I launched 06-10 and constantly feel helpless and lost. What advice do you have?
I began to build databases, polish my idea, and save up money for programming. In 2008, I had compiled and cleaned up databases for:
* Embassies worldwide including telephone number, address, URL, email, and fax #
* Airlines including partners, reservation numbers in all countries around the world, and frequent flyer programs. I also went one by one and marked all the low cost carriers in each country.
* Airports including maps to show proximity to surrounding areas (useful when traveling low cost airlines)
I then hired my buddy to do the design and programming. We created a travel blog section where users could create travel scrap books (journals, albums, video embed, plus other features) that also allows you to add places that you have eaten, partied at, and slept in. The idea was to create a 100% user based recommendation system without the big corporate glut of advertising and all that stuff.
I now have a product that creates travel guides for countries and individual cities, but without users, it becomes very difficult to grow. I've gotten some feedback from friends and family, but they don't really care to help out much.
The idea is two fold:
1) Have people sign up and add things about their home towns so that other users can travel to that city and have the ability to do touristy things and non-touristy things
2) Have people sign up and add things they find while they explore the world to help filter out the garbage.
My site is http://www.QTripper.com I write articles once in a while and also try to fund the development by having affiliate products that are relevant to what people might want.
I spend most of my time attempting to link build and trying to find & fix bugs.
I have a bunch of tools I want to add that would be very useful for travelers (pro and newb) but I have minimal funding left and want to focus on marketing.
Any advice is much appreciated
TL;DR I spent all my money developing and have nothing left over to market properly and even if I did I would have no idea what I am doing!
53 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 74.6 ms ] threadThere are a number of EXTREMELY insightful HN users who have talked at length about doing their own marketing, SEO, client acquisition and related topics. The most prolific is Patrick (HN user: patio11). His personal blog is filled with a great deal of useful information
http://www.kalzumeus.com http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11
Creating fake but believable data will drive real users who think "this is really cool, I love User1023's trip data."
Even if the OP doesn't use this tip, I will. Thanks!
My idea is to eventually have backpackers in europe, a family going to disney land, or people taking a small trip who update their pics and status on facebook use the site.
And yes, I have looked in the travel agents but to no avail. At first I wanted to develop APIs that I would trade in exchange for their clients as my users. I've also pitched having them fund the development of a tool in exchange to use that tool for free. No one bit
But, frankly, yes, a lot of my close friends have suggested I jump ship to that career because of my passion for travel.
My experience is that backpackers tend to use Facebook a lot, so integrate your login with Facebook Connect for starters. Make it more social by hotels/restaurants/etc. having Like buttons that points to your site.
Create a Facebook group, where these people can get to know each other. It is also a good opportunity to advertise your page.
Try to fetch data from Google Maps/Yelp/Foursquare and put it on your site. Make badges and achievments like Foursqare does, that users can earn and show off. That makes them wanting to go back to your site and make activities.
facebook group already exists and it has supporters.
I will look into those sources to populate the site with info.
Aside from it being new and empty, is there anything off the top of your head, as a backpacker, that would make you not want to use the site?
Another thing is that I don't know how the blog looks like because I can't find a link to it. So a Tour or Help would be nice, or a link to active blogs from the main page.
Other ideas:
Make a contest for newly registered users for a prize of something cool, e.g. iPhone4. Also make a mobile optimized version of the site, or an iPhone app, where the users can find, comment, upload images based on GPS coordinates.
Same things goes for the mobile version. I've had this conversation with many people and it always ends up in the chicken vs egg debate. Some people argue that having a mobile/smartphone add will increase user base, others agree to focus on the main site and have those as addons after I complete certain milestones
the header Travelers section has the blog info, but I will probably populate the homepage with them as suggested elsewhere
Fake user content, for now, to breathe life into your site. Several respected people on HN have noted this works well.
Issues:
* I'm not exactly sure what I'm getting for clicking on "sign up." Is it only a travel blog platform or is there more?
* I don't care "what's happening right now" on some map. That is prime homepage real estate that is being wasted. Perhaps leave that for when I'm logged in on a "news feed" page; and then only show my friends (via Facebook or Twitter connections); also, you could show other site users in whatever town I'm now in (if I'm traveling now).
* The Hot News and Travel Deals columns are competing for my attention. And I am repulsed from bothering to read them. It's the 50-50 column widths. And there's too many (10); try showing only the top 1 or 2 of each.
* You ask the user "are you a QT?" I don't get it. Maybe I'm missing something.
Credibility: I like to travel, I blog about my travels on my own Wordpress blog, and I read a lot of other people's travel blogs and travel-lifestyle blogs.
I hope that helps.
Travel blog that scoops up recommendations to populate travel guides
* I don't care "what's happening right now" on some map. That is prime homepage real estate that is being wasted. Perhaps leave that for when I'm logged in on a "news feed" page; and then only show my friends (via Facebook or Twitter connections); also, you could show other site users in whatever town I'm now in (if I'm traveling now).
