

Ask HN: Do you know of other good HN-like places to post your articles? - swombat

As a blogger, I regularly post things on HN if I feel that they will be interesting to the community here. I also often post things into the appropriate subreddit. I tend to ignore digg, and submit some things to Slashdot.<p>Ultimately, that works very well for technology-related articles, because all those communities are technology-minded. So, for example, when writing blog articles on Woobius Scribbles (my company's blog), if they're relevant, I'll post them here.<p>However, the market for Woobius is architects and the construction industry. That's a very different niche from HN. And yet, there are quite a few people linked to the construction industry on this site, as witnessed by the comments on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=479749 .<p>So, my open questions to HN users who have blogs (or read blogs) in niches other than this one are:<p>Where do you go to find those non-technology blogs?<p>Where do you go to promote your blog(s)/businesses in non-technology niches?<p>What are the other "niche HN's" out there?<p>Thanks!
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ekpyrotic
I concur. I've been keenly searching for sites in HN's vein, but centered
around philosophy and the arts. 'HN's vein' is vague, I'll elaborate:

1\. Keen eyed moderators, stamping down on vandalism; including, bad grammar,
and bad spelling.

2\. A intelligent community of readers dedicated to adding comments of value:
carefully constructed, sourced, input.

3\. Clean, content-oriented design.

(I might have to put my dailymis.com domain to use)

~~~
russell
If you know of any half-way decent sites, pass them on, email if you prefer.
My SO is an artist and would like a good forum.

~~~
ekpyrotic
Russell,

No respectable forums to my knowledge; however, I do suggest 'Arts & Letters
Daily' (<http://www.aldaily.com/>). I expect you frequent A&L, a bulletin of
the day's most prominent cultural articles; on the off-chance there are those
still unaware I do, gladly, bring it to your attention.

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patio11
_Where do you go to find those non-technology blogs?_

Google for keywords of interest to you, talk to people in your market, talk to
your customers, etc.

 _Where do you go to promote your blog(s)/businesses in non-technology
niches?_

The succinct answer: You use it to promote other people.

The longer one: blogging other people's stuff and commenting on their blogs
gives you a relationship with them. Once you have a relationship with them,
and they trust you, it isn't "promoting your stuff" so much as it is sharing
something that they think their readers will enjoy.

Additionally, after you have a loyal fanbase, you will probably find that your
most successful "promotion" efforts are a result of pulling rather than
pushing. i.e. a portion of your readers who are more dedicated and savvier
will take it upon themselves to spread your stuff elsewhere.

[Edit: I don't make any money off the following recommendation, and only am
mentioning it because its exactly responsive to your query: I wrote a chapter
in a book called BlogBlazers about this. Its the above two paragraphs at
chapter length, essentially. Aaron Wall's chapter is good, too.]

~~~
swombat
You know, I agree with you, but I've found, from personal experience in the
technology-related sphere, that a little bit of help along the way makes the
whole process quicker. Submitting your articles to relevant forums makes it
more likely that you'll pick up a community of readers, commenters and
subscribers.

My problem is, I only know the communities that I belong to - and they're all
mostly technology-related, like HN or proggit.

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edgefield
You might check out <http://www.newmogul.com/> for business news...

~~~
raptrex
wow this site looks and functions exactly like HN

~~~
unalone
It's built using the same Arc-based system.

~~~
jsdalton
Which system is that?

~~~
jacquesm
this one:

<http://arclanguage.org/>

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ilamont
Check out Slinkset (YC Summer 08) - lots of niche sites that are not about
technology:

<http://discover.slinkset.com/>

(I started my own HN-like site for public corruption, using Slinkset:
<http://publicdime.slinkset.com/>)

Also outside of technology, I read Universal Hub (universalhub.com) to get a
handle on Boston-based blogs, but it doesn't have a voting system like HN.

In the tech sphere, I sometimes look at this one, focused on FOSS:

Free Software Daily -- fsdaily.com

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brandnewlow
If you want Chicago-related news/announcements/weirdness my site, The Windy
Citizen is (finally) starting to take off. <http://www.windycitizen.com>

There's not much tech on there yet, but there could be if local guys shared
their stuff on there.

As far as I know we're the only local, social news site out there. Kevin Rose
himself told me it was a lousy idea. I'm intent on proving him wrong.

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jacquesm
how about off-line ? or google adwords ?

Direct mail might make sense, or flyers at builders trade shows, I know that
sounds 'weird' for an online business but it would seem to me that your
potential customers are all much too busy to be hanging around on forums.

~~~
russell
I am way out of date on this, but vertical specific magazines are hungry for
stories. If it is reasonably well written and topical, you are pretty much
guaranteed to be published. The only downside is that you should wait until
it's published before putting it online. If you have a friend in PR, check to
see if this is still true or give one of the mags a call and pitch your idea.

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blhack
I run a site called <http://www.gibsonandlily.com>

all the people that post there are nerds, but it is mostly non-tech news...we
kindof joke that we're like reddit and digg...but for adults.

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raptrex
I dont know of one, maybe this is a good idea to make one? or start a
subreddit

~~~
swombat
"Making" a community is not really a technological problem... There is, for
example, an "architecture" reddit, but it is half dead and appears to be
populated by a handful of architecture fans, rather than by actual architects.

Creating such a community would definitely be a lot of work, with a very small
chance of payoff.

