What You Can Do For Your Blog, February 1, 2006 — Sometime in the last couple of years I put a link up to an Amazon tip jar/donation box page. It's gone now. A few of you have given generously. And I thank you very much for your support. It's much appreciated. And although it's not cheap to run this site (you should see the bills for meals :) the fact is that I don't think you should have to pay for the site or for our free electronic cookbooks. Yet, I still do have aspirations of at the very least covering my cost with the earnings from this blog. Rather than ask for money (though there's nothing wrong with that) I want to put all the blogging cycles I have into making this a genuinely special and unique site. I hope that we're already off to a good start. The number of posts is up. January saw not only the introduction of part 1 of our "tastingmenu Gets Schooled" series (the trip to Asia), but also saw the launch of our shop with hopefully cool food graphics (more to come). We've revamped the navigation up top. The 2nd annual Taste Everything awards are coming at the end of the month. We have new books in the works. And we also have some big announcements regarding our food photography - one of the largest food photography collections on the web, and the only one to feature the food of so many of the world's top restaurants. And don't forget, as soon as we wrap up the Asia trip (more Hong Kong and Tokyo remain) we'll do part two of our series. I'll keep it secret for now so as not to spoil the surprise.

Bottom line: we're going to work hard to make tastingmenu even better this year. What can you do to help?

1. Let us know what you think. If you have suggestions either comment on this post, or send us mail at info [@] tastingmenu [dot] com.

2. Support our sponsors if you feel so inclined.

3. And finally, instead of doing telethons or other stuff like that, we're going to ask you to do one simple thing: tell 10 friends about tastingmenu. Yes... we are asking you to spam your friends. (Try to tell friends who might actually be interested so it's not quite as spammy.) Consider this a huge favor letting the world know about our little site. The more readers we have, the more cool things we can do, the more cool places we can visit, and the more cool experiences we can share with each of you. And to make it easier, feel free to wait until we have a post that really warrants it. BTW, telling friends about blogs you read is a great way to support any blog you appreciate, not just tastingmenu.

That's it. Next we'll ask  you to sign up your friends to the tastingmenu long distance service, but we're some months from announcing that. :) In the meantime thanks for being here, next post we're back for one more meal in Hong Kong. It's a good one. I promise.