Prime Publishing LLC

Mr. Food Test Kitchen Partners with Wheel of Fortune® for New Cookbook

Northbrook, IL ­– The Mr. Food Test Kitchen is teaming up with Wheel of Fortune to create a brand new collectible cookbook to be released later this year. Filled with over 150 triple-tested recipes alongside behind-the-scenes pictures and stories, this cookbook is a must-have for game show enthusiasts.

“Teaming up with the Mr. Food Test Kitchen for this project is ideal as Howard Rosenthal, the host of Mr. Food, and his team know how to create recipes that relate to our viewers,” said Wheel of Fortune Executive Producer, Harry Friedman.

The cookbook is comprised of recipes from the Mr. Food Test Kitchen. It will also include recipes from (or inspired by) Pat Sajack and Vanna White (such as Vanna Banana Pudding), and recipes from viewers.

MrFood.com is holding a Wheel of Fortune Cookbook Recipe Contest where viewers can submit their original recipes for the chance to get featured in the cookbook. Recipes must follow the Mr. Food Test Kitchen’s “Quick & Easy” cooking style, using no more than twelve ingredients that could easily be found at the local supermarket. Winners will receive an autographed copy of the cookbook along with a Wheel of Fortune prize package with an estimated value of $100.

Recipe submissions will be accepted from now through May 17, 2015. Winners will be notified by the end of August and be posted on WheelofFortune.com and MrFood.com. The cookbook is due to be released in October 2015.

Prime Publishing LLC manages the MrFood.com digital properties including the websites, e-mail newsletters, and all social and community channels. Prime Publishing created the current MrFood.com digital property in 2010. Users per month have grown from 134,000 per month in 2009 to over 3,100,000 per month this year.

Stitch and Unwind Hosts Afghan Charity Drive

Northbrook, IL — In February 2015, StitchAndUnwind.com asked their loyal readers to bring a little love and warmth to children in need.  To do this, StitchAndUnwind.com teamed up with Warm Up America!, Craft Yarn Council, and Build-a-Bed to launch a charity drive asking for crochet or knit afghans. The afghans are then sent to children who don’t have warm beds to sleep in.  The students at Morehead State University build and distribute beds to children in Eastern Kentucky for their yearly Build-A-Bed campaign. Through this initiative, each child is given a twin size sheet set, a hygiene kit, books, pajamas, nightlight, alarm clock, stuffed animal, a twin-sized bed, mattress, and an afghan.

“Warm Up America has a long history of helping people in need. We love what they stand for and how they go about providing donations to the people that need it most,” Nicola Prybell, Prime Publishing community manager, said. “I knew that this was a great opportunity to show our readers just how important it is to help those less fortunate. Just by using up scrap yarn that you have lying around your house, you can make an afghan for someone who really needs it. That’s the most rewarding part for knitters and crocheters.”

By reaching out to loyal readers of AllFreeCrochet.com, AllFreeCrochetAfghanPatterns.com, AllFreeKnitting.com, and FaveCrafts.com in newsletters, via social media, and in video announcements, word spread fast. To encourage readers to donate, Yarnspirations joined in and offered a prize of 10 skeins of Bernat Blanket yarn to give to one lucky participant. At the end of March, Prime Publishing was able to donate a whopping total of 134 afghans.

“We knew the readers would love the idea of this charity, especially because children in need were involved, but we were truly blown away at the response,” Christina Hammond, Prime Publishing community editor, said. “The boxes started rolling in, and we ran out of places to store them all! We even had blankets donated all the way from Hawaii with messages of love and hope for the children set to receive them.”

The success of this charity drive further demonstrates the generosity of the Prime Publishing community. Prime Publishing, LLC continues to work with various charities each year to help those in need. To find out more about the company’s past charity involvement, be sure to check out our Charity Drives page.

Check out our announcement video!

Check out a time lapse video of all the blankets!

Prime Publishing Launches Daily Newsletters

Northbrook, IL — Prime Publishing is excited to announce the launch of new, innovative, daily newsletters for both our food and craft properties. In the past month, we started offering daily Recipe of the Day and Project of the Day newsletters to the visitors and subscribers of RecipeLion.com, AllFreeCrochet.com, AllFreeSewing.com, AllFreeKnitting.com, and FaveCrafts.com.

Altogether, Prime Publishing has more than 30 niche, digital properties focused on cooking and crafting, with e-mail newsletters that publish up to six times a week, reaching 6.2 million subscribers. Each of these newsletters includes a sizable collection of new and exciting recipes and projects for readers to sample.

