Just a quick update, I am now excepting a few guest posts here on weight loss weapons. If you are interested in having your article published on this blog you can email steve at weightlossweapons.com along with your attached article. Your article must be fitness, weight loss or health related. No Acai berry or Colon cleanser articles please.

I am only accepting a maximum of 5 guests posts so get yours to me quickly.

Weight Loss and Fitness Article Directory

I am in the process of setting up a new weight loss and fitness article directory at weightlossweapons.com. So stay tuned for upates on when it launches and how you can contribute to it. (it will be a do follow directory). There is just too much crap posted out there and this directory will only be accepting high quality articles.

Talk to you soon
Steve

Who needs money? Well if you could use an extra $250 then I suggest that you head over to John’s weight loss blog at Johnisfit.com. He is having a blog contest for the month of June with the top prize being $250 cash plus other great prizes. Entering is easy, go to John’s weight loss contest for all the details.

Follow Me on Twitter

Twitter has been exploding recently and everyone is using it including myself. I mainly use it as a tool for social interaction to ask questions and to find interesting new sites and stories. Most of my tweets are about what I am doing in my daily life as well as my latest posts on weight loss weapons and some of the other sites I run.

I go under the name @steve_wlw and I invite you to follow me. If you are interested in deals and saving money I am just starting to tweet about these exclusively under @debtslaying you can follow that as well.

I look forward to chatting with you

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this blog and what I want to achieve with it. I’ve been offered $2700 to sell this site. That’s decent money but somehow I know with a name like Weight Loss Weapons it will get turned into a diet pill site. Something that I am strongly against.

To date this has been a place where I get my ideas out about weight loss and weight related issues. But its been more of me talking at you instead of with you. As you can tell with the lack of comments I’ve been posting.

I’m going to make this blog a more personal space to interact with me and blog about my personal weight loss successes and struggles plus other health and fitness stuff too. As Jason from Run4change put it, this blog is going to have more heart. Although the post frequency will be nowhere close to his. (seriously he has more posts in January than I have on this whole site

3 guys with blogs that have heart are Andrew from Andrew is getting fit, Israel from Fat Man Unleashed and John from John is Fit. I aspire to be like them.

This past Fall and Winter have been rough personally for me. I have gained weight quickly and no it’s not muscle. I have a ton of reasons why I’ve gained but they honestly amount to nothing more than lame excuses.

Getting To Know Who Am I?

You know it’s funny, I get about 10,000 to 12,000 visitors a month and only a handful of them really know who I am. My “About Me” page is really nothing special and doesn’t let you know what I am all about.

This is the picture from my about page. (The sun was in my eyes, not trying to look cool) and I would love to post more except I don’t have that many. I am the guy taking the pictures, not in them.

It’s pretty close to what I look like right now and somewhere in between my heaviest and my peak.

My peak being my wedding day about 7 years ago. I worked really hard to get into shape and hit the 175lbs mark the day before. This is what I looked like, not bad eh?

Over the last 7 years I’ve gained and lost more than 40Lbs. In that time I’ve had 2 children (well my wife did) and settled into a nice cushy desk job. A very common lifestyle pattern that has contributed to the gains.

Here is a picture of me at my heaviest or pretty damn close to it.

Vital Stats

Here are some quick “stats” about me:

Age:31
Marital Status: Married
Weight: 198lbs depending on the Scale
Height: 5′9
Hobbies: Spending Time With the Family, Sports, Reading, Making Money Online.

Who I am Online

I am pretty active online and frequent a lot of other blogs and social networking sites. Here are some of my “Ids”

Twitter: Steve_WLW
Stumbleupon: mclintst
Digg: mclintst
Blogcatalog: mclintst

When I comment on other blogs I use the name Steve@weightlossweapons.com most of the time. Feel free to add me as a contact.

Sites I own

I am fairly new at building websites but I’m enjoying what I am learning and it provides some extra income, with the economy the way it is every little bit helps. One of my goals is to eventually earn a full-time income online. Here are some of the sites I own at the moment:

Weightlossweapons.com and Weightlossweapons.com/blog

These are my first self hosted sites that I created almost 2 years ago. They have come along way from the when I started them.

Debtslaying.com

I started this site about 8 months ago when I became debt free and have changed the focus so many times since then it is ridiculous. I’ve settled on it being a place where I can post about deals and discounts that I find online as well as hot topics, financial issues and other related things that I find interesting. I also make money with this site through the adsense ads and my affiliation with Amazon.com (basically if you follow the link and buy items from Amazon I get a commission).

