My name is Rob Cooper and my first website was created in 1994 on an IBM 386 using notepad after reading “10 minute HTML”. I coded by hand for years, then bought my first domain www.formerfatguy.com where I stored my before and after pictures. After that it became a place to share my journey of how I lost 300 pounds of fat and then gained over 50 pounds of muscle.

Building the website was just a hobby.

I left my 12 year job of driving taxi and went back to school at NAIT here in Edmonton Alberta where I took the Computer Systems Technology Course. I graduated in 2000 and got 2 jobs. One as a web developer and the other as an IT contractor. Both were for friends I had known from before.

I became the Chief Development Officer for Market Web Solutions leading a team of designers and developers. I handled the live web servers, email servers and Microsoft SQL servers as well as the production servers in our office. This as well as programming in Active Server Pages was what I spent most of my time doing.

Then in 2001 I was asked to come back to NAIT to teach web development at the 400 level (4th year). A teacher of mine recommended me and when I spoke with the head of the department, he told me that when he heard I had been recommended, I was put at the top of the list. I taught an evening class Tuesdays and Thursdays for two years and then hired my top students to work as sub-contractors for a small web development and design company I created. I programmed during the day, and taught it at night.

Then I got really curious about Search Engine Optimization.

I realized that I could measure my results quickly and prove that what I was doing was getting results. People could go look at a website I had built and I’d never know what they thought, but ranking higher in google was an actual measured result.

It became a hobby and I got my website ranked in the top positions for my keywords. Most of my pages are still ranked in the top positions using the on page and off page marketing tricks that I have come to use. It worked so well that my boss was impressed and decided that my skills could be better used in the position of Search Engine Optimization. It was more fun anyway, so I handed off the CDO title to our new star Ron and took over the SEO. Ron was passionate about programming and I wasn’t any more, so it was an easy decision.

Enter blogger blog in about 2004 when I added a self hosted blogger blog to my microsoft based website former fat guy. It began slowly. Very slowly.

Then enter Google Adsense.

Ah ha! Money - Income - Lifestyle.

I realized that where I positioned the adsense on the pages made a difference on how much money I earned. It was now my new passion.

I went from “time worked for money earned” to “work - get paid, get paid, get paid, get paid, get paid, get paid, get paid, get paid” model which I learned from Tom Antion after attending a Peak Potentials Wealth and Wisdom Event. Work once by creating the page and then marketing the page, then just sit back and the page earns money over and over and over again. Earns money while offering information the reader is looking for. Win - Win.

After learning about Adsense, I learned about clickbank and other affilate products that were related to my content. Then Amazon.com and again, could offer a resource for the readers that provided them with what they were looking for and me with additional income. Actually, I chose gift certificates from Amazon which I use to purchase books every few months for myself.

Through self education about how this all works and ways to optimize it and make it work better, enter RSS feeds and the power they have for marketing.

Well.

To put it quite frankly - Blogger is shit.

Wordpress has so many things built into it for easy and comfort as well as having an army of developers designing plugins to support it and improve it leaves me wanting to jump ship from blogger and go full steam into Wordpress. Well, I did that. Created a bunch of blogs in their respective niches and now earn a nice little passive income stream which allows me to do my passion and support my mission

My mission is to inspire people to take action on their health and weight by being active in fitness, changing their beliefs and becoming more passionate about what they do and who they are, thus becoming better people and creating a better world.

The income I have generated comes in over and over again, day in day out and allows me the freedom to create the community I have on my www.formerfatguyblog.com website. It allows me to teach and to inspire people to take action on their weight. It’s who I am. Blogging has allowed me to share my passion with the world and honor my mission, the reason I’m here.

So, about me and about this blog.

I realize that I can also teach these same people who are taking steps towards their health and fitness to also learn to blog themselves and inspire even more people. It creates an army of enlightened fat burning warriors set off to change many more lives than I could alone. I want YOU to learn to blog. I want to provide the blogging platform and teach you to do what I do, and then earn money from it so that you have the income to purchase self help tools, books and to take courses to improve yourself. I want you to have an income while changing lives so that you can then invest that back into yourself, to purchase any health supplements or whole foods supplements or products to support you goals. I want you to be able to give the gift of education, a little book or an audio tape to a friend you meet so that they can become better.

My writing has been called “overkill” and “over-reaction” in one case. I prefer “passionate”

Be well

Popularity: 2%

This page has been read 1159 times