Adam Riemann

Adam Riemann is a popular motorcycling YouTuber.

He has 789K subscribers on his YouTube channel, ‘ARiemann1.’

Adam is the founder of Motology Films.

Introduction-

Adam Riemann was born in 1975 in Australia.

He grew up in the dirt, close to nature.

His father, Bernie Riemann, was a builder.

Adam has a sibling; an older brother and he was into BMX.

Love for bikes-

As their parents broke up, Adam and his brother found respite in their bikes.

At a young age, he was good at art and used to draw and paint and wanted to grow up to become an artist.

Later, Adam thought of getting into graphic designing straight out of high school.

He got enrolled into technical and further education (TAFE) to study graphic design but after six months, he quit it because at that time, he had stage fright to present a speech in front of his class.

Within a couple of weeks, Adam secured the job as a waste collector in a garbage truck and made good money with which he bought another dirt bike at 15.

At 15, he left home and started living with his friends and started prioritising bikes and associating them with independence.

Travelling, racing & finding his mentor-

In 1996, Adam became a dirt bike racer and a mechanic and got into a relationship.

He was a qualified heavy-duty diesel fitter but decided to not spend his time underneath hot oily trucks out of a mine.

In 1997, Adam felt an urge to travel, ride around Australia and at that time, planned to write freelance stories for bike magazines but got rejected by the magazines.

But these rejections did not stop him as in 1998, he started his motorcycle trip and rode to eastern states of Australia and then rode up to New South Wales.

Here, Adam raced in Australian 4 Day Enduro and met Geoff Ballard and started working for him.

Geoff not only taught him to ride faster but also taught him about life.

Then, Adam bought a van and continued racing motorcycles and then, headed north and started living in the van along with his girlfriend.

Then, they rode to the northern tip of Australia and in the way, rescued an orphaned wallaby which got christened as Rocky.

Later, they returned to Western Australia and in 1999, Adam bought another bike and continued racing.

He published a book, ‘A Wallaby’s Tale’.

Writing & winning championships-

In 1999, Scott Staines wrote articles about Adam riding around Australia and racing on the same bike.

At that time, Scott used to write the ‘Way Out West’ monthly column in Australasian Dirt Bike Magazine (ADB Magazine) and he suggested to the magazine that Adam is the right person to take over his column.

ADB is Australia’s biggest dirt bike magazine.

Thanks to Scott, his journey into motorcycle media got kickstarted.

Adam upped riding and racing and in 2001, cracked the top five in his state enduro.

In 2002, he broke up with his girlfriend and started completely focusing on racing.

In 2004, Adam won his first outright state championship and backed up his second state championship.

He moved to Sydney with just $700 and in 2005, started racing the nationals and started contributing to the magazine full-time and started consecutively appearing on the covers of the ADB.

Adam also started desert racing and won a Finke award.

In 2007, he finished 31^st outright in Erzberg Rodeo in Austria and at that time, was the only Australian to compete there.

Then, Adam gained a guest ride on the KTM team for Australasian Safari, also known as Dakar downunder.

Here, he won the 450-production class and finished fourth outright.

In 2008, Adam made it onto a factory team and thanks to this, he started getting paid to race.

He is two times West Australian Enduro champion.

Motology & ARiemann1-

Even though Adam worked for the magazine and raced for many years, he did not earn a decent income.

In 2009, as the ADB Magazine made him redundant and he had to survive on freelance gigs.

Adam knew that he had accumulated avid readers who would read all his magazine articles and so, he decided to start his own brand.

So, in January 2009, he started ‘Motology’ (later renamed to Motology Films) to write and share his racing experiences.

Thankfully, the photography that Adam learnt while working for ADB greatly helped him.

But his Motology website was able to attract only a small audience and was not growing fast and faced stiff competition from the already established websites.

So, Adam thought of publishing bike and gear reviews on his website and producing related videos.

So, on 17 June 2009, he started his YouTube channel, ‘ARiemann1’.

At that time, Adam had no plans of becoming a YouTuber as he just wanted to use YouTube for hosting his videos and to embed his YouTube videos on to his website.

After trying a couple of names, he named his channel as ‘ARiemann1’ as this name was not taken.

On 27 October 2009, Adam published his first video, ‘Team Aus prep for BAJA 1000 by Adam Riemann’.

Even though he started his website and YouTube channel, he continued working freelance magazine gigs.

Hardships & success-

Even though Adam did not earn through his YouTube channel for years, he persisted and manufacturers kept giving him bikes.

In 2012, he made a dirt bike movie with his father and published its videos on YouTube and thankfully, they became viral.

Adam’s videos, ‘World’s Most Dangerous Ride on edge of cliff. Himalayas’ and ‘World’s Most Dangerous Ride Part 2 Himalayas’ became viral and helped his channel become successful.

This Himalayan trip inspired him to later do several adventure trips.

In 2013, Adam along with Mark Portbury, rode 7000 km from Austria to Egypt, traversing seven countries on their KTM 500EXCs.

He made this into a film, ‘Motonomad’ and showcased it at the Orpheum Cinema theatre.

In 2015, Adam’s YouTube channel hit 100K subscribers.

Later, he produced ‘Motonomad II’ (this was also screened at a cinema theatre and made the final selection for the Motorcycle Film Festival in New York) and ‘Motonomad 3’.

In Motonomad II, Adam along with another couple of riders venture into Siberia’s Altai Mountain range and attempt to cross the Steppes of Mongolia.

In Motonomad 3, he along with a couple of riders, rode through Chile’s Atacama Desert to La Paz, the world’s highest national capital.

Adam sells these films on Gumroad.

A successful YouTuber-

As of February 2024, Adam has 789K subscribers on his YouTube channel, 99.9K followers on Instagram and 85K followers on the ‘Motology Films’ Facebook page.

He earns from a variety of sources, advertisements, and Membership on his YouTube channel, selling merchandise and feature films.

In addition to using a DSLR camera, he also uses a GoPro camera for filming.

His farm-

In 2015, Adam along with his family returned to Sydney and later, moved down south.

Then, he raised a loan from a bank and bought a 160 acres property in a rural bush landscape and built his house.

Personal life-

Adam is married to Amena Baghdadi.

This couple has two daughters, Ayla, and Ruby.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Adam Riemann?

Share with me in the comment section below.