The current Debtslaying theme was inspired by Garry Conn, for anyone looking to make an honest dollar online blogging Garry is definately someone you should be taking advice from. The guy knows his stuff and will even help you set up a free wordpress blog if you open a new hostgator account.

Sealingyourdriveway.com

This is a site I started to post about all things related to your driveway. I was a driveway sealer for a few years and did a lot of sealing, rebuilding and driveway repairing.

Bissell-Carpet-Cleaner.com

I actually bought this from a friend of mine. Since I own a few Bissell products I thought it would be fun to see what I can do with it. So more changes are coming soon.

Contacting Me

If you want to get in touch with me about any of my sites, questions about general stuff or even if you want to send me products to review (which I do from time to time) you can email me steve@weightlossweapons.com.

Now that you know more about me, who I am and what I do. Let me know who you are? Leave a comment and I’ll be sure to reply, going forward that will be my new comment policy.

Take Care,
Steve

I was reading a post on GarryConn.com yesterday about the new direction he was taking his blog. The post was titled Make Money Online by Shutting Your Mouth This really got me thinking about this site and my attempts to monetize and profit from it.

Affiliate Sales

Many bloggers are making money from affiliate sales. Basically they recommend a product or service and if someone makes a purchase using the bloggers affiliate link, that blogger gets paid a percentage of the sale.

I promote healthy weight loss without using expensive pills or programs as well as posting my own personal successes and failures. Almost every affiliate program related to weight loss or dieting etc.. promote the very things I speak out against. So trying and sell you a diet pill or a weight loss plan/program would completely contradict the purpose of this blog. The only exception I’ve found so far is P90X which I honestly believe lives up to the hype.

I’m sure there are products that I could find that would be useful in your weight loss efforts, Whey protein, scales, running shoes etc… but you’re not going to buy those products off the internet from non reputable sellers.

Adsense

I also use adsense on this blog as well as the main site Weightlossweapons.com. I’d say 95% of the money made comes from the main site. It gets quite a lot of search engine traffic especially the weight charts.

The money made is enough to earn a monthly paycheck but not nearly enough to allow me to make a full time income online, yet

Bloggers are also notorious for being ad blind so adsense isn’t really effective with them. (If your reading this that means you).

Money is not my main motivation

I have come to the conclusion that barring a major change in the way I blog, I am not going to make any substantial amount of money from this blog. I’m ok with that because making money blogging in not my sole intent.

I try to teach and share what I’ve learned about weight loss. I know what it’s like to be overweight as well as how it feels to reach my goals, so I think I can relate to a wide variety of people. Help them is my main purpose and goal of this blog and website. The money is just a bonus.

How I will profit from this site

I’ve heard of people clicking ads as a way to support the sites they like. J.D from getrichslowly.org had a great post that discourages this and really nailed how you can support the sites you like called Ads are not the new online tip jar definitely worth a read.

As mentioned most of the money made is from my main site, so that is where the majority of my efforts will be directed.

How you can help

There are a few ways that you can help. One is to have a look at weightlossweapons.com and read what I have written. If you like it or find anything useful I’d ask that you share it by linking to it or telling your friends.

The other is by letting me know what needs to be fixed, improved or if there is something I am missing. I did this with the blog a little while ago and I had a ton of really helpful and useful emails.

Finally, leave a comment here and let me know what you’re doing to make money from your site(s) and what kind of success or failures you’ve had so far.

Recently I was in a car accident. A hit from behind that had left me with pain, stiffness and very restricted range of motion. Needless to say this has knocked me off weight loss and exercise plan.

I am now just at the point of getting back on track and being able to start a regular workout routine again. Over the passed 2 months I’ve gained 12 pounds. Not a huge deal but definitely a set back to my plan.

It’s not all bad though, it could have been worse. I could have been more seriously injured or gained 20 plus pounds. I did manage to get some exercise in, walking mostly.

This whole experience has really drilled home 2 important points.

1. Poor diet mixed with little or no exercise is a recipe for disaster. It’s not just the weight gain, but also the feelings of laziness and the negative thoughts that come with it.

2. Don’t plan too far ahead. Life has a way of changing those plans weather you like it or not. I had planned to run my first half marathon this spring and be at my goal weight by mid summer. So I’ve had to adjust my goals according to my current physical condition.

My posting frequency has dropped off during this time mainly because I really didn’t have anything interesting or motivational to say. That will change as I become more active and resume my weight loss plan. My next post will be on something that I’ve found to be very important that too many people don’t take advantage of when it’s offered.

Thank you for continuing to post your comments on my previous articles. They have been very encouraging.