21Bikes.com – A New Website For You And Your Bicycle

You may have figured it out by now, but I like to make stuff.

I’ve been working on Bicycle Touring Pro for the past two years and slowly building it from a site read only by my friends and family to one of the top bicycle touring sites on the Web. In addition, I’ve written a book about the basics of 21st century bicycle travel, created a step-by-step course on how to get free hotel rooms and campgrounds… and now I’ve created yet another web project that I’d like to share with you.

My latest online venture is a new website called 21Bikes.com.

Unlike BicycleTouringPro.com where most of the content is written and produced entirely by yours truly, the content at 21Bikes.com is meant to be  user-generated, with most of the site being built by you and thousands of people from around the world.

How 21Bikes.com Works

The concept behind the site is incredibly simple: You upload a photo of you and your bicycle. If it looks good, I’ll post it to the site within one of the 21 bike-specific categories (This is where the name of the site comes from). Then, once the picture goes live, it gets voted on and shared by users from around the world.

You can submit a photo no matter what type of bike you ride, how old you are, where you live in the world, or what you look like. The only requirement is that the photo you submit include both YOU and YOUR BICYCLE. That means no pictures of random people cycling past you. The photo you submit has to be of you and your trusty steed. The better the picture, the better your chances of it being posted to the site. And if you’ve got more than one photo (or more than one bike), that’s great! You can submit as many photos as you like.

Click here to submit a photo of you and your bike now!

Once you’ve sent in your photo, just sit back and enjoy. I’ll post a new batch of photos every single day. When you see one you like, hit the blue “Sweet!” button in the top right-hand corner of the post and vote it up. Then, send the pic to your friends through your favorite social networking website. And who knows… if you submit a great photo, you might just make it into the Top 10 list!

I Need Your Help To Make This Site Successful

Because 21Bikes.com requires people from around the world to submit photos of themselves and their bicycles, I can’t do this on my own. I need your help!

So here’s the deal: If this sounds like a fun undertaking you’d be willing to participate in, there are two quick and easy things you can do to help me make this new website a success.

1) First of all, go to the upload page at 21Bikes.com and send in a photo of you and your favorite bike.

2) After you’ve submitted your own photo, tell your friends about the site. If you know anyone who is interested in bicycles or bicycling in general, just send them an email, shoot them a message through your favorite social networking site, or call them on the phone and tell them about 21Bikes.com.

If you could do those two things, it would be very much appreciated.

Additional Notes

21Bikes.com is at the very beginning stages of its online evolution. There are a few photos on the site thus far, but not very many. Once the site gets up and rolling, I plan to have thousands of bicycle portraits posted to the site, but in order to make that happen I need your help.

For the first few weeks I’ll probably just post one or two pictures per day. But as the site gains traction I’ll post as many photos as I can on a daily basis.

I think that once the site generates some momentum it will be really fun (and interesting) to see such an incredible array of bicycles and their riders from locations all around the world. And maybe, just maybe, this will be one more way to get people excited about riding their bikes?

Finally, if you have any comments or suggestions on the site, please let me know. I’ve purposely built 21Bikes.com to be simple and easy to use. But as time goes by I may add additional features. So let me know if you have any ideas.

Thanks so much for reading. Now if you don’t mind, head on over to 21Bikes.com and check it out!