After just a month of publishing our new, daily newsletters, we’ve added more than 160,000 additional subscribers. These new, daily newsletters provide a shorter sampling of our content with a main recipe or project of focus, along with a couple handy collections. The newsletter is perfect for the busy person looking for ideas on his or her smartphone, tablet, or desktop.

Rachel Kallison, Food Group Editorial Director, said, “We’re excited to expand the content we can offer our readers. In a fast-paced world, in which we’re often checking our e-mail on our mobile devices or tablets, we know these short-form daily newsletters will be especially appealing.

“Sometimes it’s easier to digest a single, fabulous recipe when skimming through e-mail, rather than an entire collection of recipes,” Kallison added.

Readers can choose to sign up for our new daily newsletters, our regular weekly newsletters, or both.

“Our mission at Prime Publishing is to offer five minutes of fun to our readers and visitors every day, and these additional newsletters provide yet another avenue for our subscribers to enjoy our content,” said Stuart Hochwert, President and CEO of Prime Publishing, LLC.

Prime Publishing plans to launch additional daily newsletters for its cooking and crafting properties this summer.

To sign up for daily or weekly newsletters, visit our cooking and crafting subscriber centers.

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Craft and Food Sites Celebrate 2014’s Editorial Accomplishments

Northbrook, IL —  Prime Publishing’s editorial staff celebrated many exciting accomplishments in 2014, including web site redesign, launching new blogs, acquiring a new test kitchen and craft studio, and much more.

Some of these successes were outlined in recent blog posts on Seams & Scissors and RecipeChatter.

Blair Chavis, managing editor for the food team, said “”We’re really proud all that our food properties have accomplished this year. Readers can enjoy thousands of new recipes, a fresh new look on our recipe sites and blog, as well as new Test Kitchen-approved recipes from our brand new Test Kitchen.”

On the craft side, Caitlin Eaton, managing editor, said “I’m so proud of the craft team’s accomplishments this year. We redesigned our sites and added more content than ever before, and we hope to surpass that in 2015.”

To find out what else the editorial team did last year, read the blog posts:

10 Things the Food Team Achieved in 2014

10 Things the Craft Team Achieved in 2014

Stuart Hochwert, President and CEO of Prime Publishing, LLC, said “Our goal is to provide 5 minutes of fun to our readers and visitors every day. I am grateful to our editorial team for working very hard to make this a reality.”

How To Generate Revenue Online: An Inside Look at Prime Publishing

Northbrook, IL –  How does a business generate revenue while keeping the majority of its content free? That was the situation Prime Publishing LLC president, Stuart Hochwert, faced when launching his network of crafting and cooking websites five years ago. Hochwert recently discussed the strategies he used to grow the firm’s first two properties, FaveCrafts.com and RecipeLion.com, with social sharing platform, Po.st.

The original content found on Prime Publishing’s network of websites is 100% free to the consumers. Site editors aggregate a vast library of recipes and craft projects, and consumers get to enjoy them at their leisure. It sounds like the ideal situation, but it begs the question: how do you sustain that kind of business model?

“When I launched Prime Publishing LLC 5 years ago,” Hochwert told Po.st, “I saw more craft purchases being made at Wal-Mart, Michael’s Arts & Crafts, Hobby Lobby and others, yet I saw print magazine circulation dropping. The hypothesis was that ‘eyeballs’ who enjoy crafting were moving online, so we created a multi-platform series of cooking and crafting communities to inform, inspire, and engage consumers. Our communities span digital websites, e-mail newsletters, social media, and e-commerce and were originally supported exclusively by advertising.”

The multi-platform, advertising-supported model continues to thrive. In a period of about five years, Prime Publishing’s network of websites have grown to over 6 million subscribers with around 100,000 new subscribers being added each week and over 200,000 video views weekly on YouTube. Not only is Prime Publishing a potent player in the e-newsletter market, but they also have a marked presence on other platforms, including social media.

“Pinterest has been a home run and is perfect for cooking and crafting,” Hochwert explained. “Historically, Facebook has been our largest source of social media referrals, although now, Pinterest has surpassed it.”

While Prime Publishing’s network of websites was originally created for desktop consumption, the model has expanded to appeal to users on the go.

“Over the past 12 months, our mobile site has become a priority as we see more consumers using their smartphones to interact with us. We are starting to move to a fully responsive site design and rolled this out first on AllFreeCrochet.com,” Hochwert explained. “Now consumers on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone can enjoy our content. We have been experimenting with various smart phone ads and providers and just recently have a combination of ads that are generating a CPM that is getting closer to desktop CPMs.”

