As outdoor sports become a new trend for young people, outdoor bloggers are standing on the outlet. From hiking and cycling to climbing snowy mountains, they have attracted a lot of attention with their real record and expertise. However, the road to monetization for outdoor bloggers is not all smooth sailing, and the balance between brand marketing and content value remains a challenge. This article will explore how outdoor bloggers can seize opportunities in the traffic era, while avoiding falling into follow-up trends and bubbles, and contribute to the sustainable development of the outdoor market.
There’s a lot more to do.
Outdoors has become a popular hobby among young people in China nowadays.
The popular “mountain outfit” is the embodiment of this hobby. Even in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, young people still have to use jackets, hiking shoes, etc. to associate with the mountains and fields.
The data of e-commerce platforms is enough to illustrate the popularity of outdoors. Taking the ongoing “618” mid-year promotion as an example, the sales of outdoor-related products on Taobao, Tmall, JD.com and other e-commerce platforms have increased significantly. According to data from the research agency Magic Mirror Insight, in May 2025, the sales of Tmall sports and outdoor-related categories increased by 13.8% year-on-year; The 618 promotion went on sale for 1 hour, and the sales of outdoor brands such as Kaileshi and KEEN on Tmall increased by more than 100% year-on-year. According to JD.com’s official data, 4 hours after the launch of JD.com’s 618 opening event on May 30, the sales of trail running shoes, jackets, folding cars, outdoor camp cars and other categories doubled year-on-year.
Xiao Zhou, a post-95 girl who works in colleges and universities, recently bought jackets, trekking poles and hiking bags. Xiao Zhou told Haike Finance that she didn’t have any exercise habits before, and after hiking in the suburbs with her friends, she “fell into the pit”, and after brushing some strategies, she just took advantage of the big promotion to buy equipment online, hoping to use it during the summer vacation. In addition to the natural healing feeling brought by hiking itself, Xiao Zhou was also “planted” by various outdoor bloggers on the Internet, wanting to plan his climb to the “first snow-capped mountain in his life”.
Outdoor refers to sports exploration activities carried out in the natural environment, including hiking, cycling, camping, skiing, paddleboarding, etc. Real outdoor sports, emphasizing deep interaction with nature, with specialized knowledge and skills, are different from ordinary tourism that focuses on sightseeing and leisure and relies on scenic spot facilities.
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With the spread of golden sentences such as “life is a wilderness” and the popularity of sayings such as “going to class”, outdoor has accurately hit the hearts of young people who are tired of the workplace and yearn for nature. As of the press release of this article, the number of views of videos related to outdoor topics on Douyin and Kuaishou has reached 472.48 billion and 102.83 billion respectively, and the number of views on outdoor topics on Xiaohongshu has reached 14.50 billion.
In the midst of the boom, outdoor bloggers stand out for their real records of traversing mountains and getting close to nature, which is quite different from travel bloggers who rely on mature attractions. More importantly, professional knowledge in vertical fields gives them strong professional ability to bring goods and outstanding commercialization attributes.
Outdoor bloggers are promoting the outdoor industry from niche to mass, but it is still unclear how bloggers, users, brands, platforms and other parties can achieve a win-win and sustainable traffic-based approach.
01 Outdoor is gradually becoming a trend
Outdoor sports stem from users’ need for nature.
According to the “2024 Outdoor Sports Crowd Insight Report” released by the research institute Mob Research Institute, the motivation of people participating in outdoor sports is mainly to relieve stress, strengthen the body, and get close to nature, which are much higher than social needs; Nearly 90% of respondents engage in outdoor exercise every month, with sports preferences mainly cycling, hiking, mountaineering and camping, and 52.7% of users exercising outdoors for 3-6 hours a week.
Users share outdoor sports on social media, bloggers join the communication chain, and then with the help of the platform, specific outdoor projects can converge into trends.
This is the case with frisbee and camping, which were once popular.
Frisbee is easy to use, has fun and social attributes, and can also “make a film” by participating in activities, which has attracted many users in 2021. In October of the same year, talk show actor Xiaobei jokingly said at the “Talk Show Conference” that frisbee makes people “not as good as being a dog”, which made frisbee further break the circle.
At the same time, the popularity is also high is the concept of “exquisite camping”, which is classified as “light outdoor”. Different from the hard-core way of hiking in the wilderness with equipment on your back, exquisite camping lowers the entry threshold, users can drive directly to scenic places, easily set up campsites, and some areas also provide special camping camps and barbecue equipment. Under the concept of exquisite camping, people can directly enjoy the fun of the wilderness without having to go through the trouble of hiking or preparing items.
