Best Weight Loss Blog Update: Nominate Your Favorites and Win Prizes!

Photo: Cape Cod Times.

Do you have a favorite weight loss or fitness blog and feel it deserves some recognition?

Would you like to win one of several lovely giveaway prizes for yourself and possibly your favorite blogger?

Yep, as threatened promised many months ago, it's time to update the musty old Best Weight Loss Blog list that Cranky Fitness readers compiled back in 2009. Weirdly enough, the thing remains an extremely popular destination for googlers on the web! Yet I feel terrible knowing hundreds and hundreds of poor innocent folks arrive here every day looking to find the best weight loss blogs... and instead find themselves wading through a bunch of abandoned blogs and broken links.

(Oh, and another favor I have of readers: I'm on the hunt for affordable web development help and looking for advice!)

So here's the scoop:

The Best Weight Loss Blogs-- 2012 Edition:

Quick summary, for those in a hurry:

Get To The Freakin' Point for Once, Crabby!

 1.  Vote for up to 10 of your favorite weight loss blogs in the comments below. Define "weight loss blog" however the hell you want.  You could win something for doing this.

2.  Don't wait forever; nominations will close in a couple weeks or so to allow time to evaluate and compile winning blogs.

3. Best blogs and reader giveaway winners will be announced on March 26 to allow me to compile results.

4.  If you don't check back later, you could lose out on a prize you won.

Longer FAQ Version, For Those Avoiding Actual Work:

1. So Just What Are the Fabulous Prizes?

OK, so here's the funny part... I don't know yet!

My guess is there will be a thing or two that is Big and quite a few other prizes that are Smallish.

For some unknown and illogical reason, I suddenly decided NOW, RIGHT THIS MINUTE was the time to have this thing... just after I'd said "no" to about a million product review pitches.  However, several great possibilities for prizes arrived in my inbox just hours after I decided to do this, and I suspect I can drum up other stuff over the next few weeks.  Worst case, I'll re-purpose products and books etc that I already have, pay for a few new things and hope the Lobster is not reading this sentence, as well as do a lot of unattractive behind the scenes groveling to round up prizes. But wouldn't it be fantastic if sponsors with vaguely health/fitness related stuff were to spontaneously offer up their very fine wares or services in exchange for the chance to inform Cranky Fitness readers of their incredible benefits?

2. How Will The Top Blogs Be Chosen?

Reader nominations will be counted, plus, unlike last time, I get to nominate and vote too. And I'm not capped at 10 because hell, it's my blog.  Many great and popular blogs got left off last time because people assumed of course someone else would nominate them, and I don't want that to happen again.   There are also some prior nominations from an earlier post; see below if you give a crap.

At the end there may be a runoff of some sort, especially if there turns out to be a good prize for the blog winner.  Or if I get lazy, we may just leave it as a big-ass list with the highest vote-getters on top.

3. Why Would A Well Written and Popular Weight Loss Blog Give a Shit What Cranky Fitness Readers Have to Say?

For whatever weird reason, the old Cranky Fitness poll brings in tons of new readers googling to find weight loss blogs.  Blogs that end up high on the list get clicked on a lot, and not only does this bring them direct traffic, I believe it helps the blog's search engine rankings. The new 2012 poll will take a little while to build up the same awesome powers, but it will be greatly aided by the drastically edited old version directing people straight to the new post.  I even feel comfortable saying I PROMISE that top ranked blogs will eventually get a lot of new readers from this silly thing, especially if they are small blogs right now.

Plus I'm hoping to have a nice prize for the top weight loss blog.

And hey, remember how a few months Crabby went scrambling around debasing herself in order to hustle up votes when she got nominated as one of Shape Magazine's Best Fitness Bloggers?  Well, that's because she herself likes the new readers that popularity contests can bring.

4. What Can I Do to Increase My Chances of Winning a Prize?

Prizes will be chosen semi-randomly. Some randomness will be definitely be involved, but preference will be given to entrants who:

•  leave nominations complete with blog names and urls to make compiling easier;
•  mention this contest to others (and let me know via comment or email that you've done so); or
•  are nice humans who aren't spammers or folks just stopping by to nominate their own blogs and no one else's (although you're quite welcome to do so).

5. How Can I Rig This Thing To Make MY Favorite Blog Rank Higher?

 Image swiped from here.

Besides nominating your favorite blog, you can tell me and others WHY it's awesome so we may want to vote for it too.  You can also go to the blog itself and let the blogger and/or the readers know about the nomination, so that those who would like to see the blog get more reader and SEO recognition can help it out.

6. Wait, This All Sounds Vaguely Familiar...

Yep, if you were here over the summer when Cranky Fitness first emerged from its slumber (the blog was pretty much abandoned for about a year and a half) and you voted in the pre-poll, those votes and nominations will definitely be counted as explained earlier.  However, to be eligible to win a giveaway prize this round, please comment and vote again.  And yes, this means the early birds get two worms!

Another Reader Blog Poll You May Want to Check Out

Tim at A Daring Adventure, who like Crabby is also a Life Coach and GoogleWhore, has just compiled a list of the 20 of the Greatest Self-Improvement Posts Ever Written.  A great resource, and if you're still avoiding actual work, go check 'em out.

And Now, Crabby's Desperate Plea for Web Help:

It's time.  I'd really like to move Cranky Fitness and my coaching website to a new blogging platform without losing readers!  I'd also like to upgrade the look a bit, learn enough to be able to tweak things myself once it's up, and maybe even get some graphics help on headers and banner ads.  I'm eyeing the Wordpress Thesis theme but don't know anything about how wordpress works.

The thing is, I need affordable help, and could offer a little bit of money and a LOT of promotional exposure for someone who knows their way around blog transfer & set up, and who might be looking to expand their web design business.  An on-going banner ad, a blog post all about the amazing transformation, some carefully crafted SEO key-word rich endorsements... you get the idea.

Anyone know of someone who might fit the bill?  Please email me at crabbymcslacker at g mail dot com.

So, what are some of your favorite Weight Loss Blogs?  And thanks, awesome readers, for all your help, past present and future!