Prime Publishing is always looking for new ways to reach their audience and introduce themselves to those not yet in the loop. Their premium paid circulation digital magazine, I Like Crochet, launched in 2014, marks the company’s inaugural foray into the premium content model. Its sister publication, I Like Knitting, recently launched in December, 2014.

 

AllFreeHolidayCrafts Hosts Ornament Charity Drive

Northbrook, Illinois – AllFreeHolidayCrafts is happy to announce our first charity drive to date! In an effort to help raise money for the Heartland Alliance, AllFreeHolidayCrafts is collecting handmade ornaments to donate to the charitable organization throughout the month of November 2014. In addition to these handmade creations, Prime Publishing LLC will also be donating one dollar for each handmade ornament collected; up to $1,000. The handmade ornaments will be handed out to the familes located at one of Heartland Alliance’s residential homes throughout the month of December 2014 to spread some holiday cheer.

Each year, Heartland Alliance helps to support people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety. This is not Prime Publishing’s first time donating to charity. In fact, Prime Publishing has successfully hosted a number of charity drives in the past and worked with a variety of organizations including Project Linus, Special Olympics, Mittens for Detroit, the Northwest Community Hospital, and the American Heart Association. With the help of our charitable (and very talented) readers, Prime Publishing has donated more than:

— 200 homemade blankets (crochet afghans, baby blankets, and quilts) to Project Linus

— 100 homemade knit and crochet mittens to Mittens for Detroit

— 1,700 baby hats to Northwest Community Hospital

— 6,311 baby hats to American Heart Association, Chicago

Head over to AllFreeHolidayCrafts today to learn more about Heartland Alliance, and how you can help. Don’t miss out on this wonderful opportunity to make a difference through crafting!

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Contact:

Jennifer Hendrix, Editor

AllFreeHolidayCrafts.com

Prime Publishing

847-205-9375

 

About Prime Publishing:

Prime Publishing LLC was established in 1995 as a traditional niche book publishing company. Today, they are an Internet Media Company that operates web sites, eMagazines, and communities focused on the niche areas of crafting and cooking. A full list of web properties, free eNewsletters and free eBooks can be found at www.primecp.com.

Baby Hat Charity Drive a Success

Northbrook, Illinois – AllFreeCrochet.com’s latest charity drive with the American Heart Association, “Little Hats, Big Hearts,” has drawn to a close and was a rousing success. The editors of AllFreeCrochet.com asked readers to mail in knitted or crocheted red baby hats to raise awareness for heart disease, the number one killer of Americans, and congenital heart defects, the most common type of birth defect in the country.

The event had personal meaning to AllFreeCrochet editor, Jenny Benoit, as well. “My dad actually passed away 20 years ago from a heart attack and my mom was recently diagnosed with a heart condition about 2 years ago. Heart disease is something I take very seriously because it has affected my family first-hand. This charity drive definitely spoke to me on a personal level and I am beyond thrilled with how many hats were donated. It was an honor to help spread the word about heart disease.”

The charity drive ran throughout the month of September, and AllFreeCrochet was able to donate 6,300 hats to newborns. Donations came in from all over the globe, even coming in from places like South Africa, Europe, and Australia. One winner was chosen to also receive a prize pack from Lion Brand.

“Prime Publishing has hosted a number of charity drives over the past few years, but nothing comes close to the success of this particular baby hat charity drive,” Benoit added. “We were expecting around 1,000 hats or so, maybe even less because we were afraid the red color requirement would deter some people from participating. In fact, it did quite the opposite; receiving 6,300 baby hats is far more than we ever expected to receive. Many of the homemade hats we received were also accompanied by a handwritten note from those that have been affected in some way by heart disease. I think the connection with the American Heart Association actually helped motivate people to participate more because they had a personal connection to the cause.”

FaveQuilts and AllFreeSewing, affiliate craft sites under the Prime Publishing brand, are currently finishing their own joint charity drive, Hands-on-Heart Breast Cancer Pillow Drive, to benefit the American Cancer Society.

Want to learn more? Check out some of our helpful links below!

Check out pictures from the event here.
Check out our “Thank You” announcement here.
Check out an article from the Northbrook Patch here.
Find out how you can still donate here.

Prime Publishing Recognizes Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Northbrook, IL – Prime Publishing hosted the “Hands-on-Heart Breast Cancer Pillow-Making Party” on October 4, 2014. 24 Girl Scouts from two different local troops came to the office to make the Hands-on-Heart Pillow, which was specially designed to fit comfortably under the arm of a post-op patient, relieving some of the pressure from that area and protecting it from painful bumps and bruises.

