Overview of Business Model

The popularity of online cooking and recipe Web sites is growing constantly. Similar to purchasing a traditional offline cookbook at a bookstore, many people are now turning to the Web to find their latest recipes and purchase their cookbooks online.

There are a few ways that you can generate revenue with this type of business. Since your site will receive highly targeted traffic, you will provide an

Excellent advertising opportunity for cooking, food, or kitchen-related businesses. You can sell cookbooks and other cooking-related publications directly from your site. You can also charge a membership fee for this type of business whereby only members would be able to access certain sections of the site by way of a user ID and password.

This type of business also gives you a tremendous opportunity to practice permission marketing. You can ask people if they would like to be notified when you make updates to your Web site or if they would like to receive daily recipes via e-mail. This will encourage people to return to your site often and will also provide you with another advertising opportunity to offer cooking, food, or kitchen-related businesses. If you send out a daily or weekly newsletter, you could sell advertising space in your newsletter to cooking-related businesses. You may choose to develop a niche for yourself in this area. You could develop a heart smart cooking site, a low-cal cooking site, or a macrobiotic diet site.

Skills Needed

Since you will be offering your visitors cooking advice and recipes, knowledge of different foods and cooking techniques would be an asset. This will enable you to answer any questions your visitors may ask. The more you know about cooking, the more professional your business will appear.

Cost to Start This Business

Initially you will have to pay for the design and hosting of your Web site, computer hardware, computer software, a scanner (to scan your cookbook covers), and a printer. If you currently have some of these items, your initial start-up costs will be considerably lower. If you plan on setting up a comprehensive mailing list system, you will also have to purchase mailing list software to help you organize and maintain your mail lists. Other costs that you will incur are related to the promotion of your Web site. Estimated cost is $5,000 to $10,000 to start.

Number of Employees Needed to Start

One dedicated individual can run this type of business. You can start this venture while keeping your regular full-time job until your business’s revenue surpasses your current income.

International Potential

This business has strong international potential. New recipes and cooking techniques are of interest to people all over the world.

E-Business MODEL/Payment Processing METHOD

Since you will be selling traditional offline cookbooks directly from your site, e-business level 2 or 3 would be most appropriate for this type of business. For more information on this, see Part 1.

Important Business Issues to Be Addressed

You should ensure that the recipes that you publish on your site and in your cookbooks are original and have not been copied directly from another source. This is an issue that many cooking sites have faced in the past. To avoid copyright issues, always get permission in writing and cite where you have received the recipe from. This will avoid any future conflicts that you may face with competing businesses or copyrighted cooking publications.

Online Marketing Techniques

• Participating in newsgroups and discussion forums related to cooking would be a great way to generate traffic to your Web site. Always make a valuable contribution, and always include your signature file with a great tagline.

• Launch a strategic banner advertising campaign on Web sites frequented by your target market. These sites could include cooking sites, food-related sites, and kitchen accessory sites.

• Develop a viral marketing strategy where people can “Send This Recipe to a Friend” via your site. This will spread the word about your site.

• You could hold a weekly or monthly contest on your Web site for a free cookbook. You could ask people if they would like to be notified of the winner via e-mail. This e-mail will encourage them to return to your site to reenter your contest, thus re-exposing them to your site.

• Develop a discussion board on your site where visitors can interact with one another about cooking, great recipes, and past food experiences. This is a great way to encourage people to return to your site, as they will love to participate in your virtual cooking community. You can even participate in the discussion, which enables you to interact with your potential customers.

• You could choose to have a Visiting Chefs section on your site where you could profile a celebrity chef and provide some of his or her secret

Recipes. You might choose to post in advance the celebrity chef calendar and ask people if they’d like to be notified when you update the calendar. If you wanted to incorporate some higher-end technology, you could have a live webcast or downloadable video accessible from your site.

For a more detailed description of these techniques, along with many other effective online marketing methods, I recommend the companion book 101 Ways to Promote Your Web Site. You can also find tons of free resources at Http:// www. susansweeney. com/resources. html.

Additional Income

You could generate additional income for your cookbook and recipe site by selling a database of your favorite recipes on CD-ROM. This would be similar to your cookbooks. However, the low costs of developing this product would dramatically increase the overall revenue for your business.

Online Examples

The Kitchen Link

Http:// www. kitchenlink. com

This is a large recipe site that uses several online marketing techniques to keep traffic coming to its site, including a newsletter, a mailing list, discussion boards, and a cooking advice column.

RecipeCenter. com

Http:// www. recipecenter. com

A dynamite recipe Web site with thousands of great recipes for visitors to read. A great feature about this site is that they have a “Tell a Friend” option, which enables them to practice viral marketing. Visitors can e-mail up to five friends at once to tell them about RecipeCenter. com, and if they do, their name is entered in a drawing for a free cookbook. This is a great strategy!