I launched 06-10 and constantly feel helpless and lost. What advice do you have?

In 2006, I graduated from college and took a 2 month trip through Europe. I realized that travel help was limited to huge corporations that gave outdated info and that there was no one true aggregate for all things travel.

I began to build databases, polish my idea, and save up money for programming. In 2008, I had compiled and cleaned up databases for:

* Embassies worldwide including telephone number, address, URL, email, and fax #

* Airlines including partners, reservation numbers in all countries around the world, and frequent flyer programs. I also went one by one and marked all the low cost carriers in each country.

* Airports including maps to show proximity to surrounding areas (useful when traveling low cost airlines)

I then hired my buddy to do the design and programming. We created a travel blog section where users could create travel scrap books (journals, albums, video embed, plus other features) that also allows you to add places that you have eaten, partied at, and slept in. The idea was to create a 100% user based recommendation system without the big corporate glut of advertising and all that stuff.

I now have a product that creates travel guides for countries and individual cities, but without users, it becomes very difficult to grow. I've gotten some feedback from friends and family, but they don't really care to help out much.

The idea is two fold:

1) Have people sign up and add things about their home towns so that other users can travel to that city and have the ability to do touristy things and non-touristy things

2) Have people sign up and add things they find while they explore the world to help filter out the garbage.

My site is http://www.QTripper.com I write articles once in a while and also try to fund the development by having affiliate products that are relevant to what people might want.

I spend most of my time attempting to link build and trying to find & fix bugs.

I have a bunch of tools I want to add that would be very useful for travelers (pro and newb) but I have minimal funding left and want to focus on marketing.

Any advice is much appreciated

TL;DR I spent all my money developing and have nothing left over to market properly and even if I did I would have no idea what I am doing!

The short answer is, do it yourself.

There are a number of EXTREMELY insightful HN users who have talked at length about doing their own marketing, SEO, client acquisition and related topics. The most prolific is Patrick (HN user: patio11). His personal blog is filled with a great deal of useful information

http://www.kalzumeus.com http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11

I guess your audience is the backpacker type, the ones who travel for an extended period of time (3+ months). Have you thought of approaching travel agents who specialize in these sorts of holidays so you could somehow partner with them? No sure what the deal would be but I guess your audience is right there..

The audience right now is focused on the backpacker type, but I want to eventually give it a feel as a go-to place to add your travel stories.

My idea is to eventually have backpackers in europe, a family going to disney land, or people taking a small trip who update their pics and status on facebook use the site.

And yes, I have looked in the travel agents but to no avail. At first I wanted to develop APIs that I would trade in exchange for their clients as my users. I've also pitched having them fund the development of a tool in exchange to use that tool for free. No one bit

Facebook Connect is in the works. I was thinking of having an internal like button to use with the internal point system each user gets for being active.

facebook group already exists and it has supporters.

I will look into those sources to populate the site with info.

Aside from it being new and empty, is there anything off the top of your head, as a backpacker, that would make you not want to use the site?