. It would have worked when cycling around the world was a novelty. But today, thousands are cycling across the country on their own budget, the trip has loss its news headliner.
Surprisingly, many cyclists have been able to get sponsorship and donations in Thailand. Many cyclists are now using theme to honour the king to make their proposal sound cause worthy. Many Thais and even government agencies fell for that. Lately, a cyclist has proposed a budget of over US$125K for his three years trip to promote self sufficiency idea originated by the king, to the world. This time he stepped over board, and strong criticisms abound asking him to drop "to commemorate the occasion of the king's blah blah blah".