Edward - don't let the nay-sayers get you down. Here's a few pieces of advice. First of all, for all of the users who don't sign up and are merely there to look around and maybe catch some reviews, the site has no local focus.(I recently read somewhere that a typical site with user generated content can expect around a 10:1 ratio of readers to creators - so this group should be important to you). I'm not particularly interested in seeing a Google map of reviews from Connecticut when I'm in Portland Oregon. I feel like you would do well to pick one or two cities, and focus your resources on reaching critical mass in those markets. I think what you have is cool. Talk to your friends and enable them with digital cameras. A lot of people eat out once or twice a day and even a few of these people using your site will really rev up the user experience in a given city. After you have 100, maybe 200 reviews. Reach out to local bloggers, small local papers, and some of your favorite restaurant owners. Maybe even print up some info and go talk to some of the more interesting restaurants in your area. Restaurant owners love getting reviews, and many will be happy to speak your praises to their customers in hopes of a good review.
After months of after-work-hours programming, I launched my site <a href="http://www.mygrub.net" rel="nofollow">http://www.mygrub.net</a> but haven't seen any traction. Any tips for getting traffic? How did reddit get its very first users?<p>I applied to YCombinator with this, but was rejected. Maybe for good reason =(
I imagine people are just going to your front page and then leaving, so what I would do is experiment with the front page to see if you can get better engagement. Focus on getting users to make the next click. Add a 'Add a Location' textfield on the front page, so that I can add a restaurant right away. Defer registration until after they typed in the review. Make it easier to browse restaurants, it doesn't seem easy to explore anything beyond what was recently added.<p>Also, the content doesn't seem very localized -- I entered my city and state, but it seems to default to California every time.<p>btw, you have a bug when adding locations with a quote in the name (search for Rhea's or Provino's). I added a couple of locations for you, good luck. You should make a follow up post (after you fix that bug) asking everyone to post at least one location for you. Or maybe you can turk it (<a href="http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome)?" rel="nofollow">http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome)?</a>
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions! It's all been very encouraging and I now have a lot of new ideas as a result. <p>There were a couple suggestions about linking my site to other existing food sites, like eGullet. I have a hard time thinking about how to do this without having it appear like shameless self-promotion or even spam. I posted something on chowhound.com about my site, only to find that it was quickly removed as spam. <p>As for marketing, I'm working with a shoestring budget, which consists on spending about 50 cents a day on google adwords. I guess I really just need to go out there and tell more friends about it. For whatever reason, I tend to be a little shy when it comes to making a big splash among my friends about my startup.
Cool site. I co-founded a startup that was doing a very similar thing in 2002 (it failed). Here are some ideas that will hopefully make your site successful.<p>- Start off with a really niche site. For example: Vegan food in Portland, Oregon. It's the niches that sites like Citysearch aren't serving very well.<p>- Don't code any more features. Spend the next 3 months on marketing. Making this site successful is an exercise in savvy marketing, not programming.<p>- No one cares about keeping track of restaurants they visited. Everyone cares about going to good restaurants. Same features, different message.<p><p><p>
I think you want to focus, focus, focus. Ex. become the absolute authority on Pizza places on the lower east side of Manhattan (or whatever your thing is). Be SO important to a tiny 'slice' of the world that restaurant owners are encouraging their customers to review.<p>Definitely post your own reviews and talk about the idea an insane amount = as much as you can. How did CL grow - there may be ideas there.<p>All the easy ideas have been taken. Build it and they will come just isn't easy anymore. You have to immerse yourself in the market to get traction.<p>If all else fails, hire some hot girls.
It reminds me of one problem that actually needs solving: have you ever worked for a company in a remote location, where takeaway is the only food you can get? There are usually loads of leaflets from takeaway restaurants lieing around, and it is hard to remember which ones were good, and which of their meals didn't suck. Maybe if your blog became more fine-grained (which menu did I choose), it could be used for that.
The OP explanatory comment has drifted down the page by now. This feature request would be useful to stop this. <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1149" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1149</a>
PATIENCE, grasshopper. Give yourself longer than two weeks to build up 'traction'. The more stuff that builds up on your site, the more people will want to go there. And that takes time.<p>I would not worry about yelp or any other sites people are comparing you to. Google emerged after the problem of internet search was 'solved', and Flickr appeared and succeeded after photo sites had been around for years.<p>You might want to concentrate on (and emphasize) what differentiates you.<p>If you have not already, use every channel you have available. Tell everyone you know, and remind them. Link to other food sites (even competitors?) and post on restaurant forums and sites.
"Ever wanted to keep track of all the great restaurants you've been to?"<p>The answer is NO. This is why you dont' have any visitors. Is it so hard to accept that ppl dont' give a rat's a$$ about "blogging" about stuffing themseves with food?<p>People like to talk about THEMSELVES. This is what drives social network sites.