Since our relaunch, we have had 90 new members register on the site, bringing our total registered membership to 558 now.  That’s incredible.  The great thing about all the new members is that is shows that the community here in Arizona is finding out about our great site and all it has to offer.  It also provides more activity on the site and helps make us a better, more informative BBQ site for everyone to enjoy.  We Welcome all of our new members and look forward to meeting all of you out at many of our upcoming events.

This past month we had 638,920 hits on the site, bringing our 2 month total since our relaunch to just under 1.3 million hits.  That’s incredible.

I am also amazed at where our visitors are coming from.  Of course, the majority are coming from the United States, but where are others coming from?

This past month, we had 446 hits from Argentina, 1229 hits from Canada, 1054 from Great Britian, 386 from the Netherlands, 93 from Hong Kong, 4 from Poland and the Czech Republic and 7 from Namibia just to mention a few.  That makes us truly an international destination point for BBQ info.  Pretty incredible as well.

We do have a great end of year planned here at AZBarbeque starting with our big November BBQ Cook-off sponsored by Pulte Homes on November 8th.  Then we have the ever popular QN4U BBQ Class on December 6th followed by our 4th Annual AZBarbeque Holiday Party.  This will most likely be the weekend following the QN4U Class, but we are still working out the details on this.

We hope to see many of you online more as well as out at many of our events.  We are actively working on our schedule for 2009 and it’s looking like it’s going to be even better than 2008 was, so keep checking the site for all the great info.

Thanks again to all of our great members and visitors for helping to make AZBarbeque Arizona’s #1 BBQ Club.

I was not able to make Memphis in May or the Jack Daniels Invitational due to the costs involved, but while checking the costs for going to the American Royal, it was priced reasonable enough that I felt I could make it.

I am very excited to be going as I have been looking foward to this for several years.  I am going with a few of my good buddies, Tom from Whiskey Ranch and Steve who cooks on my AZBarbeque team.

I will post a recap once we get back.  We have some people we know who are competing at this year’s event, so we plan on meeting up with them as well has have some other people we know planning on meeting up with us.

It should be a great event and one more thing I can cross off my “Bucket List”.

I knew our team worked hard on the site and were really excited about what the future held for us, but making the decision to become an “Official” BBQ Club and taking it Statewide was something we knew we had to do.

After one month, our numbers don’t lie, it has been a HUGE SUCCESS.. and all if it is because of our great members, without you, we could never do this.

Here are just some stats from the past month (I love numbers)

Total hits on the site, all pages, including forum - 636,939 … That’s right, over half a million hits on the site this past month.  That’s incredible.

Of course, the majority of our hits came from the USA, but where did others come from?

The Netherlands had 1313 hits this month
Canada had 1147 hits this month
Hong Kong had 142 hits this month
Great Britian had 731 hits this month
Singapore had 164 Hits this month
Saudi Arabia had 18 hits this month
Mexico had 56 hits this month
And there were many more countries, this is just a handful, but pretty impressive that we are being found all over the world.

Our busiest Day last month was the 8th of August, our busiest day of the week is Monday’s and the number of unique visitors we had last month was 6014.

We are very excited to see what the coming days, months and years hold for us here at AZBarbeque and we are very grateful to all of you for your support.  We hope you keep coming back and continue to tell all your friends, family, coworkers and fellow BBQ Enthusists about us and our great club.

We have several BBQ Events coming up this month and the rest of the year, so make sure to keep checking back and checking out our Calendar to get all the details.

Now, Time for some BBQing…

Thanks to our great friends out at Blue Media who really helped bring this all together.  http://www.bluemedia.com/

R.J. and Kyle over there heard that we were relaunching the site and knew that I loved having my last Truck Wrapped, so they suggested that we look into wrapping this one with an AZBarbeque Theme. 

I was hesitant at first, but when I met with R.J. and he actually put some concepts down on paper, I was sold.  It looked great.

So, after about 2 weeks of design changes back and forth, it is now complete.  You can check out the finished product at:  http://www.azbarbeque.com/forums/bbq-discussion/new-azbarbeque-truck-wrap/

Let me know what you think. 

Also, come check it out at our upcoming events or if you see us out on the road.

