Name of your website?Grilled Vegetable Recipe - Vegetable Side Dish Recipes
Your name?
KC Kudra
Your Location (city, etc)
Broad Brook
When did you start your website and why?
February of 2007 bought the site and did extensive update to site to make it more informative to or users. The site was a very clean and catchy design by a very good site designer and fit in with our other site which is a [404 Check: was link to http:/ / www. EpicureanRecipes. com, anchor: diversified recipe site.]
We liked the concept of a narrowly focused recipe site on one of our favorite ways of cooking and having a cholesterol problem it was a way to encourage me to come up with new recipes that would help promote a healthy lifestyle.
Please give us a short summary of your website, business model, etc
A complete guide to grilling vegetables and vegetable recipes on the barbeque grill. Everything from grilled vegetable kabobs to grilled potato salad, we also offer grilling tips on grilling vegetables to perfection on your BBQ grill. We only cover grilled veggies here, for vegan, vegetarian, and people trying to put more veggies into their diet. Our recipes are mostly quick and simple but some do take some preplanning and thought before attempting the recipes for anyone who's looking for a collection of tried and tested recipes like grilled asparagus or our grilled garlic and feta pizza they have to try some of these.
We like to think You'll find the perfect side dish for any fall cookout or spring picnic. Simple recipes that are perfect for grilling on the side or as the main course. There are so many amazing and delicious veggie recipes to try. Most recipes are low-fat or low-calorie and all are free for private use although we do like to ask that you tell people where you found them.
Our business model is still somewhat in development as the site is really still very young and in the traffic building stages. We derive some income from on site advertising and hope to have a website newsletter and someday a recipe ebook or print on demand recipe book and cooking guide to server the customer that wants to have a copy of the recipes for their kitchen or barbeque in this case. We're always on the look out for people that want to contribute original articles, recipes, or quick tips to use on the site just contact us with your submission and a name and any other info you would like to accompany the piece (we do retain editorial rights).
We are in the process of opening up our article section and hope to have the first few articles loaded and tested in the next few weeks. Our site is a Mom and Pop family site and all the coding is done by me at this point and everything is hard coded so it takes a lot of prep and planning then testing to make sure all links work before we make the section available to the public. But we feel this gives the site a more personal touch and a more family friend feel.
What has been the most difficult part of creating and running your website?
I can't say there has necessarily been a difficult part other than balancing out the fact that we have four kids with three year old twins so having time is a challenge balancing coding new sections, writing content, testing recipes and most important trying to promote the site so we get more traffic. It's like we're a little fish in an awfully large pool with some real whales in this niche. Where they can just through money at it we have to through our hearts into it.
What has been the easist part of operating your website?
Thinking of ideas for the site they just keep rushing in but whatever we do we do not want to get away from that close family feeling even our two older boys & and 11) help out so its been a real family affair. This is what we were looking for any ways food and the preparation of good food has always been a coming together place in my family and I can still smell the great aromas coming from my grandmothers kitchen they don't make them like her anymore.
What was your biggest mistake?
Not spending enough time promoting. It's a full time thing it seems. Its hard because it is vital to the success of any website but it is the content and design aspects that I love most. Lots of the promoting is just down right boring like directory submissions, oh please snooze, snore, get me another pot of coffee ( a future site maybe) but yet it is so important to get the people to your site.
It is kind of like building a Walmart on the moon or in the jungle of the Amazon it could be the biggest, the best, with the lowest prices on earth but without traffic it's nothing. Now the kicker here is you not only need to build and stock that store you have to build the cars and roads to get the people to the store. Seeing the challenge yet? I mean you can be indexed by " Mother Google" but if your on page 3,456,879 what good does it do you might as well be opening that great Walmart store on the moon heck maybe even Mars.
Who maintains your website and why?
We do. Simple because we're broke and major control freaks hate to admit it but we want to know every aspect of our business if we don't know how to run it how can we expect anyone else to know what we don't know ourselves. We use to have a brick and mortar manufacturing company nothing to big but we had a saying I wouldn't expect an employee to do anything I wasn't willing or capable of doing ourselves. When's the last time you heard the CEO of GM say that, yeah I thought so.
It also keeps the site much more family friendly which is the way we look at it as another one of our children with its own special needs. It needs to be nurtured and feed and given close guidance so it doesn't have to go down some of the hard roads we have been down hopefully.
Tell us how your business has benefitted from your website?
Simple really the website is the business. No website no business. What we mean is we are basically in the information business we have information and hopefully people will want that information. What we do and our website does is connect those people with the information through our content.
What are your views on ecommerce and the future of the internet?
It's funny you ask as I had this conversation with an old friend the other day that is one of those dear but miss guide souls that think they can live without a computer and they don't need that or the Internet because they can work with there hands and they have friends that are making good money because they have trades, yada, yada, yada you know the sort I'm sure? , Yeah so did we until the two of us both became sick and couldn't do that anymore. Information is the plastics of the 1960's (remember the movie "The Graduate" "One word for you to the young Dustin Huffman, PLASTICS") clue in what use to take me days to do on a computer (started on a Commodore 64, boy am I dating myself) is done real time now at the blink of an eye. Information now touches the world and the world view in seconds not hours, days, or weeks.
