John and I get tons of questions from friends, family, email, social media, and comments every day. I thought it might be a fun idea to answer some of the most asked questions here.
Maybe one of these questions is yours or something you’ve always wanted to ask. We’ll continue to add questions as more come along. They are in no particular order.
- How long has your blog been around? I just found it today. The blog has been up and running since November 2015.
- You mention Florida and Arkansas a lot? So, where are you? We’ve moved in between NW Arkansas, South Florida, and SW Florida over the last 19 years. Recently, we moved to Southern California, and absolutely love it!
- Do you have a “real job”? This is one of my favorites, and it often comes from family. Blogging may not be a traditional job, but it is a “real job.” I work more hours on our websites than I used to work at my previous employment. John and I are considered self-employed, so while this may not be a 9 to 5 job requiring us to get dressed and head into an office, it most definitely is a “real job.” 🙂
- How do you make money? I won’t go into detail about amounts, but I will explain some of the ways we receive payment through the website. One of the most common ways is through advertisements. The ads you see throughout the site provide a source of revenue. Occasionally, we work with brands like Walmart, Tyson, Oreo, Pepperidge Farm, as well as, others to showcase their products in exchange for a fee. Last, some of the pages and posts on this site contain affiliate links. Most of those links take you to Amazon.com. If you click the link AND purchase a product within a specific amount of time, we may receive a small commission.
- Why are there so many ads on your page? I’m so sick of ads. Please see #4. The ads are one of our main sources of income. It’s similar to having ads on cable TV. We do try to balance the number of ads and visitor experience. This is similar to you receiving a paycheck from an employer. Asking us to remove ads would be like us asking you to work for free without a paycheck. That doesn’t seem reasonable. In time, we do hope to reduce advertisements as the readership grows.
- Do you have a YouTube channel? No, but keep your fingers crossed that we’ll have one available in the future.
- I tried to find one of your recipes on Google but couldn’t locate it. Did you get rid of it? Google is tricky. We’re actively working on rewriting a lot of old posts in the hopes that Google will move them closer to the first page. That way, they’ll be easier to find. However, we have rewritten some posts that didn’t perform well and changed the recipe completely.
- Why don’t you just write the recipe? I don’t want to hear about your family or how you got this recipe from your great-great-grandmother’s ancient recipe box. We would LOVE to just write the recipe. That would save a ton of time. Also know that we don’t like reading fluff about people’s family either. As we’re rewriting posts, we’re removing the majority of the family stuff and just writing information about the recipe including helpful tips, links to other resources, and in-depth instructions. Our posts are formatted in a way that you should be able to make the dish from scratch with minimal issues and have some additional recipes to check out as other options.
- I left a comment, but it never got approved. What happened? Several things may have happened. We use a plugin called Antispam Bee to filter out spam comments. If for any reason your comment met the criteria for spam, Antispam Bee deleted it before we got a chance to read it. Antispam Bee deletes thousands of comments a week because of spammy markup. Otherwise, we reviewed the comment and deleted it for one of the following reasons. It was rude or vulgar. The question was already answered in the post/recipe. It brought no value to the post, and/or would not be helpful to future readers, or has nothing to do with the recipe. Additionally, we understand how frustrating it is to make a recipe and have it not turn out as expected. That happens to us too sometimes when we make other people’s recipes. However, coming back, and leaving a comment to complain without any detail explaining exactly how you prepared the dish isn’t helpful to anyone. Again, the comment doesn’t provide value. Saying, “I followed the recipe to a T, and it burned. This is a horrible recipe” doesn’t give any additional detail as to what happened. We do approve some “bad review” comments if they explain further what the reader think may have happened. This helps other readers not to make the same mistake. It helps us provide tips in the post and allows us to troubleshoot the recipe in case we need to update it.
- I don’t have time to scroll through all the pictures and text to get to the recipe. Why can’t you put the recipe at the top so it’s easier for me to find? We have added the Jump to Recipe button back, so you can get to the recipe faster! We understand that not everyone needs extra tips and information to make a recipe. However, some people do. The information in the post is not just to fill space. It’s information to help make the dish successful, so you don’t waste time or ingredients. It’s answers questions we see asked most frequently and addresses common issues. *Please note: if we receive a comment that the dish didn’t turn out and it’s because the information in the post was not followed, most likely that comment will be deleted.
- I have a question about (fill in the blank) recipe. We will do our very best to answer it for you. When we write the posts, we test the recipe the way it’s written. Generally, we don’t substitute a lot of ingredients, or change the cooking method. We’ll have to give you our best guess as to how things will turn out. To get most accurate response, please check out the other comments on the recipe, and see if someone has already answered your question. 🙂
- Why didn’t you respond when I left a comment on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, etc.? We try to catch all those comments, but some are missed. Please accept our apologies. Many of the social media platforms are build to filter out notifications, so we never see some of the comments.
- I work for (fill in the blank) company and have a product your readers would love. Can I send you a sample? No, I’m sorry. We don’t accept samples. If you’d like to discuss monetary compensation in exchange for a blog post(s)/video(s), we’d be happy to discuss that, but we don’t accept stand alone products or samples.
- I would like to advertise on your site. Thank you for the offer. We currently advertise through Mediavine. If you would like to purchase advertising space through Mediavine to be placed on our site, we would be happy to forward along the information.
- I have this article, link, infographic, guest post opportunity, etc. that would be a great fit for your site. It will be mutually beneficial. Can we set up a quick call or Zoom meeting to discuss? Thanks for the offer, but no. We hand select everything that is placed on our websites and don’t accept offers from unknown sources.
- Do you have a recipe for…? Maybe! Please use the search function found on the recipe page of this site. If there is a particular recipe we don’t have but you’d like us to make, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact us and let us know.
- I just saw an ad on your site that was very offensive, and I don’t appreciate it. I sincerely apologize that there was an offensive ad on our site. If you could kindly let me know which ad, I may be able to have it removed through our ad company. However, please be aware that the ads showing are largely based on cookies. This means that the ads you see are based on the region in which you live and your previous search history. For example, if you’ve looked for an awesome KitchenAid Mixer today and a couple of hours later visit our site, chances are good that a KitchenAid Mixer ad will pop up at some point. That being said, some bad ads do slip through, so please let me know if a particularly offensive ad is showing.
- May I use a photo(s) from your site? Please email us. We will be happy to discuss the use of the photo. If we don’t give written permission and the photo is used anyway, it is likely that a DMCA will be filed to have the photo removed.
- Why didn’t this recipe work? I followed it to a “T.” I wish I knew. We can help you troubleshoot the recipe, but the truth is, we aren’t in your kitchen. Several things can change a recipe even if you followed everything as written. Weather, altitude, oven calibration, humidity, and the list goes on. We hate it when a recipe doesn’t work for everyone like it did for us. Unfortunately, we can’t always determine the reason.
- What can I substitute for (fill in the blank)? If we don’t have it listed in the recipe or the post, we haven’t tried to substitute it. We’ll have to look around and get back to you. There’s no guarantee that what we tell you will work since it hasn’t been tested. See #15.
- If I recreate one of your recipes and adapt it, do I still need to credit your site? Yes, please. That’s good blog etiquette.
- I made one of your recipes, but it doesn’t look like the photos/video. First of all, thank you so much for making one of our dishes! Second, we make all of our recipes with easy to find ingredients and do very little in the way of staging and editing. We want the food to speak for itself. We don’t use fake props, fake water drops, fake syrup, etc. Everything is edible. The editing is very light. We do brighten the photos and add some vibrancy to the pictures. It’s possible it looks different due to editing.