
When You Don't Make the Front Page of Hacker News - timsegraves
http://blog.interviewsy.com/post/75118833004/when-you-dont-make-the-front-page-of-hacker-news
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jpatokal
...Write A Blog Post About It That Makes the Front Page of Hacker News
Instead?

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tomasien
I can almost 100% guarantee you that having an automatic slider killed a lot
of upvotes for you. I'm not trying to be a dick, I've actually seen this over
an over, and I experience it as a user - if I see a Show HN, I'm upvoting
unless I have a reason not to. I despite automatic sliders, and yours is
particularly egregious. Long term, it's a tiny mistake in what seems to be an
otherwise interesting project, so I'd do a way with it immediately to avoid
the distraction.

~~~
timsegraves
Fair point. I'm actually not a big fan of the automatic sliding either. I just
didn't think to take it off. I'll definitely do that now.

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jsankey
The upside is that people have to be quick to spot the typos, e.g. "miriad"
;).

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Jedd
Made that teeny bit worse by the following 'of'.

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cl8ton
Don’t take not making the front page on HN as product validity as 99% of
posters here are not the target market of 100% of the ‘Show HN’ posts here.

btw: You summed it up pretty nice in your blog post!

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timsegraves
Thanks! It can be a little disappointing not making a big splash but I just
hope that little post helps others in similar situations remember to keep the
longer view.

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dsugarman
I am interested what happens when you don't initially make it to the front
page, but then your postmortem does, and it links you to your original
project. What is the conversion % of people who then check it out?

~~~
timsegraves
Yeah, I think that will be an interesting followup post.

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bastijn
I'm even more interested in the conversion rate for the front page HN
generated visitor boom, and actual long term gain. But that might be too hard
to measure.

I myself always visit the sites but I cannot remember I have been using one
for longer than a day.

~~~
gk1
If he's using Google Analytics it should be fairly straightforward to tie
conversions back to the referral source.

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Aaronneyer
Aside from just having a good article/project, it takes good timing, good
luck, and sometimes some good upvotes from friends to make the front page.
I've had a few things which I was sure would take off not make the front page,
including a combined ruby and rails security vulnerability, as well as a
project with plenty of publicity and 50,000+ views on XDA.

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ialex
Wow, you hacked HN whit this post to be on the frontpage congratz you made it
and now i will check interviewsy.com.

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paul7986
Upvoted for the irony!

My 1st two start-ups made the front-page.

My current and I think best yet hasn't had the same good fortune.

good luck to you!

~~~
timsegraves
Haha, I know, right?? What's your current project? I love checking out what
people are passionate about.

~~~
paul7986
Thanks

Our web app turns a crowd & their devices into a huge stereo system; all
devices play same audio in sync.

[http://SpeakerBlast.com](http://SpeakerBlast.com)

We think it's cool, but maybe people don't see it being useful? We use it at
home to fill our house with audio.

~~~
paul7986
Thank you!

Hmmm so do you think we should use images of the supported platforms/browsers
instead of all that heavy text?

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freditup
Potentially, depends how it would look visually I guess. You could just
display a little message saying the platform isn't supported yet and linking
to the FAQ perhaps.

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erikb
Your landing page is not the thing. And you get the right feedback to tell you
that: no votes. So why complain about it instead of working on it? You seem to
have spent a lot of time on your tool. Landing page is were you have to work
on now!

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ahahah
It's name has a spin-off air about it.

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d-k
irony at its best...

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trollingineer
That's what you get when a bunch of virgins decide what gets to the front
page.