Last Christmas I never even left my computer to do my Christmas shopping I did it all from the comfort of my computer chair and then went about my busy day, and by the way it was in the middle of the night too, don't sleep much. Clue in everyone there is a reason Bill Gates is the worlds wealthiest person computers and to be the Internet has changed lives like no other invention since the advent of the wheel or in our case flame and food.
What are your views on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
I have spent the last six years studying everything I could get my hands on about the subject and usually have some pretty good results with a few of our other sites. It takes time. Like it or hate it you need to understand it at least at the most basic and watch out for scarletons promising top this or that they'll most likely screw you up in the long run and cost a small fortune.
There's a couple of real white hat things I have been studying lately that seem to be the real key to most of what I didn't know already. Just remember that if your thinking of going over to the dark side young Skywalker be very careful Mother Google has spies everywhere and a whole department that's only job is to keep an eye on every bell and whistle that comes out then reverse engineer the thing and make it worthless at least with an algorithm update or hick up and poof no more black hat advantage at best, banded more likely.
They take their shareholders very seriously and (if duplicate content wasn't enough proof of that considering they are the largest producer of it on the planet, yet its a big no, no) and will do pretty much anything to stop things they pensive to cost shareholders profits, in a way its kind of refreshing to see that out of an American Corporation, maybe some others should try it like the auto industry but I digress.
What are your views on Search Engines? Have they helped or hindered your website?
Definitely helped but like anything else its a love hate relationship like when I'm doing research and have to do like four million searches to find the right path. I also have a tendency to dive deeper into the results to find the hidden gems that can't SEO their way out of a paper bag to find some really useful stuff.
Yeah I wish I was getting more of the search traffic but it takes time and you have to play by their rules, never liked being nice in the sandbox (kid reference not Google's don't like being there either). I think they put way to much emphasis on linking it gives a distinct advantage to the players with the deep pockets to pay a bizzilion SEO geeks to post to everything under the sun not to mention huge ad budgets.
I say this because I'm often disappointed in Google's results they're fair to midland at best unless your looking for ebay or Amazon but why anyone would use a search engine for these sites is beyond me just direct type it then bookmark it. MSN Has got to have thee worst site URL submission page and form on the planet, rrrrgh at how many times it makes me put that stupid camtasha code in.
I guess in the end they're kind of the AAA of the Internet Superhighway can't wait till we have GPS for our browsers and can just dial in the coordinates we want and cut out the midle man.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
SEO, SEO, SEO! And content creation need to do more with articles when I can fit them into the schedule, I know make time but they still only give me 24 to work with and I can't use to much more of that up or I'll get no sleep at all.
What method has been least successful for promoting your website?
Safelist, and banners.
What would you like to see change with respect to the internet?
A better understanding that there are a lot of bright people out there that have better ideas and solutions if they could just get through the clutter of the mega sites out there that can just out spend them.
That and all these "mega programs and systems for getting rich" without doing anything or little or no investment. There are a lot of people getting burned by this garbage as they promote it be your own boss. This is Not a business (and we have had them both) in the brick and mortar world is no different then in the Internet world it takes, time ( invested, spent and duration) plus capital investment (time and real money) to make any business. Sure there are those few out there that work only a few hours "now" but how much did they work getting there.
Besides that this isn't about doing something you hate your suppose to find a niche that you love and then the time is nothing because your doing what you love so why would you want to stop doing that. If you do you don't want a business you want a trust fund well go out and find a lost relative. Businesses take a lot of dedication and perseverance to make them work but when everything is right there is nothing short of the birth of your children which compares.
The only ones getting rich off of programs and systems are the quick, the BS artist and the owners the rest are going nowhere because they haven't even found the path.
Who do you see occupying the Internet skyline in the future?
A few mega conglomerates and the next generation of businesses, very small aggressive and lien mini companies with less then a dozen employees. Think I'm nuts don't you ever heard of Plentyoffish one man operation that gives Yahoo a run for their money and a personal guiding light for us.
Small little companies with a Mom and Pop mentality with sub contractors under them in mini networks will kick the pants right off of big companies that have huge overhead and need to bring in mega hourly rates just to make payroll will be broad sided be smart, quick thinking individuals with the power to act in a moments notice to changes in the marketplace and capitalize on them why the giants are still trying to get it out of the conference room.
An example is a million dollars a lot of money to Yahoo? Not real, how about to you? I know it's a nice piece of change to us. We can go on living rather well on that kind of money.
Also you'll catch wind of where the real power of the Internet is in middle America (figure of speech could be any country and will) of a vast underground of very quite millionaires you will not see them promoting the greatest thing since sliced bread, no guru status and they wouldn't want it any ways, living right next door in quite little middle American homes. Going to the same soccer games as your kids, driving minivans and not Porches (out of choice) without a care in the world and always seeming to be happy like they have no worries as to where the car payment or mortgage is coming from because they will not have one.
Guru will be something they go to study Yoga with not some hot marketing plan that will pale in comparison with the numbers they're getting any ways. True freedom to be how and what they want without egos getting in the way. I know I want to be part of that silent majority, that stealth I hate to use it marketer/businessman that puts their family first and lives a quite dream life.
What is your website address?
Grilled Vegetable Recipe - Vegetable Side Dish Recipes
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