San Francisco Tips is a site which I started for Dutch people visiting San Francisco. It could guide them to cheap hotels, good restaurants or the most trendy places to go out at that time. My intend was to build out the site, so that users can participate, and add their own tips.
It turned out to be harder than I thought! Here is why:
- I just had a daughter 6 month ago. While still working full time, and a commute of more than 2 hours a day, there is not a lot of time to work on getting new tips where to go, let alone put these on the site.
- Although the site is set up in PHP, I don’t have the sufficient knowledge to code the databases, and to build the web site in a way that people can add their own tips. At this moment I just have a simple form, that shoots an email to a Gmail account.
- The site is in Dutch. That means I have less competition, but also a much smaller audience. Most Dutch people speak English very well, and especially the people who are thinking of visiting San Francisco. Nevertheless I believe it is still a good niche market.
- The content that I have written so far, has not been that appealing. That should be done much better.
My wife, Fiona, has spent two hours today to rewrite some of the content on the homepage. I’m very happy with her work, because she not only rewritten it, but also extended the content.
Now it is just a matter of adding more content on San Francisco, to build more pages. So if you have any tips, send them through on the form.
And off course I need to get my act together, and start coding the proper web site, so it is a truly dynamic site where users can add content.