BusRates.com created value because it presented hours and hours of up-to-date research on one concise page, and enabled users to contact bus companies directly. Raised by an art teacher and writer, I looked at the site as a left-brained art project, and a cause with principle, that inadvertently became a commercial business. Keeping in mind that a web site can always be improved, I kept a running list of ranked ideas for the site, and implemented only the best, most solid options at a pace inline with budget and programmer time.

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I learned from past employers that when a group of people contribute to a database, there is less accountability or confidence in each others' entries. Information is inaccurate and ends up unusable. For a database to be have accurate information, you have to give one solution-seeking expert maintain absolute control. When all the base listing information was set up, the site's visitors would contact bus companies about the rates or equipment they posted. Customer inquiries prompted bus owners to log in and update their fleet information, prices and sales message on their BusRates posting frequently. And it was this constant updating of the content on all of these pages that I suspect improved BusRates organic ranking growing traffic from an initial 8,000 per month to the 90,000 to 135,000 visitors/mo when I handled operations up until April of 2010.

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I agreed to work for the buyer, UMA, for one year before having them operate it. After 15-1/2 months in DC with UMA, I left daily operations on April 15, 2010 to recuperate from working as many hours as physically possible for 6-1/2 years. I maintained a stake in the company, two seats on the board, but had no concrete plans to return. I saw escape from the overwhelming daily operations of the site as an opportunity to plan a redesign that would shock and awe the industry one last time, but this was overruled by UMA executives who put employees first, bus company members second and customers last - the opposite of what I felt was necessary. I believed the site should better develop its bus charter specialty, whereas other managers wanted to dilute the site by adding restaurant and hotel directories. It was the classic specialize versus diversify disagreement. UMA proceeded to develop and launch a new version of the site which took more than twice the estimated time to launch, and launched it incomplete. 4 of the 5 new directories they had were not functional and had no listings at all! I felt this decision demoted the brand. I also fought to remove banner ads and newsletters unless they had something genuinely important to say. There were also disagreements in the order and method for presenting listings that reduced the customer's experience to increase profit short term at the expense of customer loyalty long term. By mid 2018, BusRates monthly traffic had plummeted to under 15,000 per month. Luckily, I had sold out in late 2012.

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