Brilliant ideas! I was already thinking of removing that section and was going to add search functions for the items on the left, but I like your suggestions a lot more!
* The Hot News and Travel Deals columns are competing for my attention. And I am repulsed from bothering to read them. It's the 50-50 column widths. And there's too many (10); try showing only the top 1 or 2 of each.
I was going to eliminate the Hot Deals section as it does get a lot of attention. I mainly threw it in there as a way to post deals via aff links and make money, but so far I haven't made a dime.
* You ask the user "are you a QT?" I don't get it. Maybe I'm missing something.
That was before I had any idea on call-to-actions and a poor attempt at viral. I am going to get all of these suggestions and redesign the home page.
Thank you!
On a side note, if you checked out the travel blog section, what would entice you to drop your blog and join this community?
From my personal experience as an Indian with an Indian passport and lots of friends who don't have American or European passports, visas, even for holidays, are the biggest travelling pain. Suffice to say, I travel less because I hate applying for visas, not least because finding the correct information is really hard. If you took some of the pain out of that problem, you will get a lot of users.
I know it's not as sexy as making a social network for travellers who can check in to cool places around the world.
But, it's a real problem and will really help people.
So, one heuristic for a good way forward is to look in places where information flow is still slow and broken. Embassies are a good example of that.
My idea behind the embassy section was to ensure that contact information was available when the sites go under, as they usually do, or cloak their information to not be bothered. Believe it or not, I actually made that database of 8000+ myself.
So, I have a great section that is useful, but hard to market. I rank least in embassy keywords even though my data is more up-to-date than other older sites.
I created an adwords campaign and managed to get $0.08 a click on my keywords with an average of 3 min/user to the embassy section, so I know it is useful. But organics are very, very low.
Plus, I don't want to violate the site with a bunch of adsense nonsense and the widget, which provides very little $$/lead has had 946 clicks in 6 months with 0 conversion
See http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/
I can see how I can focus on that one niche and become profitable, but wouldn't that be spreading myself thin over two projects instead of one big one?
I can understand you don't want to spend too much time over this. Can't you automatically generate static pages listing the key information given the user's destination, origin and nationality? I'm guessing the embassy information doesn't change too often, so having static content will help with SEO and caching.
The widget will also take you to a service that will help fill out your visa application and deliver it. Their fees depend on the service you require.
I also constantly email all the embassies/consulates in the database for updated information because, and many people don't know this, embassies/consulates in smaller countries are usually the house where the ambassador lives. So when they change (and they often do), so does all the contact info.
You could make it even easier to navigate by adding a map.
Instead of listing by embassies in a particular country, you should list by embassies of a country. To give you an example, if I'm thinking of going to France, I'm looking for the French embassy's website, not where I am applying from. That second bit of info is also needed, but you could ask that in the second filtering stage or by guessing the user's location.
I have tackled the embassies in vs embassies of on the listing and quite frankly, I don't have enough points of reference to make a call. There is a nifty search box on the right that allows you to filter though
A simple alternative I could think of is to get rid of the list of countries and make the search form on the right the main interface. You only need to ask "where are you going?", "where from?" and "your nationality". Simple search boxes or dropdown menus with flags would be great.
Data romaing charges abroad are massive, and your target audience are travellers.
I think it is a little premature for a mobile app as there are a lot of kinks to still get through on the main page and investing time/$$ into a mobile app might be too soon, especially since funding is tight.
Most of the traffic generated has come from Google Adwords and testing ads for the embassy section. Next up is google organic, again, mostly for the embassy section. The rest are referrals from blogs/forums mainly to the Travel News section.
There isn't a lot of promotion as most people view this as something they might use while traveling as opposed to adding content in the city they already reside in. And, thus, there is very little word of mouth.
I have seen some people join from marketing efforts, especially people who are leaving for a trip, but end up not using the site. I have a rough idea as to why (usability) but it is not concrete enough for a radical change
Of course the cheap way to start off is going door to door in all the hostels in your own home city, assuming people travel there.
In terms of beefing up content, which apart from facts and figures your site currently lacks, checkout Wikitravel (CC-sharealike licensed) as a possible source for data if you haven't already. Even if it's just a temporary solution to your lack of content in many parts of the world it's a solution to the chicken-and-egg problem I think you're struggling with. Wikitravel bootstrapped by starting their country pages off with Wikipedia articles, incidentally.
To get more money coming in, improve your deal titles - "Lightweight travel laptop at bargain price" probably works better that "Acer modelnumber...." which just looks like a generic irrelevant ad. Have you looked at programs like Hostelworld. Can't imagine the commissions being huge - but it's establishing the usefulness of your site as a hub for useful travel links some of which happen to pay you.