Internet traffic can create explosive models in a short period of time, but after the cycle, the popularity will quickly fall.
The “2023 Annual Life Trend Observation Report” released by Xiaohongshu at the end of 2023 mentioned that the “top” Citywalk at that time was urban hiking, which can be said to be a simplified version of hiking. According to the report, in 2023, the search volume of Xiaohongshu Citywalk will increase by 140 times year-on-year, with more than 3.7 million related notes.
Going back further, in the “Top Ten Life Trends of 2022” released by Xiaohongshu, “mountain life” is prominently listed, including camping, frisbee and other outdoor sports. The data given by the report is that in 2021, the number of content related to Xiaohongshu camping and frisbee increased by 5 times and 6 times year-on-year, respectively.
Today, the popularity of Citywalk, camping, and frisbee is far from the high point of the past.
The outlet is changing, and many bloggers have been trying their best to chase the wind.
Xiao Xin, who has 12,000 followers on Xiaohongshu, is one of them. As a sports enthusiast working in the internet industry, Xiao Xin takes the time to try out a variety of different sports, including frisbee, paddleboard, flag rugby, and the newly popular pickleball. According to Xiao Xin’s self-summary, she plays with whatever she is, the traffic is not bad, and fans also like her exquisite and “energetic” personality – even if she works overtime, she can’t stop her enthusiasm for sports, and she has good-looking outfits and photos every time she exercises.
But bloggers can’t catch up with any wind. For example, the “first snow-capped mountain in my life” that will become popular in 2024, Xiao Xin weighed it for a long time, and finally gave up on this topic. Xiao Xin said that she had been to the plateau and had severe altitude sickness, and she could not estimate how much return would be after investing a lot of time and energy, so she did not plan to challenge her limits.
If there is a clear return, then bloggers in other fields are willing to participate in cross-border participation.
“Hello teacher, my name is He”, which has won the honor of Bilibili’s 2023 Top 100 UPs, is an example. At present, He has 11.994 million fans on Bilibili, 3.261 million fans on Douyin, and 812,000 fans on Xiaohongshu. On May 22, 2025, He updated the video of himself climbing the peak of Siguniang Mountain, in which he clearly stated that he was planted by the concept of “the first snow-capped mountain in his life” and received an invitation from the outdoor brand Beimian.
Generally speaking, the difficulty of climbing snow-capped mountains is level 1 per 1,000 meters, and the height of 5,000-6,000 meters is an entry-level snow-capped mountain. The Siguniang Mountain Peak belongs to this level, with an altitude of 5,025 meters, and there are 5,396 meters of Haba Snow Mountain and 5,210 meters of Otana.
The concept of “the first snow-capped mountain in life” has become popular, which is in line with the yearning of ordinary people for outdoor challenges. It is different from tourism in meaning, but the cost is not much different from ordinary tourism. Taking Haba Snow Mountain as an example, the overall climbing itinerary is mostly 3-4 days, and the club price is mostly 2,000-5,000 yuan, including one-on-one mountain guides.
Due to the large number of climbers, the “pug” meme was born on the Internet, which refers to the situation of kneeling on the ground due to poor physical fitness in the Haba Snow Mountain and being pulled by a guide with a rope. This makes the general public no longer feel that the snow-capped mountains are unattainable, further lowering the psychological threshold for users.
02 There may be potential for realization
Internet platforms have tried to create a closed loop of monetization based on content traffic in outdoor scenes.
Xiaohongshu has tested the waters of many related industries based on this. Xiaohongshu launched its self-operated e-commerce project “Little Oasis” in early 2022, which originally sold beauty, skin care products, fashion home furnishings and other products, but later turned to outdoor products such as camping, skiing, and cycling due to the popularity of camping, but it was not successful. The Little Oasis has ceased operations in October 2023. Xiaohongshu has also set up a tourism and cultural company with a business scope including campsite services, scenic spot management and other businesses, and registered trademarks such as “Xiaohongshu Cultural Tourism” and “Xiaohongshu Campsite”, which are not very popular now.
Douyin is also popular for outdoor promotion, and the commercialization path is more direct. Under Douyin’s outdoor topics, topics such as outdoor camping, outdoor equipment, and outdoor supplies have popular labels, such as outdoor camping topics have reached 38.19 billion.
User demand is also pushed up. According to a research report released by Guosheng Securities in April 2025, the domestic outdoor equipment market size will be US$4.45 billion (about 31.96 billion yuan) in 2024, which is in the expansion stage, and under the neutral assumption, the market size is expected to reach US$9.18 billion (about 65.93 billion yuan) in 2030.
