

I launched 06-10 and constantly feel helpless and lost. What advice do you have? - ihavetoblog

In 2006, I graduated from college and took a 2 month trip through Europe. I realized that travel help was limited to huge corporations that gave outdated info and that there was no one true aggregate for all things travel.<p>I began to build databases, polish my idea, and save up money for programming. In 2008, I had compiled and cleaned up databases for:<p>* Embassies worldwide including telephone number, address, URL, email, and fax #<p>* 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.<p>* Airports including maps to show proximity to surrounding areas (useful when traveling low cost airlines)<p>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.<p>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.<p>The idea is two fold:<p>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<p>2) Have people sign up and add things they find while they explore the world to help filter out the garbage.<p>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.<p>I spend most of my time attempting to link build and trying to find &#38; fix bugs.<p>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.<p>Any advice is much appreciated<p>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!
======
dshankar
Fake it. Create fake users, fake traffic, fake places they've been to, fake
trips.

Creating fake but believable data will drive real users who think "this is
really cool, I love User1023's trip data."

~~~
alexro
Don't create fake data all by yourself - it will have your hand obvious,
rather pay people to create content how only they can do it. You can give them
the brief instructions of course.

~~~
ihavetoblog
I've seen places where I can get services. I think it was Odesk.com and I
think there are some others. But yes, getting disenfranchised with a project
usually involves doing a lot of work yourself!

------
agazso
Checked out your site and as an avid backpacker found the idea pretty cool,
but yes, it feels empty.

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.

~~~
ihavetoblog
Facebook Connect is in the works. I was thinking of having an internal like
button to use with the internal point system each user gets for being active.

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?

~~~
agazso
For me the main raison holding back is that I don't like to register to new
websites. I like for example Hacker News' Clickpass authentication, because
it's easy to use and I don't have to remember another password. But on your
site Facebook connect would be even better, because it opens a lot of
possibilites.

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.

~~~
ihavetoblog
I feel an iphone app may be too much time/money spent when I don't have the
base of the site fully functioning or very usable. Resources are tight now, so
I would want to focus on the usability of the main site vs iphone app.

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

~~~
mgkimsal
As you make changes to the main site, just keep in mind how that same URL will
render on mobile devices, and make changes accordingly. There are many 'full'
sites I use on an iPhone because it's still easy to consume info, even though
it's not a dedicated 'mobile' version.

~~~
ihavetoblog
will do. We originally had a flash banner and crap like that ... that was
opted against for various reasons

------
billpaetzke
Make the homepage more focused. Have a primary call to action.

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.

~~~
ihavetoblog
* 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?

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?

------
jcr
The short answer is, do it yourself.

There 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>

~~~
ihavetoblog
thank you, will look into this

------
notahacker
If you're 100% serious about this and "nothing left over" means you can still
afford to then travel. Seriously. The cost of living in, say, South-East Asia
isn't high. And your core customer base is sitting in the computer room in a
hostel somewhere, looking for things to do and looking to share their
experiences with others. Probably a carefully placed sticker will catch their
eye. Or they'll be chatting to you at about all the places they've visited
anyway. Maybe the hostel themselves will be so pleased at being listed on your
website they'll stick up a "rated on QTripper.com" sign in reception. Don't
underestimate the power of offline marketing.

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.

~~~
ihavetoblog
It's funny that you mention this, because this is what I did this last year. I
spent Dec 09 - July 10 traveling all around Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and
South Africa. I handed out well over 500 business cards and would spark up
conversations all the time.

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)

------
willheim
I like it and I'm scared for you. Here's why:

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.

~~~
ihavetoblog
I view the problem of too much information as a detractor. Let's say you go to
Netflix Instant View and want to watch a comedy. Most of those are 1 or 2
stars and you needlessly flip through then until you get to something with
some valuable rating.

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.

------
olalonde
Clickable: <http://www.QTripper.com>

~~~
ihavetoblog
Thanks, I had no idea how to do that

~~~
ulf
You can't - in the description at least.

------
revorad
If you just focused on providing people with clear information about embassies
and visa applications, that would be a HUGE help.

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.

~~~
ihavetoblog
Well, the embassy section is the most developed part of the entire site as it
is the oldest. Most of the date is kept up-to-date in terms of contact
information for the embassies and we have a widget that provides visa
information for free.

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.

~~~
revorad
That's awesome. Your embassies page is quite good.

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.

~~~
ihavetoblog
By map you mean a generic map with clickable countries to take you to the
embassies of that country? I'll consider it. I'll have to see how size would
play into the visible area of the page.

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

~~~
revorad
If you get a lot of visits to that section, then you could A/B test to choose
which is the better way.

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.

------
alexro
You definitely need some sort of a mobile app - people usually don't think
about their travel much before they actually go. But once on the road they
will be more inclined to check your info.

~~~
JamesDB
Perhaps one that you can take notes/leave reviews on without being connected
to the internet. These will then sync when next connected to wifi (like
evernote does)

Data romaing charges abroad are massive, and your target audience are
travellers.

~~~
ihavetoblog
It is in the works and your second suggestion is brilliant! Hadn't thought of
that. Can also update on WiFi (which is what I was thinking about)

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.

------
ihavetoblog
Thank you for all the attention and fantastic suggestions. I have begun
implementing most of the suggestions here and we are going on a revamp of the
site based on these recommendations.

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

------
matdwyer
Go about emailing some prominent travel bloggers from communities like
bootsnall, (like the families going across the world, etc.) and then try to
give them some sort of incentive to update your site, and then talk about it
on their blog. Use some way to integrate with a few that are influential (even
if you have to pay them) and hope that it catches on in that community.

~~~
ihavetoblog
interesting idea .... i will def look into it

------
pan69
I guess your audience is the backpacker type, the ones who travel for an
extended period of time (3+ months). Have you thought of approaching travel
agents who specialize in these sorts of holidays so you could somehow partner
with them? No sure what the deal would be but I guess your audience is right
there..

~~~
ihavetoblog
The audience right now is focused on the backpacker type, but I want to
eventually give it a feel as a go-to place to add your travel stories.

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

~~~
stcredzero
Why not become that travel agent yourself? This might be a longer-term goal.

~~~
ihavetoblog
I have thought about this, but that is a very very long term goal. I can't
juggle too many balls and have to create income off whatever I have first
before I go into growth.

But, frankly, yes, a lot of my close friends have suggested I jump ship to
that career because of my passion for travel.

~~~
stcredzero
If you say that travel is your passion, then I bet you could do a great job at
it _and_ figure out how to innovate and disrupt that industry.

------
Herring
[http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/04/15-mistakes-
young-...](http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/04/15-mistakes-young-
entrepreneurs-make-but-don%E2%80%99t-have-to/)

~~~
ihavetoblog
thank you, very helpful

------
secret
Have you tried getting mentioned on travel blogs? Try looking specifically at
the ones targeting backpackers.

~~~
ihavetoblog
Yes, i've been rather successful at getting reviews for the project on some
travel blogs, which did produce some results, but died out over time.

------
JamesDB
What kind of visitor numbers/member numbers are you getting? Do you know where
people are finding the site?

~~~
ihavetoblog
I get an average of 3000 visitors a month and have 148 registered users, of
which 60 or so are family and friends.

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.

~~~
JamesDB
Are people responding well to it in forums? Do you find users promote it among
friends?

~~~
ihavetoblog
The articles get a decent response. Activity usually lasts 2-3 days but the
users only click on other articles from there and then bounce.

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

