Travel portal, good site, but poor traffic

[simonhere]

Hi Guys,

I built a travel portal where users can create a profile similar to plentyoffish but aimed at users who enjoy travelling. I have not marktered the site as much as I would of liked to and the software is awesome.

However I am not seeing the results, the domain has been around since 2000. I built the site about two years ago.

Anyone no a good method to increase the visitors to a social networking site? should I setup dummy profiles? or should I pay for mailblasts? what has worked in the past and what are the easy steps I can take?

- Simon

[bill]

Word of mouth and links from other travel sites might help. However, that's a tough market. There are some big players that get most of the traffic and SERP-love from the SEs. They've become authority sites while your site has lingered.

[piatkow]

In other fields I have seen good sites flop because everybody sticks with an established on-line community.

A technically better site isn't enough, you need hearts and minds.

[maximillianos]

Also, there is no "easy" way to get more visitors unless you got the cash to buy them.

If your site is really sticky, it might be you best bet to buy ads to drive traffic and hope a few stick around.

[sharong]

Have you tried implementing a user-recommendation system of sorts, where users are encouraged to send a link to their friends to the website?

For example, some sites offer a widget which in fact encourages users to send a link to friends, offering them an incentive that the website will donate money to charity.

[edited by: jatar_k at 12:58 am (utc) on Jan. 1, 2009]
[edit reason] no urls thanks [/edit]

[parambyte]

not that i have a super successful site, but I have been working in advertising and marketing and perhgaps I can tell more if i see your site. however, I have realised if you give consumers what they want, they will come to you.

since you have a travel site, i believe you must be passionate about travelling, and perhaps you would want to give away a dream travelling destination for free as part of some promotional on your site. if you can afford that, you would drive traffic up like crazy, amongst people who ARE passionate about travelling!

[DavidAugust]

I'd suggest integrating Facebook Connect [developers.facebook.com], Google Friend Connect [google.com] and or OpedID [openid.net] to make it smoother for users to sign up.

Also, explode your content, meaning let your users share, mash-up and otherwise use and interact with your site how they want and where they want. This may mean making sure you are mobile friendly (write your site in valid and strict XHMTL and you often already are), and maybe make applications to play well on others' sites (like a facebook app).

Circle of Moms claimed >800,000 new sign ups in I think under 3 months, and their growth has been partly attributed to their successful Facebook app and Facebook connect integration.

Make it easy for users to sign up and do what they want, and they'll sign up.

[edited by: engine at 10:59 am (utc) on Jan. 3, 2009]
[edit reason] TOS [/edit]