Bloggers have joined in it and formed a joint force with platforms, brands, users and other parties. Due to the certain requirements for equipment in outdoor sports, the promotion of outdoor bloggers is often more vertical than that of ordinary travel bloggers, and users are more acceptable. For example, hiking, there are light and heavy equipment, and the equipment requirements for different altitudes and different climate regions are different, and the list of equipment recommended by bloggers is reasonable.
According to Haike Finance’s observation, the content of the equipment list on the Internet platform has become its own category, and the cover picture is often a group photo taken by bloggers who spread all the necessary equipment on the screen. For example, Xiaohongshu outdoor blogger “Cheng Gary” shared his first reloaded hiking equipment, including tents, sleeping bags, stoves, titanium pots and other outdoor cooking utensils and sleeping supplies, and most of the equipment is marked with brands and specific models. Although the blogger only has more than 1,000 followers, the note has more than 6,500 likes, and many users discuss the use of specific equipment with the blogger in the comment area.
This makes outdoor bloggers more monetized than many other fields.
In a video released on June 13, 2025, blogger “Shen Muke”, who has 24,000 followers on Xiaohongshu, said that there are relatively more business order opportunities and brand budgets for outdoor sports verticals, and the price of bloggers is also high, and bloggers with 5-60,000 fans around them can earn 100,000 yuan per month, while their fans can reach 4-50,000 yuan per month during the peak season.
Blogger “Wild Emma”, who has 94,000 followers on Bilibili and 90,000 followers on Douyin, once shared his income information – a cumulative business order income of 380,000 yuan in two years. It should be noted that the blogger lives overseas and said that because many brand products are more time-sensitive and market-targeted, it is much more difficult to take orders on his own than domestic bloggers. Even so, this statistic exceeds that of many travel bloggers with similar fan sizes.
When the outdoors become a fashionable lifestyle, outdoor equipment begins to be not limited to professionalism, but into fashion wear. For example, the superimposed shapes of jackets, trekking poles, headphones, and masks that can be seen everywhere on many platforms reveal the “wild feeling” that young people like.
The more equipment required, the more likely it is that the blogger will be commercialized. In this regard, the aforementioned blogger Xiao Xin has a lot of experience. Xiao Xin said that he does not have many business orders in frisbee, flag football and other events, because what he needs is nothing more than daily sportswear and shoes; But hiking and cycling are different, it can be called uncapped, and some cycling bloggers I know need tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of yuan to add up to a road bike.
This has prompted outdoor gear to become a kind of middle-class, urban, fashionable status symbol. For example, Arc’teryx, a high-end brand that was originally a professional hiking equipment, ranks among the top in the field of sports. According to data from research agency QuestMobile, in February 2025, the post-00s in second-tier cities and above will pay 11.4% attention to Arc’teryx-related content, higher than brands such as Adidas (8.4%) and Nike (3.2%).
03 The shortcomings are still in the content
The outdoor business tide has spawned more and more new players to enter the game.
The emerging outdoor brand Bo Xihe is an example.
According to the prospectus submitted by Boxihe on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on April 28, 2025, Boxihe is mainly engaged in outdoor products such as clothing, footwear, and equipment, and is the fastest-growing high-performance outdoor clothing brand in China in 2024; In 2022, 2023 and 2024, Boxihe’s revenue will be 378 million yuan, 908 million yuan and 1.766 billion yuan respectively; In 2022, 2023 and 2024, the online DTC sales revenue will be 331 million yuan, 752 million yuan and 1.351 billion yuan respectively.
However, the rise path of these new players has attracted many netizens to ridicule them for focusing on marketing and light research and development.
According to the prospectus, Bo Xihe actively uses social media platforms and KOLs for marketing, with a cumulative number of more than 3 billion views of brand-related videos on Douyin and more than 200 million discussions related to the Xiaohongshu brand; In 2022, 2023 and 2024, Boxihe and R&D investment will be 13.6 million yuan, 19.8 million yuan and 31.5 million yuan respectively, accounting for 3.6% of total revenue to 1.8%; advertising and promotion costs were 68.71 million yuan, 170 million yuan and 360 million yuan respectively, accounting for 18.2% of total revenue to 27.4%.
It should be noted that although outdoor brands are not technology companies that require high R&D investment, their products have higher requirements for waterproof, breathable, thermal insulation, anti-slip, wear resistance and other aspects than ordinary clothing, and a considerable scale of R&D investment is necessary.
Taking Pathfinder, which is also an outdoor brand, as an example, the financial report shows that in 2024, Pathfinder’s revenue will be 1.592 billion yuan, and the R&D cost will be 80.74 million yuan, accounting for 5% of the total revenue; advertising and promotion costs were 110 million yuan, accounting for 6.9% of total revenue.
