When to Give up?

I can understand your feelings and believe others encounter the same while building up a website.

last time I have one already made but don't have patience ..thus give up and close down

last year I do back again , using back the same domain ( lucky haven't taken ) than do again

towards end of last year I run out of ideas etc....than I revamp it...the site

till now

GIVE UP.....trying to make wordpress work for that idea. You have the basis for a good idea for a web app but Wordpress is not the tool for it. You could have your very own web app social network for travelers sharing their pictures while on vacation. Might cost a few hundred dollars (I know web developers in that range if you are interested) but it would be yours others would add content to it (ala facebook) and you'd have something that could grow into something very lucrative

How much of your precious energy are you sacrificing feeling guilty about it? Let it go and do something you enjoy more. Put your energy to the best use possible...we only have so much of it.

Why not just sell it and use the income from it for your new baby?

There is NO SHAME in quieting when you get burned out ... there is only shame when you get depressed because you feel hopeless.

If you don't like the project -- sale it and move on . It's okay .. Trust me ; I'm doing it right now.

The same thing happened to me with my first blog (in a different niche). It got some traffic and made a little money, but for the time and effort I was spending on it, it just didn't seem worth it. What did I do? I downloaded all the posts and compiled the best ones into an ebook. I already did the writing, why let all that hard work go to waste? Travel related books are great. You got a lot of content, just find different ways of making money off it that doesn't involve blogging.

You don't count pictures as content..?

There's no reason that articles have to be heavy on words and light on images, and I'd have thought many travel buffs would love to see more images on the site.

Your use of images on the site seems to be mixed though. I found some take you away from the site to a Flickr slide show like this example, some have images that are clickable but just take you to the uploaded image URL, and there are others that are not clickable or even both on the same page

My point here is that good user experience means website visitors can predict what will happen when they do something. Having a number of different options that may happen when you are about to click on an image can negate the UX such as taking someone off to a standalone page just showing the image breaks the continuity of the site, or taking them off your site to a Flickr sl;ide show.

By the way - look out for a plugin being released this week by Cindy battye called Sticky Posts - it may be a real time saver for someone like you who has lots of images and can add them into an article that will get people clicking and engaging.

In terms of giving feedback then I approach the site as if I was someone that was looking to travel to a specific destination and therefore was interested in finding information about a specific location.

The number of location specific posts seems to give strange totals. Looking at the menu of 'Place to Go' for instance. Asia is indicated as having 123 articles/posts yet when you expand it to see what countries are covered the aggregate total for all the individual countries only add up to 93.

That totalling issue is the same for Australia & Pacific 15/16 (1 missing?), Central & South America 11/13 (2 missing), Europe 30/42 (12 missing), Middle East & Africa 20/28 (8 Missing) and North America 72/77 (5 missing).

This means there could be 58 posts unaccounted for. It may be these posts have not had the appropriate category or tag checked so they appear within the post grid for those categories, or maybe they don't exist at all and somehow the totals are just being shown wrong.

If they do exist though this could lead to frustration of anyone who's written an article that then can't be found via the menu, or from prospective readers of articles (of a country that doesn't exist on the menus) but the article may actually have been written by someone.

There's a lot of work gone into thisyour site and I feel it would be a shame not to continue with it. If coming up with content is not your bag now, then is there a better way of encouraginng more contributions from others - competitions for the best travel writing, photo contests etc. Maybe getting people voting for favourite articles/images etc. Could you also try to get sponsorship from businesses to help support the site i.e. Selling ad space on appropriate pages to local businesses there such as hostels, scuba schools etc.

Here's some honest feedback:

I don't like the website's design. It looks similar to the site of my doctor (not kidding) with all these cold colors. Travelling for me is about excitment, making awesome experiences, meeting nice people and being happy. Unfortunately, this is not reflected in your design.

The same goes for the titles of many of the articles. I don't want to read a blog post called "A weekend in San Francisco". It's too boring! Why isn't this called "Top 15 locations you need to visit in San Francisco" or "My crazy adventures in San Francisco". I know you are not writing these articles and it leads to the next issue.

