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Ask HN: After 2 years of content but low traffic, is it time to give up?

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Re: Ask HN: After 2 years of content but low traffic, is it time to give up?

#21

The numbers that matter are the ones I don’t see. Revenue? Expenses? Time commitment you put in. Opportunity cost of that time. Maybe you aren’t Zagat’s or whatever, but if it cash flows out, pays you for your time, or you just enjoy it... Why not.

Initially I was targeting users, eyeballs on the site. If I could get a few 1000 a month, my plan then was to approach investors, saying "I've got this many people using the site, this is how I plan to make money". So, I have 0 revenue and only 500 monthly visitors, they're the only figures I have right now!

Re: Ask HN: After 2 years of content but low traffic, is it time to give up?

#22

> One thing about the inbound traffic I am getting is that it's all for direct restaurant searches (e.g. "Johnny's Diner") rather than area searches (e.g. "Newtown restaurants"); the latter is where you see the site's true value, so everyone just bounces from the restaurant page. What page are you expecting to rank for “Newton restaurants”? And if people are ending up on the Johnny’s Diner page, why doesn’t that page…

For something like "newtown restaurants" I hwas hoping the search results page for that would rank, something like menucosm.com /restaurants/newtown-123 . On that page I have good canonical URL, pagination, rich text, SEO text, links to similar pages, all the standard stuff.

The reason I said the Johnny's Diner page doesn't show the value is because t;s the area search that's most useful. I have added links to the area search from the Johnny's Diner page, and that might be why I'm slowly seeing this upturn in traffic from 350 to 500 (the dates tie in with when I released the code)

Re: Ask HN: After 2 years of content but low traffic, is it time to give up?

#23
Probably.

I work with a site just like yours, and can obviously say only so much. But consider these things:

The reason you're getting good hits on restaurant pages is that most restaurant websites suck. Many might have only a facebook page, etc. Presently you're being "told" by Google that it's only going to send you individual restaurant traffic, but you feel the value is in the aggregator.

Which brings us to the uncomfortable truth.

Google is at war on aggregators and is doing everything it can to hide them. In the last 8 years it has pushed them further and further down the rankings, while having it's own aggregator services appear at the top of the rankings. Google don't want you to exist because being the middleman is where they make their money. A while ago there were some cases trundling through the courts, but no idea what happened with them.

Also, most of your competitors like tripadvisor/bookatable/opentable/timeout/resdiary/etc. sell bookings directly to the restaurants. They'll charge per cover (per head). If not, they'll be upselling something else (tripadvisor has recently been pushing a lot of "experiences" where it'll be making a big commission). Some of them actually make most of their money by also selling restaurant management software, etc. You haven't given your site, or said how you make money, but can you make that kind of money, and can you do direct sales to restaurants? They are hard to sell anything to as most of them are constantly on the breadline. If you're hoping to slap a bookatable widget on each of your listings and make money, prepare to be disappointed, it might cover your hosting and a few beers.

Finally, I hope you don't find this too rude, but are you really following good, modern SEO practice? As if I search "Newtown restaurants Ireland" then tripadvisor, your main competitor, is sitting pretty at the top. But your site is nowhere to be seen (I see no independent aggregators). Perhaps you've given a bad example as Google is insistent on trying to show me restaurants from Newtown, Wales. I also tried a few restaurant names in Newton and still couldn't figure out what your site is.

EDIT: Just saw you actually posted your site, so if I search "Rathmines Restaurants" you're 16 in google results. It's not bad, but you can see what the others are doing instead ("the top 10 restaurants in Rathmines"). You also see that if you go to any of the top results, a bunch of listings have "reserve" buttons, and use something like the opentable widget.

Plus points for having full text menus, your site is clean and fast, it's a good achievement. I just do wonder how you're going to make money on it. I would definitely try putting opentable widgets in asap so you can get a much better idea of what sort of revenue you could generate and just how much you'd have to grow it to make it worth the investment. In my experience though those widgets are pretty lacklustre unless you can figure out a way to make money directly from the restaurants.

Re: Ask HN: After 2 years of content but low traffic, is it time to give up?

#24
post #16

You probably should pivot. You have some nice data likely by now. It's more a question whether someone wants it. Basically you don't have product market fit. I suggest you do a business model canvas. Jot down your value proposition - what problem you're solving. Are you targeting people looking for locations? Or hungry people looking for a place to eat? Adventurous people looking for somewhere new? Someone just looki…

Thanks for this. The main use case is "Hungry people looking for a place to eat" when they know where they want to go, or near their current location if on mobile. I guess the market's too saturated for something so generic now. As you say, I should really "pick a specific problem", specific being the key word.

Or you can tackle the problem better. One of the world's biggest problems is deciding what to have for dinner, especially for groups that eat different things.

One thing I wanted to try is Akinator for restaurants.

Do you want pasta? No. Pizza? No. Something classy? No. Spicy? No. Fast food? Maybe. Burgers? No. Tacos? Okay.

Re: Ask HN: After 2 years of content but low traffic, is it time to give up?