With filling from Fairfield World and machines donated by Bernina USA, the event was a huge success. The Girl Scouts created 24 homemade pink pillows destined for donation to the American Cancer Society through the American Sewing Guild of Chicago.

The event ran from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and included both breakfast and lunch.

For more information on how you can participate in the Hands-on-Heart Breast Cancer Pillow-Making Drive, please visit our website.

Visit our Events Page here to check out some pictures.

 

Prime Publishing Yarn Sites Celebrate I Love Yarn Day

Northbrook, IL – In celebration of the Craft Yarn Council’s annual I Love Yarn Day, the yarn sites of Prime Publishing are teaming up to take it to the next level.

AllFreeCrochet.com, AllFreeCrochetAfghanPatterns.com, and AllFreeKnitting.com will be celebrating the yarniest day of all, Oct. 10, with a week of amazing new patterns, exciting daily prize giveaways, and social media activities.

Visit our yarn blog Stitch & Unwind at www.stitchandunwind.com each day Oct. 5 through Oct. 11 for a prize sponsored by Lion Brand, Red Heart, or Spin Brite. For the full giveaway schedule, visit our blog.

On I Love Yarn Day, Oct. 10, we’ll give away a grand prize including yarn, books, hooks, needles, a travel bag and more!

Watch the editors of Prime Publishing explain why they’re so excited for this fiber-tastic day in our official video.

The Craft Yarn Council’s tips for celebrating I Love Yarn Day, which is held annually on the second Friday in October, include: create an I Love Yarn Day badge, teach someone to knit or crochet, do something for charity, wear a knitted or crocheted item, give a gift of yarn, take your yarn to work day, host a yarn-a-bration party, or knit, crochet and craft in public.

Learn more about I Love Yarn Day at the Craft Yarn Council website, and celebrate with Prime Publishing at www.stitchandunwind.com.

Contact:
Caitlin Eaton
Prime Publishing
847-205-9375

About Prime Publishing:
Prime Publishing LLC was established in 1995 as a traditional niche book publishing company. Today, they are an Internet Media Company that operates web sites, eMagazines, and communities focused on the niche areas of crafting and cooking. A full list of web properties, free newsletters and free eBooks can be found at www.primecp.com.

AllFreeCrochet.com is a website dedicated to the best free crochet patterns, tutorials, tips and articles on crochet. Find all varieties and skills levels, from easy to crochet afghan patterns to complex Tunisian crochet patterns.

AllFreeCrochetAfghanPatterns.com is a website dedicated to the best free crochet afghan patterns, tutorials, tips, and articles on crocheting. AllFreeCrochetAfghanPatterns finds and delivers the best free crochet afghan patterns from all over the web , from easy to crochet mile-a-minute patterns to complex granny square patterns.

AllFreeKnitting.com is dedicated to the best free knitting patterns, tutorials, tips and articles. Never buy another knitting pattern again! AllFreeKnitting finds and delivers the best free knitting patterns from all over the web , from easy to knit afghan patterns to complex knitting patterns. Variety makes things exciting and AllFreeKnitting has the right thing for your next knitting adventure.

 

AllFreeCrochet Hosts Baby Hat Charity Drive

Northbrook, Illinois – AllFreeCrochet.com is excited to announce they are hosting another charity drive! They are working with the Red Heart Association on their initiative, “Little Hats, Big Hearts” to donate homemade hats to newborn babies. “Little Hats, Big Hearts” is a wonderful project to help raise awareness of heart disease, the number one killer of Americans, and congenital heart defects, the most common type of birth defect in the country.

This is not Prime Publishing’s first time donating to charity. In fact, Prime Publishing has successfully hosted a number of charity drives in the past and worked with a variety of organizations including Project Linus, Special Olympics, Mittens for Detroit, and the Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, Illinois. With the help of our charitable (and very talented) readers, Prime Publishing has donated more than:

–200 homemade blankets (crochet afghans, baby blankets, and quilts) to Project Linus
–100 homemade knit and crochet mittens to Mittens for Detroit
–1,700 baby hats to Northwest Community Hospital

Head over to AllFreeCrochet today to learn more about “Little Hats, Big Hearts,” and how you can help. Don’t miss out on this wonderful opportunity to make a difference through knit and crochet.

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Contact:
Jeanette Benoit, Editor
AllFreeCrochet.com
Prime Publishing
847-205-9375

About Prime Publishing:
Prime Publishing LLC was established in 1995 as a traditional niche book publishing company. Today, they are an Internet Media Company that operates web sites, eMagazines, and communities focused on the niche areas of crafting and cooking. A full list of web properties, free newsletters and free eBooks can be found at www.primecp.com.