I just recently launched a website about sharing recipes and I am having great difficulties in getting people to sign up and submit recipes. My site is a little different in that the user must take photos of the meal they're cooking showing the step by step process in creating the dish. So, you can't just submit a text entry. Now I can't cook, but I submitted some simple recipes anyways to show what the site is like. But still it's not enough content to grab new members to sign up. Can anyone give me some advice or tips on how to get new members to sign up?
submit your site in web directories. exchange links with other sites like yours. perhaps make a cooking contest and offer cash prizes for the first 3 winners and promote it around the www
Good idea of site. But to start with, you need to have atleast 15-20 recipes which should be displayed in the manner you want people to share their recipes. First you need to try mailing homemakers. Dont spam but try to research females between 30-35 of age. Find about a thousand of them and send them mails. If you are lucky enough you may get about 20-30 people. Try putting a lot of stuff in your site which you want people to do. Use any of your friends to cook few dishes, ask your relatives friends or whomever you can to cook recipes and you include about 20-30 recipes. If you could try buying traffic, do it. Probably you could use Adwords if you could spare money but be very careful in choosing the keywords and bid or you would be ruined. It's all jus my advice after looking at you comment that came into my mind. Try researching different ways. experiment things and you might be lucky. Cuz this is a good idea if it clicks. Cheers, Enigma
Do contests for favorite recipes. Create a rewards system where users earn points for submitting recipes and can later redeem said points for amazon.com or cooking.com gift cards.
Yeah contests do help a lot. Even i'm working on introducing a contest site. But need the right script for it which i am not finding. Desperately searching for one. Hope i get lucky.
I loved this idea. It would work like hell. It would do more than a contest because people would submit more for earning points. And yeah have a contest too.
Dunno much dude. not it's time for you to research. It's jus an idea. or you could find homemakers from some cooking websites or yellowpages and either e-mail them or send them a normal postal cards with promotion offer printed and asking them to participate. they could either contact thru ur website or send you the pics and info by post. try to research man. it would click good. i somehow feel there's a lot in what u're doing and would suceed if done better.
Well, it's according to how many go to your site everyday in the first place. Sorry, but just like getting visitors to click on ads to make money, a Webmaster need thousands coming in. Contests, or no contests. By the way...isn't it the idea to make money, not to give it away? If you are shelling out more than you are bringing in.... Why are you are making it harder for them to submit? There are plenty of pictures out there you can get to match their recipe.
you might want to check out new blog/website marketing directories: - freeblogpixel [dot] anthonet [dot] com - the-homepage-movie [dot] com - milliondollarwiki [dot] com weird ones i know - but many of them are free and so they might give you a good opportunity to take benefit from the marketing that is being made for such sites.