#25

> One thing about the inbound traffic I am getting is that it's all for direct restaurant searches (e.g. "Johnny's Diner") rather than area searches (e.g. "Newtown restaurants"); the latter is where you see the site's true value, so everyone just bounces from the restaurant page. What page are you expecting to rank for “Newton restaurants”? And if people are ending up on the Johnny’s Diner page, why doesn’t that page…

For something like "newtown restaurants" I hwas hoping the search results page for that would rank, something like menucosm.com /restaurants/newtown-123 . On that page I have good canonical URL, pagination, rich text, SEO text, links to similar pages, all the standard stuff. The reason I said the Johnny's Diner page doesn't show the value is because t;s the area search that's most useful. I have added links to the ar…

https://www.menucosm.com/restaurants/newtown-123

How the heck are you expecting this to rank for anything?

> On that page I have good canonical URL, pagination, rich text, SEO text, links to similar pages, all the standard stuff.

Here's what I see when I load that URL:

https://imgur.com/a/cEffh4U

I see absolutely nothing like what you describe on that page.

Meta description: Find great restaurants in Sallybrook on menucosm.com Meta title: Restaurants in Sallybrook

Really?

And if the area search is so valuable on the Johnny's Diner page why are you linking to it and not making it a primary focus of the page?

Re: Ask HN: After 2 years of content but low traffic, is it time to give up?

#26
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this. The main use case is "Hungry people looking for a place to eat" when they know where they want to go, or near their current location if on mobile. I guess the market's too saturated for something so generic now. As you say, I should really "pick a specific problem", specific being the key word.

Or you can tackle the problem better. One of the world's biggest problems is deciding what to have for dinner, especially for groups that eat different things. One thing I wanted to try is Akinator for restaurants. Do you want pasta? No. Pizza? No. Something classy? No. Spicy? No. Fast food? Maybe. Burgers? No. Tacos? Okay.

Nice suggestion, thanks. Means I could pivot but still using my existing dataset

Re: Ask HN: After 2 years of content but low traffic, is it time to give up?

#27

Probably. I work with a site just like yours, and can obviously say only so much. But consider these things: The reason you're getting good hits on restaurant pages is that most restaurant websites suck. Many might have only a facebook page, etc. Presently you're being "told" by Google that it's only going to send you individual restaurant traffic, but you feel the value is in the aggregator. Which brings us to the u…

Thanks alot for this very detailed response. That's interesting about Google's war with aggregators but makes total sense now that you say it.

I do plan on integrating opentable, that'll be the next feature I add, if I stick with it. It's pretty much a labour of love at this stage, HN has convinced me I'm fighting a VERY uphill battle.

Restaurant management, along with freemium services on the site, was where I was hoping to make money eventually. Sadly, as you and others have pointed out, restaurants live on the breadline, so I think I picked a bad market!

In terms of SEO, think I posted the easy wins I did on another comment. "newtown" was just an example of a made up place for illustration purposes in the original post. That's cool that I'm in position 16 for Rathmines, I was down in the 50s last time I checked (Rathmines is a cool area with plenty of restaurants).

Re: Ask HN: After 2 years of content but low traffic, is it time to give up?

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For something like "newtown restaurants" I hwas hoping the search results page for that would rank, something like menucosm.com /restaurants/newtown-123 . On that page I have good canonical URL, pagination, rich text, SEO text, links to similar pages, all the standard stuff. The reason I said the Johnny's Diner page doesn't show the value is because t;s the area search that's most useful. I have added links to the ar…

https://www.menucosm.com/restaurants/newtown-123 How the heck are you expecting this to rank for anything? > On that page I have good canonical URL, pagination, rich text, SEO text, links to similar pages, all the standard stuff. Here's what I see when I load that URL: https://imgur.com/a/cEffh4U I see absolutely nothing like what you describe on that page. Meta description: Find great restaurants in Sallybrook on me…

Hey, thanks for getting back to me and taking a look.

Newtown and Johnny's Diner were just sample names I came up with. If you go to the homepage, you'll see links to area searches and the 3 most recent;y added restaurants. I didn't want to put anything specific, I guess I probably should have!

Re: Ask HN: After 2 years of content but low traffic, is it time to give up?

#30
post #12

Restaurants are an interesting space but all around hard to make money in. Restaurants just don't like to spend money where it isn't absolutely necessary. So it's hard to sell them ads or online services. You could look at letting restaurants claim their listings and offer them a pro package of services. Maybe menus, or even try offering online ordering. Being local you have an advantage that you can easily meet with…

Yeah, so freemium services to the restaurants was one of my ideas of making money. However, as you've pointed out, restaurants "just don't like to spend money where it isn't absolutely necessary", which is an interesting and valid point. Yeah, it was bad restaurant websites, with PDF menus, that inspired me to build the site.

regarding revenue, if your site takes off then you may be able to sell space for restaurants to include additional information and photos on their page (such as interior, staff, or food). if you go this route then you'll want to exercise some quality control so that the photos are both accurate and appealing
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