A New Adventure: YumGoggle

We bought a website! My mom and I went into business together this year and, so far, it has been quite a ride.

In February and part of March, we overhauled the existing site. We gave it a brand new look and feel. Unfortunately, because of the major changes, we were unable to keep the preexisting 30,000 recipe submissions. Basically, we started over, from scratch. But we are happy with the new format and with our new website. We’ve also learned a lot from this experience.

The website is Yumgoggle.com. If you’ve never heard of it, food bloggers from all over the world submit a photograph, description, and a direct link to a recipe from their blog.  We have great categories available for the bloggers to select when they submit a recipe link. Submitting a recipe is absolutely free.

After the submission is published, we go about promoting the link to the recipe all over the internet. We promote on some combination of Pinterest, Bloglovin, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Tumbler, StumbleUpon, etc… Not every recipe is promoted on every social media outlet, except, everything goes on Pinterest, Bloglovin, and Twitter.  

In addition to the individual promotion, the website is open to the public. People can access the site and search for what interests them. One of the ways they can do that is by browsing Categories. They can also search for key words. Searching and accessing the recipes is also free. 

Some of my favorite Categories are:

Geeks & Nerds

Half-Way Homemade 

Quick and One-Pot Meals 

What makes us different from other, similar sites? For starters, no one has to sign up for an account to use us. That process has always seemed cumbersome for both submitters and users. We want our process to be as easy and enjoyable as possible. Also, we don’t want people to be afraid to submit their recipes/photographs. Some sites, similar to ours, are hyper critical of the photographs and recipes submitted. Being bloggers and food bloggers, ourselves, we know your ability to take an incredible photograph is not directly connected to your ability to cook good food. We want people from all over the world to share links to their recipes with us and we want to share them with the world.

So, how do we make money if everything is free? We have a few, unobtrusive, ads placed on our site. When people visit our website and click ads that interest them, we make a few cents. That is where the money to maintain the website will eventually come from. That is one of the lessons we have learned, when you visit a blog or site that has some ads, take a moment to click one or two. Running a website takes money and often that money comes from ads. Think of it as tipping. If you are using a site, blog or otherwise using free content on the internet, be kind enough to click an ad (if there is one). It’s an easy way to support your favorite sites.

We hope you’ll take the time to check out our site. We update content, daily. And if you see some gaps in my blog posts on this site, now that it’s likely because I’m working on the new website. We are still finding a balance between our new venture and our existing lives and jobs.

Thank you, all, for your support!