Encourage and incentivise signup. Is your "Sign Up" button to QT-ly clever for its own good? Low signup rates suggest maybe. It's not really clear what you get for filling in all these boxes, especially when you can leave comments without it, and there are no calls to action to encourage you to "get your own travel ranking" or "recommend your favourite restaraunts in Prague" on the relevant sub-pages when I might want to register
Love it or loathe it, Facebook Connect seems to be the way forward for this sort of thing too, so that Bob can tell your site visitors and all 300 of his friends he's just found a really sweet hostel in Kota Kinablu. Probably one or two of the friends met him in the hostel back in Kuching and are doing a bit of travelling themselves...
I may have rambled on a bit here but I did consider doing something similar in the past.
It worked, but then quickly died out. The problem is that unlike most other niches, people don't travel all the time and are too lazy to add content about their own home location.
I am trying to use the Wiki as much as I can to give a more graphic interpretation of their data, yes. And I can see what you mean on the titles. I was making them that way for organic searches, but realistically I can't compete with all the deal sites and shopping sites. Very good point.
You are 100% right on the FB connect. There is no escaping FB and the like buttons thrown around everywhere.
If you considered something similar in the past, do you like where I have ended up? Would you be interested in joining?
Ahh, I will look to see if there are any hostels around here. i'm sure there MUST be, but who really knows until you look. I know Boston has 1 or 2 for the entire city (not where I live)
Like because: Design, interface, potential for information gathered there, potential use. You know all this.
Scared because: You're creating an information portal when Google does a better job. You need a massive amount of users to give you all this information when there is really no incentive for them to do so. Say I am in Amsterdam and want to go to a club. I go to google and type in "Amsterdam club". I will then get lots of information, reviews, photos, etc from a wide variety of sites. The very first entry is a map of a bunch of clubs linked to reviews. Fantastic! It's open, accessing every site in the world, and filled with info that is relevant to me. Your other problem that I foresee is accuracy of data. Clubs/restaurants/hostels close/renovate/change owners all the time. You need your listings to be curated and current. As soon as you fail once you lose that user.
I haven't backpacked in over a decade (1998) and when I did I relied on Lonely Planet books to get me places and then locals to steer me towards the good stuff. You get nothing more current, fresh, and accurate than locals, local zines, and lamp post billings. As for hostels there are many, many, many sites now that have traction and offer me more value (again, I just googled it). Trip journal sites abound (and offer many revenue possibilites like book journal printing). Restarant review sites abound, as well. User generated travel content sites have to be one of the toughest markets to crack. And with all the niches you're trying to combine into a walled garden I just don't see a clear path to success.
To add... as someone said, people just don't travel all the time. I used to be a member of a travel blogging site about 6-10 years ago. Haven't been back to it since and completely forget what its name is/was. It was a big one and very popular. Google replaced it for me.
Google fixes this issue with their algorithm based on popularity. Trip Advisor, in my opinion, is a garbage site, very confusing and cluttered. There is a reason people still buy travel guides and now ebook travel guides, because of the unreliability of search results.
A lot of times, especially when traveling, search engines change to local results, which might not be in the language you are looking for. Then you click on the English version and get different results. This is an attempt to standardize recommendations. Hopefully it will be like a living, breathing Lonely Planet guide accessible free of charge on the internet all the time.
Eventually, once the site grows, I will give incentives to the owners of the "recommendation" area access to update the contact information, but not the criticism, which will hopefully allow for more accurate data.
But yes, that is a concern.
I fully understand your concerns and I have wrestled with them over the years too. Yes, there are a bunch of travel blog sites, yes there are a bunch of review sites, but it isn't about who did it first, but who does it better.
Will I? I won't know unless I try. Can I fail? Probably, but that shouldn't stop me from trying.
I know people who made very lucrative businesses emulating existing companies with free data from the US census. On paper it should have failed, but it worked.
I see those websites as portals to information, but not aggregates. Think about Digg. What did they do? Nothing special, just post stuff you read from around the internet from the websites we all frequent. Reddit replaced it as king because it did that better (much, much better actually).
The idea is to improve on an existing niche. Give the people something your competition doesn't give them. Although many travelers use google for research, there is a bunch of garbage that needs to be filtered out. They do a good job, but not a great one. Do I want every hotel or restaurant listed? No, I prefer just the really good ones and provide quality control to steer people towards the must-not-miss for quality, value, or whatever.
One more note. When I started this project, my expectations where for every 100 people, 10 create blogs and 90 come for the information. Out of the 10 blog users, if 2 were consistently active, I would view that as a success. So, the blog section needs 2% active use for it to be a success because my reality is that most people:
1) don't write or care to share 2) view it as a hassle
I am a story teller and want to give other story tellers the ability to do so.
It is very easy to become disenfranchised with a project such as this, but it is good to know that there is support somewhere!
Will it work? Maybe. Will it fail? Possibly. But it is worth trying