What began as a fantasy about internet income became a commitment to build the best cooking site we possibly could.
I can’t remember whether No Ads Cooking began as a pipe dream about supplemental income (all the income!) or as a response to watching professional creative outlets slam shut, one after another, quarter after quarter in corporate. Maybe I really was just that frustrated with recipe websites.
Was it actually this easy? Was this all you had to do?
First, be afforded a life with spare time, some kitchen instincts, and a lot of culinary curiosity. Then take pictures of the food you make, write about its intricacies, say a bunch of stuff about your family and growing up on a farm or whatever, and suddenly you’re building forts out of instant cash.
Sorry, food bloggers, but there is a script—and at this point, that script is a meme.
But you have also done something we haven’t. You followed a script, a map, a template, and arrived at your destination. From what I can see, life looks pretty rewarding for many of you.
Let’s be clear: Not jealous. Inspired.
There are two kinds of people: those who follow maps and those who make maps for other people to follow. I use maps other people have made all the time. But this particular trip required something different.
When the concept for NoAdsCooking.com came together, the name was exactly on the nose. It was partly a promise and partly a gimmick—something designed to catch what we hoped was a natural search instinct.
You need a banana bread recipe, but you don’t want to fight your way through a digital obstacle course to get it. So you type “banana bread no ads,” “no ads banana bread,” or some other combination of those words.
And presto: you come to Papa.
And So It Began
Two people who knew just enough to get moving, armed to the teeth with AI, surrounded by endless examples on the internet, and convinced that all we had to do was zig where everyone else zagged.
We could not believe how easy this was going to be.
I don’t want to say the joke was on us, because it wasn’t a joke. Nothing we were doing felt like a laughing matter. We took it incredibly seriously.
There were weeks when I worked at least 100 hours. I’ve always been one of those people who sees the weekend as extra time to work and get ahead, but 100 hours? I’m pretty sure I had never done that before.
This was inspiration and sheer determination staring up at a mountain that disappeared into the clouds. It was exciting. Every day brought visible progress. We helped each other, put our heads down, and worked.
Before long, we had a functioning website. We bounced the idea off everyone we knew, and everyone said they loved it.
But no one used it.
A few people tried. My mom used it, which was cool. Chef2’s (our partner and technical extraordinaire) wife wouldn’t use it. She just straight-up refused.
If you can’t appreciate how funny that is, you are way too optimistic for happy endings and easy stories. It is hilarious. We were working 100-hour weeks and fantasizing about a professional life lived from our laptops, with customers instead of bosses—and the cofounder’s wife wouldn’t even make toast from the site to appease him.
Where did we go wrong?
When the Work Stopped Supporting the Cause
I’m not sure we “went wrong” so much as we expected our approach to produce the same results as our peers and competitors—if not better ones. That did not happen. And it continued not happening for the better part of a year.
Don’t give up. Why am I doing this? Should we pivot? How can we make money? Should we just succumb to ads?
The questions invade your thoughts because, in the digital world, very few decisions about user experience or business value feel consequential enough to seal your fate. There are not many ways to get yourself permanently disinvited. That should feel liberating. Instead, it makes figuring out how to get noticed seem almost impossible.
People offer one-word answers like “marketing,” as though marketing were a button we had forgotten to press. In reality, that single word represents weeks or months of accumulated knowledge, planning, testing, and practice. It demands a rigid, linear approach that feels less like creating something and more like feeding money into a slot machine, hoping it pays out.
That was a difficult adjustment after the early days of building the site. Back then, progress was visible every day. The product existed in a state of constant construction: make a change, see the change, move forward.
Once the site was built, the work stopped answering us so clearly.
So We Tried Everything
We made videos. We made our own music. We signed up for social platforms. We asked users to create accounts. We spent a tremendous amount of money on equipment, software, food, and supplies. We considered expanding onto even more social platforms.
Then we stopped and asked ourselves: Do we actually care about this? Is our heart in this side of the work?
Not really.
We just want to make the best cooking site on the internet.
That goal has nothing to do with beating the competition, gaining notoriety, or manufacturing our own moment of viral fame (yuck). We simply want to make the best website you could ever use to cook something awesome.
Yeah, real profound.
Back to Work
More than that, we want the people who use No Ads Cooking to help shape what “the best cooking site” ultimately becomes—starting from our original premise and building outward from there.
So we went back to work.
- AI in your face? Gone.
- Forced Accounts? Gone.
- Paywalled Features? Gone.
- Clean, Intentional Design? Check.
- Recipes Reviewed Against Strict Standards? Check.
- Real Stories to Explore and Relate To? Check.
- Something for Every Skill Level? Check.
Eventually, the guiding idea became very simple: Let’s make something people can actually use and worry about everything else later.
That is where we are today.
After navigating our first year in this space, we have learned an incredible amount about this world. We have committed ourselves to doing this work for the long haul—if only to see where it leads.
So please use the site. Share it with someone you know. Tell us what works, what doesn't, and what would make it better.
Let's Build This Together
We want your raw feedback—the good, the bad, and everything in between. Drop us a line directly at:
But if you do only one thing today, go make something awesome.