Am I in the right place for advice

Marks2424,

You have to understand that in a public forum you are going to get a wide variety of opinions including those given by people who like to see their name in print who have very little or no basis for their comments.

WC Fields once said, "Opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one!"

A second point to understand is that sometimes in Internet marketing what is fashionable at one moment becomes out of fashion later. The underlying principles of good business are pretty constant, but tactics, methods, and practices go in and out of style to some degree. So it is not always surprising when what looks professional to one person may not get that same reaction at another time or by another person.

I think the best you can do is to be very careful who you listen to and follow. Take the advice of the true professionals that have "walked the walk" and know through personal experience what works best for them.

You can't listen to everything said on a public forum and expect to always come away with your questions answered intelligently.

Good luck with your IM career.

Steve

Marks2424,

Here are a couple of thoughts...

First, you mentioned Travelocity, Priceline, and Expedia. Those are huge travel sites, some of the largest and most popular sites online. Are you sure it's in your best interest to compete with, or compare your site to these giants?

Think about it, who is a traveler looking to book a trip going to trust with their reservations? You and your tiny, low traffic, "new kid on the block" site? Or one of the well-established, well-known giants in the field? Not to be critical, but who's going to win that battle every time?

You said:

"Then 6 months go by and I ask people the same thing because my conversion rate hasn't gone up"

Understand that there are many variables that affect conversion rates other than site design including the source of the traffic, the keywords used, your sales copy, the offer itself, pricing, competition, etc. You should be testing as many variables as you can, one at a time, to see if you can increase your conversions.

"I still check the thread where I asked people what makes these 2 sites so well designed and I still have no answers"

"wouldn't the same people who keep telling others why a site looks bad also be able to tell why a site looks good"

People in forums may think you're simply trying to spam them with your links if you ask "what's right with my design?" I don't know for sure, but I think some folks don't want to take the time to confirm that your site is well designed.

Also, what you're asking is pretty general in nature. Usually specific questions which can be answered in a short, brief post will get more and better responses than if you ask something like "tell me everything I'm doing right with my site design." Does that make sense? Folks are quick to critique and give a quick opinion about something they see that's wrong, but your question is pretty open ended and most people would see it as to broad to even attempt to answer. If they already like your site, they may not want to take the time to respond as opposed to jumping on the chance to tell you what's wrong.

These are just some thoughts I have about what you're trying to do. I think you should take a hard look at what has been successful for you so far and question whether continuing to do it makes sense. There are so many ways to make money online - if one doesn't work, you might consider re-evaluating what you're doing and research your way to a new approach.

The very best to you,

Steve

Can we see your site?
Not all recommendation made are genuine,You need to filter and identify some genuine advices then have time to review and decide which to implement on your site.
Otherwise you will end up changing a million times and if you still pose the same question you will still get the same responses.
All the best