So I had this crazy idea the other day, of a way to make some money by just riding my unicycle. I though I’d post it up here and get some thoughts, or maybe someone has done something like this before.
So basically my situation is that I will be finishing my full time job at Christmas and then will have 2 months of holidays until I begin university. Now obviously I’m still going to need to make some sort of part time income while studying which got me thinking about what sort of work I could do.
Then i came up with this crazy idea. I call it Unicycle Advertising. Basically the concept is, I ride around the city centre (on my unicycle of course) wearing a businesses promotional or branded tshirt, hat etc. I would then charge them based on an hourly or daily rate, depending on how much time I want to spend. I could foresee a few hours over lunchtime would probably be the most effective in terms of exposure to people.
The basic pitch would address the fact that in this day and age of advertising, where people are getting blasted with ads all day long, it’s hard to get your brand noticed. What if there was a way you could cut through all the noise and get people to pay attention? Bla Bla Bla Bla. When I ride a unicycle around town, everyone turns there head to have a look, it could be your business they are looking at! Bla Bla Bla Bla.
That’s the basic idea, I think it’s possible to do, seeing as this guy is doing pretty well by just wearing tshirts!
Around here (Southern California) a lot of guys make money advertising by twirling signs on busy corners or near the business they’re advertising. They are in demand (I guess) because they are hard not to notice. I would guess that if you could think of something to carry that advertised the business you would also be hard to miss. Have someone take your picture wearing a costume (clown?) and carrying an arrow-shaped sign while riding, make it into flyers and pass them out. Couldn’t hurt!
Good luck!
Yeah, I’ve often wondered what would happen if you rode around with a tshirt that had some sort of inflammatory political slogan, symbol or image on it- not that different from Chrisli’s idea, I guess.
Yeah, I’ve thought about making a special jersey to wear while riding on the paved mix use trails around here. Not sure what it would say but it would be directed to the few bikers that like to yell at me for being on the trail or for those folks who ask about my missing wheel.
This past summer I saw a Craigslist ad for a local Farmers Market that wanted to hire a Unicycle rider to wear a Gorilla suit and ride around the Market for 1 hour, for $25 dollars.
The thing about it was, you had to be no taller than 5’4" to fit into the Gorilla suit (I’m five foot seven… and a quarter!!!).
But, something to think about for your idea…
If you had a Gorilla suit you might be more attractive to potential advertisers.
I saw a craigslist ad one time where the guy was selling a gorilla suit, and was throwing in a unicycle for free as part of the deal. (There was a photo in the ad of him riding the unicycle in the gorilla suit.) So it has been done!
As a teen, we’re talking 1990, I was paid to ride around Independence Mall in Philadelphia with a three-cornered hat on my unicycle. As I remember I was paid $50 an hour for a week for this. I quit my dish washing job because unicycling was a lot more lucrative and fun.
See noone does any sort of out of the box advertising where I live so I figure it could make quite an impact. I figure I might offer a limited amount of free trials with some businesses, so I can get some photos and get myself sorted before I start charging people.
Wow, $50 an hour is some pretty nice coin. That’s something I’m not sure about, what is a reasonable amount to charge?
I’m not sure if I’m actually going to do this or not, it was just an idea. I also thought I could ride through the city centre with a go pro attached to my head, and hopefully then be able to show clients how much attention there ads would be getting.
When I very first started riding, my friend told me I would have to one day rent out my T-shirt for advertising space and go for long, epic tours (the famous ones like John O’Groats to Land’s End and crossing the USA)
