Forum

Hi Jane and Fiona,

I was surprised and excited to see 121 responses to the Cookbook Giveaway post.  That tells me we have a lot of active EYB members that are reading posts here on a daily basis.  

I know you'd sought feedback a while back on how to enhance the social networking aspect of EYB and I was wondering whether there are any imminent plans to make EYB more intereactive.  When I think about Chowhound and the popularity of threads like "What's For Dinner" and "Cookbook of the Month" there's nowhere near 120+ members contributing.

Here at EYB we have all have a common interest in collecting cookbooks and cooking and I can't help but think that this unique foundation would make for a very lively and successful forum if we could have a way to respond directly to each others posts or recipe notes, pose questions or share cooking connundrums and post pictures of our creations directly in the recipe notes.  

Thanks once again for such a great site!  

^I want to second Breadcrumbs's suggestions.  I would dearly love more interactive capabilities on EYB.

We definitely want to do all the things you are suggesting.  Unfortunately we don't have an unlimited development budget and until the site grows more, and we have more income coming in, we are spending most of our development funds on things that expand our membership, such as SEO.  So anything members can do to help spread the word about the site will help - the more we can earn, the more we have to spend on the site (everything goes back into indexing and development).

Thanks Jane.  Any thoughts on accepting advertisements as a means of raising capital? 

The problem with advertising is that you need to have millions of visitors a month to make it worthwhile and we aren't there yet.  We always took the view that because people pay to join EYB that they shouldn't be subjected to bombardments of advertising as you get on free sites.  What we will consider (when the traffic numbers warrant it) is having advertising that only shows for visitors who are not members or only have a free membership.

One way members can help is by linking from EYB to Amazon whenever you are buying anything - we get a small percentage affiliate fee for anything bought within 24 hours of a link from our site.  So that would mount up, especially when people buy electronics.

Very good to know Jane.  We purchase from Amazon frequently and I didn't realize this.  I'll most definitely keep this in mind going forward.  Thanks!