You might as well zoom in on the horizontal ratio range and take a look at Li Ning and Anta, which focus on sports rather than pure outdoor brands. According to the financial report, in 2024, Li Ning and Anta’s R&D costs accounted for 2.4% and 2.8% of total revenue, respectively, and advertising and promotion costs accounted for 9.5% and 9% of total revenue, respectively.
Brands are vigorously marketing, and it is difficult for bloggers to objectively convey knowledge due to monetization considerations, which is very easy to obscure the real needs of users.
Outdoor blogger “Zhang Noya”, who has 128,000 followers on Douyin, 58,000 fans on Bilibili, and 138,000 followers on Xiaohongshu, has expressed more and more dissatisfaction with outdoor equipment marketing, believing that many bloggers force a lot of unnecessary things to the audience in order to monetize, but avoid talking about real professional knowledge and parameters.
Even Arc’teryx, which has a long brand history and deep professional research and development accumulation, will be involved in controversy due to marketing and premiums.
In Xiaohongshu, a professional outdoor blogger with 71,000 followers and associate professor of China University of Geosciences, “Xiao Wu Teacher Notebook” once published a video science popularization why no one wears Arc’teryx when climbing Mount Everest, because the climbing recognized by the public belongs to the joy climbing, that is, Himalayan climbing, relying on teamwork and logistical support, and the equipment focuses on “large volume and fullness”; Arc’teryx is the representative equipment of Arabic climbing, that is, Alpine climbing, focusing on solo climbing, improving performance as much as possible on the basis of lightweight. The blogger has repeatedly replied to users in the comment area, hoping that everyone will not only pay attention to the premium issue of the brand, but also pay attention to the parameters and knowledge of the product itself, so as to choose outdoor products that truly meet personal needs.
The surge in outdoor content exposure has brought the outdoors closer to the public, but the dissemination of professional knowledge in this field is far from enough.
The propaganda of “the first snow-capped mountain in life” is quite typical. There is a lot of content on platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, which are “easy to handle” at the bottom of the mountain and “just have legs” at the top of the mountain, causing many users to underestimate the difficulty of climbing the snow-capped mountain. For example, the user “Hulu Heroes” posted on Xiaohongshu that he had failed to climb the Haba Snow Mountain, saying that he had watched some videos of climbing the snowy mountain, and as soon as his brain was hot, he decided to go to Haba, and did not make much other preparations except for buying equipment. On the eve of the climb, the blogger couldn’t sleep because of the height, and when he climbed, he encountered rain that caused his clothes to get wet, and he had to prepare to withdraw 2 hours after starting the climb.
Outdoor content has a lot of attention, but it is still difficult to break the circle.
Taking Bilibili as an example, in the 2018-2024 annual top 100 UP masters, there have always been travel bloggers, but there are no pure outdoor bloggers. Among the top experts on various platforms, the only outdoor bloggers are not known for their professional knowledge, but focus on factors such as personality, story, and hardship. For example, the outdoor cycling blogger “Huyuanxing”, who has 26.074 million followers on Douyin, was born in 2000 and won the love of netizens because he was young and passionate.
The popularity of some bloggers is really a coincidence. In 2023, the outdoor cycling blogger “Chaoshan Aqiu Travels”, who has 1.3 million followers on Douyin, attracted the attention of the whole network in 2023 because his bicycle was stolen while riding in Hong Kong. Outdoor cycling blogger “Zhao Shuo Westward Journey Manji”, who currently has 4.642 million followers on Douyin and 708,000 fans on Station B, he has attracted attention due to the accidental death of the stray cat “Wukong” adopted on the road, and in one month from April to May 2025, Douyin has gained more than 2 million followers.
How to continue such popularity is a question.
The outdoor cycling blogger “Xu Yun Wandering China”, who once had more than 2 million followers on Bilibili, was once considered by netizens to be “word-of-mouth and personality collapse”, and finally chose to quit Bilibili and turned to Douyin, where he currently has 1.301 million followers. The blogger issued a statement in July 2023 saying that he would no longer ride after the transformation, and then turned to motorcycle travel. From May 2024 to March 2025, he did not update a single video.
The outdoor market is growing rapidly due to the surge of heatwaves, accompanied by the growth of bubbles and the inevitable rupture of bubbles. Outdoor bloggers in the middle of it not only need to pay attention to how to monetize, but also strive to increase the value of their content. High-quality differentiated content is not only the basis for outdoor bloggers to win traffic, but also the key for them to work together with all parties to support the continued strength of the outdoor market after squeezing out the bubble. Now it seems that outdoor bloggers have a lot more to do.