I think when people read blogs, they want to connect with the author. This is what makes them come back and read article after article. However, if you have random authors you are removing this effect. I know that there are aggregators doing that successfully, but that's because they only pick the best content.

I like how you react to feedback. You soak it up without getting defensive and you analysed the main problems already. You will be successful with that mentality eventually, the only question is if this project is really the right one to make it happen. Selling that site and starting something new you are more passionate about seems to be a good idea.

You could hire someone to write the articles for you.

You can even hire someone to manage the blog for you.

A good place to look is elance.com

I can really understand what you're going through. After a lot of effort and lack of results it can suck the passion out of you.

Just a thought... but why not turn the site into one that's more experiential in nature?

Meaning, do more photographs, create videos where you interview local businesses at your destinations, etc... create some real value and see if you can initiate a spark.

I wouldn't scrap what you've done, but perhaps you can enhance it.

Finally, I would say you have to find your own unique voice. Sounds like photography and video may do that for you.

I teach my clients to work through the following questions and it literally can change your website and digital marketing quickly:

1. What are the "specific" problems you are passionate about solving?
2. What are the tangible values your customers experience and how do they feel about the experience?
3. What are the "specific" problems you solve for each tangible value?
4. Who are you "specifically" solve each problem for (in detail)?
5. How are your products or services "a" part of "a" solution?

Hope that helps?

Best wishes... and I'm not convinced that giving up is the best answer.

~ Don Purdum

There are a lot of wonderful and creative suggestions here that make one re-think and be motivated again.

With all that was already said, I also suggest you take some time off, clear your mind, and probably spend a vacation for a while, surround yourself with people who have a very positive outlook. This will help you re-think of your plans and will help you turn things around positively.

Hey Michael,


Your website looks fine.

You need to implement a few changes and it will work wonders if:

1. Get a logo designed for your blog. You can hire people from http://www.fiverr.com for just $5.
2. Your blog content needs attractive headlines. The headlines should not only be simple and rich in keywords, but attractive enough to grab user attention. Right now, the headlines lack keywords and are not soothing to the eyes.


Regards,
Chintan

I've tried plenty of business ideas over the last few years I've been online entrepreneuring.

Some have gone on to make me a lot of money, many have failed miserably.

With everything that I start I make sure I finish a set amount of work on it before I analyze whether to give up or continue. You need to give everything a fair shot of content, implementation and a great deal of marketing before you can make a decision on the viability of the idea.

If you feel you've done that, it's ok to move on to something else. You're not giving up, you're taking your learnings and implementing it in another venture.

I create real community websites from scratch (not with WP).

I'm about to launch 2 series of websites, the first is for chat and make friends, the other is for language improvement.

both of them cover more than 10 countries.

So I think your articles can be interesting for my project.

If you don't know what to do with them, we can do a partnership, I host them in my sites and I put a link or a button to your site, so when I will work on the promotion you will have more visitors.

The first part of the project is online but not started yet, I need to create a source of incomes in order to have a minimum to invest in it (that's why I use the forum, I want to learn).

So I'm in the same situation as you, I have a project but need to promote it, except mine more than a blog.
But me, my strategy is to learn to create simple/short project that can generate a few incomes.

Then I will use the little incomes to invest in the promotion of the "real projects" who are supposed to do a few millions, if they work properly.

The texts on the landing page will be changed i will put more keywords etc for SEO.

soonchat USA

Use this login and password if you want to visit the sites (they are in demo mode, all the users with "demo" in their name are not real)

Login: jack2
Password: jack2


So PM me if you think this might be a solution for your site.

Good luck.

You could simply approach it with a different
angle.

Personally, I like videos on adventures that
inspire to get up and going to get there myself.

Your blog could be video based where you
document your own adventures and that of others.

I would just switch it up without losing your
personal touch. You have nothing to lose by
thinking outside the box and being creative.

Never give up on your dreams,life is too short.

Never give up

OK, so two years later, after lots of procrastination, half-hearted attempts and investing my energy elsewhere I've decided to just completely let go and find new direction.