Product Reviews
These reviews were produced during my time as a staff writer and as the managing editor of ElectricBikeReport.com, an e-bike review website that aims to guide consumers during the purchasing process by offering honest and thorough assessments using real-world testing and staff expertise. I’ve reviewed upwards of 50 e-bikes, dozens of products and covered some of the cycling industry’s largest trade shows.
Most were paid reviews or affiliate partners, and I’d characterize them as a blend of content marketing and traditional independent product reviewing. My aim as a reviewer is to give consumers the best, most thorough and honest look at a product, no matter the circumstance. No matter what.
Best Electric Bikes, 2022
March 2, 2022 | Electric Bike Report
Of all the things published on ElectricBikeReport.com, the best pages are by far the most successful pieces of content.
The 2022 list of the best overall e-bikes has rapidly become the most successful content published on ElectricBikeReport.com and its accompanying YouTube channel. Best lists are tricky because there are so many e-bikes to choose from, and in this instance the list was tailored to specifically target Electric Bike Report’s core readership of new and enthusiast e-bike riders in the market for affordable D2C models.
In this project I helped guide the bike selection process (I personally reviewed most of the bikes on the list) and led the effort to conceptualize the structure of the written review, handled format and script writing for the video review and solved for logistical problems on shoot days. I also functioned as the lead presenter in the video and wrote the written review.
This video has garnered more than 620,000 views on YouTube in four months — the highest performing video on the channel by a large margin.
Led to a significant bump in YouTube subscribers.
The written review is the top performing content on ElectricBikeReport.com.
E-Bike Review: Aventon Aventure
May 19, 2021 | Electric Bike Report
Aventon is a brand I know well from my personal experience in cycling, but they’ve grown significantly from the brand of affordable fixies I knew into a powerhouse in the D2C e-bike space.
For this piece I reached back a decade in my own cycling history to when I first encountered the Aventon brand, which back then was a fledgling maker of low-cost but high-performance fixie bikes steeped in racing and messenger culture. The goal was to better tell the story behind the origin of this brand and weave it into the product review; important context for consumers looking to distinguish between products that on paper can be very similar.
The final product is better than average, and got a very positive response from Aventon and viewers/readers alike.
It’s also one of the more successful reviews Electric Bike Report has published, with consistent traffic to the written review webpage and more than 128,000 YouTube views in its first year.
E-Bike Review: QuietKat Jeep
Feb. 17, 2022 | Electric Bike Report
A unique e-bike review that required some special circumstances: First, it’s not street legal, so that posed some logistical issues. And second, it’s an off-road model that begged for a particularly action-packed video, which meant my videographer and I needed to get a little creative on the shoot.
The result is probably one of the most engaging off-road e-bike reviews I’ve done. The video is top-notch and my reviewing successfully parses out this bike’s performance characteristics and some of its special legal circumstances.
This was also one of the first truly off-road e-bike reviews I’d personally done, which required some thoughtful video shoot location selection and some additional legwork during the review process itself. That additional thought paid off, and helped guide future reviews of off-road e-bikes.
E-Bike Review: BULLS Alpine Hawk EVO
June 11, 2021 | Electric Bike Report
Between the writing, the final product of the video and the actual act of reviewing, this is my favorite project I’ve worked on with Electric Bike Report.
This review of the BULLS Alpine Hawk EVO lightweight electric road bike was an exercise in ambition — the intent was to prove to the bike industry (and ourselves) that we were capable of a nuanced and high quality review of a performance product marketed towards an audience that really knows their stuff. We broke the molds of our typical review process to make something that is fresh, engaging and does a very good job of demonstrating the product’s capabilities.
Though it’s not the heaviest hitting content I’ve produced (just over 2,000 YouTube views as of July, 2022), this review did its job, helping gain the trust of higher-end performance e-bike brands and the consumers they cater to. It also served as a test piece for several new review processes later adopted into Electric Bike Report’s official review regimen, including a storyboard and script writing process I prototyped.
I am also particularly proud of the quality of this content, and would point to it as some of my best work.
E-Bike Review: Specialized Turbo Vado 4.0
Feb. 11, 2022 | Electric Bike Report
The pressure was on when word came that Specialized had one of their 2022 Turbo Vado electric commuters set aside for Electric Bike Report.
Specialized is one of the biggest fish in the e-bike space, and after waging a campaign to earn the trust of major brands (see the BULLS Alpine Hawk EVO, above), we’d finally secured a review model. I spend a considerable amount of time thinking about my audience when writing or reviewing, and I knew that the buyers of a bike like this — a model that is pricey, technologically sophisticated and painstakingly designed — would likely already have a very good grasp on the product. For me, that means mistakes will get noticed, my facts must be straight and my opinions an assessments must be extremely well informed.
In the end, I think the stats speak for themselves: The video review has garnered more than 43,000 views in its first six months and received overwhelmingly positive feedback from viewers and readers.