OK, now what?

[tobias]

Greetings all!

A little background; I bought and read the book, had an idea, bought a server, put up the site, tried to get people to hit it, fail.

It's a site that let's people sign up and post auctions as a service provider or as a service requester and its free. I was thinking about putting ads and/or some premium services on it to cover the bills, but I need to find a way to drive lots of people to it all at once or what's the point.
I tried getting it dugg on digg.com, and a few other sites like that but to no avail. I'm not sure Adsense is right either.

I'm kind of stuck and any suggestions would be fantastic.
Thanks, all!

BTW, the site is http://www.taskhive.com

[johnnywolf]

Hey great job so far. The layout of the site is beautiful, however, here are the problems I see so far.

1. The idea is a bit confusing. There are sites like Craigslist.org that are a lot simpler for the same service.

2. You are using the internet, which is world wide, for something that is location specific. The only reason craigslist made it big was they started small, only in SF, and slowly added location by location.

I would recommend going niche first.

Good luck!

[tobias]

Hey great job so far. The layout of the site is beautiful, however, here are the problems I see so far.

1. The idea is a bit confusing. There are sites like Craigslist.org that are a lot simpler for the same service.

2. You are using the internet, which is world wide, for something that is location specific. The only reason craigslist made it big was they started small, only in SF, and slowly added location by location.

I would recommend going niche first.

Good luck!

Thanks for the reply, johnnywolf.

What do you think about reducing the index page to a simple panel with a "signup now" link to keep it really simple to reduce confusion?

I did struggle with the notion of having it local then expanding it out, but a lot of services don't have geographical boundaries like graphic design or software development, so I thought I'd have to have it open to all regions.

Hmmm.
I'll have to revisit my strategy.

[kevingc]

When I think of Florida, I think of beaches. Have you thought of creating a product (such as sunblock) that would appeal to people you can get in contact with?

I'm sure Florida's beaches have some attractive people you could get product endorsements from...

Also, since you'd still be in the state, perhaps your parents wouldn't notice.

[clanshrapnel]

Sounds like you need to read up on web marketing.

There are plenty of books out there on it, and you can also check out www.thirtydaychallenge.com since that is pretty much a course on web marketing. I don't have any affiliation with that website, but I think they do a great service of putting together great web marketing information for you for free.

You'll learn stuff such as using socialposter.com, using squidoo lenses, and other ways to point traffic to your site.