Well, it's been a good run. 🙏🏼

In early 2007, I published my first fitness article online on a website called Ezinearticles.com.

That first article did well.

So I wrote more.

Soon, I had 20-30 articles that were getting read thousands of times each day.

I linked out in my bio to my favorite course at the time "Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle" by Tom Venuto (still one of the best fitness courses ever written).

I made a commission for each sale of his course.

It was a nice $500-$600 per month doing something that I really enjoyed doing... writing.

About 5-6 months later, I decided to start a blog, Fitness Black Book.

The very first month in June of 2007, I wrote an article titled "Lose Body Fat Eating One Meal Per Day".

The term Intermittent Fasting wasn't even a thing back then.

That post didn't take off immediately.

I kept writing, and then sometime in the fall of 2007, I logged in and saw that I got over 1,000 comments.

All to that blog post.

Some top fitness names in the industry were attacking the idea of Intermittent Fasting (still weren't using that term).

All the comments were super negative.

Pretty soon, people were critiquing every article.

A big Bodybuilding.com forum member found an article where I called bodybuilding "cheesy".

My site went from 100-500 visitors per day to 20,000-30,000+.

What sucks is that people found an old MySpace profile I had and were taking my vacation pictures and pictures of friends and saying terrible stuff.

I almost quit in the fall of 2007.

Glad I didn't.

By spring of 2009, I was able to quit my job and do the writing thing full-time.

My website traffic continued to skyrocket.

By 2010, many of my critics became fans and a lot of the methods I talked about became mainstream.

Where things began to go downhill.

Things were buzzing along extremely well until 2012.

My Google traffic tanked due to a Google SEO update.

I was getting 10,000-20,000 visitors per day then it dipped down to 1,000-2,000.

In 2012 I turned to Facebook Ads.

I gave out a free six pack abs workout called "Abs Blueprint".

That was doing well for 2+ years, then Facebook banned my Ads account.

It's close to impossible to run FB Ads to fitness products unless you are spending $1,000+ per day and have an ads rep.

• Tried advertising this free abs course on Google Adwords - banned for life after 2 months.
• Tried advertising on X(Twitter) - banned for life.

This still irritates my because how do they allow TEMU to advertise crack pipes and vibrators... but ban me!

In 2015, I thought I'd start a new site from scratch and name it Visual Impact Fitness (my courses were all "Visual Impact" branded, so it made sense).

Thriving again in 2015 - 2021 with Visual Impact Site

I was having a blast writing again beginning in 2015.

I leaned even heavier into pop culture references, 80's new wave videos and writing more for the 35+ year old crowd.

Yavor and I were building up traffic from an unusual source - Pinterest.

We also created a membership site to get all of our courses in a clean online format.

Pinterest traffic was great for about 2 years.

And we built up enough of an email list to survive for a few years after that.

Slow Decline from 2022 - Now

I'm to the point now where I feel like I've shared all my best fitness ideas.

From 2007 - 2010 the ideas just flowed.

I'd sit down at the keyboard and get in the zone because I had 100+ ideas I needed to share.

From 2015-2021 the same thing.

But the last couple of years, I have frankly run out of fitness stuff to write about.

I can scan the newest studies and occasionally share a good tip.

But that is about it.

Shutting Down Membership Site in May (Made them into Downloadable PDFs)

Important.

I'm shutting down the member's site in May.

Please go here to login.

​https://members.visualimpactfitness.com/​

We have downloadable PDFs for all the course material.

I'm also going to shut down my email list in about a week.

Both of these cost about $500-$600 per month together.

I'm Going to Keep Main Visual Impact Site Up At Least Until End of 2025

It's pretty cheap to host this.

So I can keep this site up for quite a while.

In fact, I might just keep it up indefinitely since I feel sad that so much work went into writing the articles and graphics, etc.

I might even put up Visual Impact Ageless on there for free at some point just because I like that program best.

Possibly Fat Loss Boost and High Carb Fat Loss as well.

I just hate the idea of losing these strategies permanently.

Most Info Based Fitness Brands Have Shut Down

The model that works now is high-end coaching.

That simply doesn't work with my personality type.

Another model that works is fitness supplements - but that takes ads and startup money well beyond my means.

I love writing and explaining things in easy-to-understand ways.

It doesn't even have to be about fitness.

Most likely, I'll find YT and TikTok influencers and help them by building clean websites, email list strategies, etc.

There are tons of people out there who just want to make fun videos.

I hate being on camera so I can do all the tech stuff they don't know how to do.

Most of All, Thank You! ❤️

Thank you for reading.

Whether it was just 1 article or you have been reading from the early Fitness Black Book days, thanks so much!

I had imposter syndrome for 5+ years.

But for the last 10 or so, I really believe that I'm a decent writer.

Another chapter of my life begins today.

Cheers,

-Rusty
(Formerly) Visual Impact Fitness​