We want to thank all of our great sponsors who helped make this site relaunch and Truck Wrap possible.

Thanks,

Mike

Football Season is back.  That means Tailgating is back and we LOVE tailgating.

We tailgate before both the ASU College Football Games as well as the Arizona Cardinals NFL Football games and we do have a blast.

If any of you go to any of those game and are looking for a great, fun and of course tasty place to come hang out before the games, make sure to come by and join us, everyone’s welcome.

Our first game is this Thursday when the New Orleans Saints come to town to face our Arizona Cardinals in a Preseason game.   I can’t wait to get out there.

Hope to see many of you out there joining us for the games.

It’s been great to talk with all of you and we look forward to seeing everyone soon out at some of our events.

We have lots of great events in the works and hope to “Officially” Announce some of them soon.

Thanks for everyone’s support.

I have gotten PM’s on the site, e-mails to my Inbox, text messages on my phone and phone calls from members and people from all over saying how much they are enjoying the new site.

I want to thank our web guys once again for such a great job.  Jake Degraw and George Algozzini worked countless hours on this and it shows.  Great job guys. 

We still have a bit more to add, but it is really coming together nicely and we hope you are all enjoying it.

We look forward to seeing everyone online here more and out at all of our upcoming events.

With the new site launching, our goal is to really take this Club Statewide now and really encompass all of Arizona.  Not only with BBQ Competitions, but with everything BBQ.  From helping to promote BBQ stores & Restaurants to sharing Recipes, ideas, pictures and suggestions on all things BBQ.  From organizing BBQ Cook-offs to Tailgate Parties.  From BBQ Socials to Backyard Get-Togethers. 

We are really excited about all the new changes and all that the World of BBQ has to offer here in the State of Arizona. 

I was told that we were “Behind the Times” since we did not have a Blog on our website, so here it is now.  Not sure how much I will get to post here or how successful it will be, but we will give it a shot.

Welcome to the new site, hope you all enjoy it, please take some time and check out all the pages and fun stuff and make sure to leave some replies and posts letting us know what you think.

Wow, where to begin.   This past year has just been incredible for us here at AZBarbeque.

Last August 1st, 2008, we had 440 Registered members and were averaging just over 70,000 hits per month.

Here we are a year later and we have 1000 Registered members and are averaging 2 Million His per month. 

Simply Amazing.

Why the incredible increase?  I think it’s because we have a great site here and people really enjoy the friendships they make here, the discussions we have and the welcoming atmosphere.  It really feels like everyone is family here at AZBarbeque.

We are also doing a great job of promoting the club and our members are really out there helping us with word of mouth as well.

We have had some great BBQ Competitions, Great BBQ Crawls, incredible socials and fun tailgate parties.  All while we have helped raise over $300k For Charities.  We also have some incredibly great sponsors who have really helped us achieve our dreams & goals. 

I know I certainly look forward to the next year with the club.  We have some great competitions and events coming up, some great sponsors coming on board and lots of great discussions online.

Thanks for all of your support, please continue to tell your Family, Friends, Co-Workers & Neighbors about us.  We look forward to the next 1000 members.

Enjoy the site and all it has to offer, hope to see you all soon out at some of our great events.

Regards,

Mike
President
AZBarbeque

Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone.  As I sit here early on Thanksgiving morning, I keep thinking back to the past 12 months and how far we have come during that time.  It is truly a time to give “Thanks” as we really couldn’t have done it with out the help and support from many people, sponsors and of course, our great members.

So far this year, AZBarbeque has helped raise over $200,000 for various different Charities, far surpassing what we have previously done in years past.  We have grown to almost 700 registered members and are averaging almost 1.5 million hits per month on our site.  All very impressive numbers. 

But the #1 thing I know I am Thankful for is the generosity and commitment of our great sponsors and members who have stepped up this year and helped us help so many great Charitable organizations.  The display of generosity you have shown has been amazing.

From our entire family here at AZBarbeque, we wish you and your Family a very Happy, Safe and Tasty Thanksgiving Holiday.  We look forward to seeing the pictures of your feast online, seeing you online more and seeing everyone out at our upcoming Holiday Party on December 13th.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING