

How We Failed Our Way to a Day on the Front Page of Hacker News - rblion
http://groovehq.com/blog/hacker-news?utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=10892138&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_eIlhyyUfA_L1NcOJnWqS0ld7WsPVP_v8BkBmSVfOYR11rbH2-q1IZXkQoHYChEKL8oIEYYi1LhVK3jFpd2ViVW6V2SA&_hsmi=10892138

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Strilanc
> _Once he was on board, I went to work lining up a team of upvoters from
> different IP addresses. Following Alex’s strategy, we wanted to get as many
> upvotes as we could, as quickly as possible._

That's pretty scummy.

> _Less than ten minutes after executing on our bulletproof strategy, our post
> was nowhere to be found._

Good. If you're going to try to game the system, you deserve to get your posts
deleted.

Also, this:

> _And interestingly, he changed the headline from "7 Lessons We Learned Going
> from Zero to $30k/Month in Under a Year," to "Lessons Learned Going from
> Zero to $30k/Month in a Year"._

> _Shorter, simpler, more direct. Flies in the face of the copywriting wisdom
> I had been reading about specificity and numbered lists. And yet, it
> worked!_

is a really revealing thing to say. It means that your plans to make the front
page somehow didn't include _reading the submission guidelines_ [1]:

> _If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous
> adjective, we 'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To
> Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the
> number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."_

1:
[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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buckbova
"We weren’t able to hack HN, but we didn’t have to; by putting effort into
publishing high-value content, we were able to get our readers to do much of
the heavy lifting for us."

I understand folks want to market their business, but I'm glad this is not an
easy forum to so.

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teddyh
They’ve _admitted_ using bad methods to scam their way into HN. Why are we
still seeing them here? Their domain should be banned outright.

~~~
davidw
It would appear that this method is more or less common knowledge at this
point. I knew most of what they listed myself, although it's not something
I've ever employed as you can see from my submission history.

------
joshdance
"Interesting, posted by some guy named Josh, wait, that was me!"

~~~
rblion
Oops. Didn't see that. I got this link in my email.

