Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

There is no doubt that the online market is exploding with sites that offer up recipes. A number of sites have emerged that have thousands upon thousands of recipes on them.

Why is this the case? Recipe searches are one of the most searched categories by women online. That basically answers it all.

Many of the huge sites are large companies that would be hard to compete with because they always think in terms of scale and information that covers much of a general topic. But I could see tons of possibilities with niche markets in this space without even trying too hard.

Think of local recipes as one example of many. You could draw on this, even in some very small areas, and gather a treasure trove that would draw interest of a lot of women. You have an instant audience and something that major advertisers would be more than happy to advertise with.

Add some social networking features into this and you have a potential goldmine. This has an almost endless amount of possiblities that could be done. Think of niches with niches. You could have age and region; region and ethnicity; local and ethnicity; and on and on. The combinations boggle the mind.

What I really like about this is it isn't a fad, and it's been something going on in magazines for decades; way before the Internet came along.

“When people want to find a new recipe these days they go to the Internet, more so than cookbooks, magazines or anything else,” said Kenneth Cassar, an analyst with Nielsen/NetRatings. “The Internet has fundamentally changed the way people do that.”

Cassar added that in the U.S. alone, 50 million people visited food sites in May. Include that with the built-in social aspect that has been there for years, and you have a winner.

Unless you're a big company to begin with, I would definitely go niche with this, and think of a combination that would appeal to recipe seekers. This is only going to grow, and it's never going to go away online.