selling a site that doesn't make money...

[Graf1771]

ok, odd title (got to get your attention!) but that's exactly what I'm trying to do...

background:
It's a blog, set up in the last couple of weeks, based on an idea from a friend. Why is it so expensive to travel by public transport, especially when we are constantly being told to be more environmentally friendly?

www.cheaperbycar.co.uk

So the site is set up, no adverts and just information and links being added. We're still working on the site, adding a forum and contact forms but we want to get a readership, people using the comments so we can push this site as far as we can.

So far we're getting the links from Technorati, Digg, Blinklist, Reddit, Spurl. Adding links on our other sites and blogs... Anything we can think that doesn't cost money. Of course we also want to get into the search engines (2 weeks since launch and nothing yet).

Can anyone think of anything I'm not doing? Or could be doing better?

[ReviewGolf.com]

Well, promoting your site by means of using sites like this one is one of the things you do... What are you goals over all?

[Graf1771]

Overall we really want the site to grow into a place for debate on public transport and try to use it as a launchpad for a serious challenge to most people's ideas on travel and car use...

Hmm, that sounds pretty serious! For now just a good place for discussion and an authority on the issues involved would be good. It would be great to see the site linked from articles on newspaper sites and other respected sites.

Who thinks it's possible?

[dburdon]

Graf,

last week I travelled by car from Kent to deepest Somerset. 215 miles in 3.75 hours by car without breaking the speed limit. Probably 30 speed cameras. The same trip by public transport would have taken 12+ hours start to finish. Its a no brainer.

On the other hand a 50 mile trip to London involves the train and tube (Subway). The congestion charge and high parking costs make it a no brainer.

What worries me is how uncompetive the train has become for long journeys. Its generally cheaper to fly.

[ootilia]

Hi Graf,

hope you don't mind my butting in... I've just visited your site and while I believe it's well-built (and the topic is interesting), I have a few issues to raise:

1. Your main site is a blog, and I see you're also preparing to launch a forum. I was wondering if this won't dilute the participation of your users in terms of making comments? I would have opted for a classical, non-blogging type of website where to display the main content / articles, then have each of them linked to the forum with something like "discuss this entry on our forum" or similar. Or just have a blog and let users comment on entries. Having both a blog and a forum might not be very practical right now, as I've seen this working successfully only on very large sites with a lot of traffic.

2. What primary keywords will you target? If you plan to rely on visitors coming through organic searches, I'd say you need to give your keywords a lot of thought. At a quick glance, it seems like the keywords you might have, are not very relevant to the site's content.

Cheers,
Otilia

[Graf1771]

Thanks for those last two replies...

dburdon - I might have to add that as a comment on the site! I'm planning an article on the comparitive costs of flying, train and car on a trip to Edinburgh soon.

ootilia - You are right about the potential to reduce participation with both a blog and forum. At the moment the forum isn't working so we're concentrating on the blog and allowing comments to try and start to get people involved. Hopefully the forum will be up and running soon though, at which point we're going to encourage use of that. I think that more people are likely to start using the site with comments though and then move into the forum as there becomes more content to discuss.

I'm not entirely sure of the keywords at the moment, as you say the site is well built - to full AAA accessibility standards, web standards and as close to perfect SEO as I can manage with the time I have to put in to this site. If you have any suggestions of keywords I'll be glad to incorporate them!

update... we're now in Google and getting over 30 visits a day from various sources. Not bad for a site that was just an idea 2 weeks ago!