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 I realized that travel help was limited to huge corporations that gave outdated info and that there was no one true aggregate for all things travel.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 & 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!
Fake it. Create fake users, fake traffic, fake places they've been to, fake trips.<p>Creating fake but believable data will drive real users who think "this is really cool, I love User1023's trip data."
Checked out your site and as an avid backpacker found the idea pretty cool, but yes, it feels empty.<p>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.<p>Create a Facebook group, where these people can get to know each other. It is also a good opportunity to advertise your page.<p>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.
Make the homepage more focused. Have a primary call to action.<p>Fake user content, for now, to breathe life into your site. Several respected people on HN have noted this works well.<p>Issues:<p>* 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?<p>* 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).<p>* 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.<p>* You ask the user "are you a QT?" I don't get it. Maybe I'm missing something.<p>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.<p>I hope that helps.
The short answer is, do it yourself.<p>There are a number of <i>EXTREMELY</i> 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<p><a href="http://www.kalzumeus.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.kalzumeus.com</a>
<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11</a>
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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<p>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 <i>and all 300 of his friends</i> 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...<p>I may have rambled on a bit here but I did consider doing something similar in the past.
I like it and I'm scared for you. Here's why:<p>Like because: Design, interface, potential for information gathered there, potential use. You know all this.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
If you just focused on providing people with clear information about embassies and visa applications, that would be a HUGE help.<p>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.<p>I know it's not as sexy as making a social network for travellers who can check in to cool places around the world.<p>But, it's a real problem and will really help people.
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.
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.<p>It is very easy to become disenfranchised with a project such as this, but it is good to know that there is support somewhere!<p>Will it work? Maybe. Will it fail? Possibly. But it is worth trying
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.
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..