

What it's like hitting the front page - twice - jonhmchan
http://www.jonhmchan.com/thoughts/2013/9/21/lessons-learned-hitting-the-front-page-twice

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jlgaddis
~18 months ago, Gizmodo linked to[0] a page on my web site. It was then posted
to Reddit, was shared several thousand times on Facebook, and also linked to
by The Atlantic. (I'm not sure if it was ever linked to on HN or not or how to
even check.)

I was at a customer's site that morning (one where cell phones are absolutely
not permitted and I couldn't exactly pull up my personal e-mail) and my first
hint that something was up was when I looked at my phone upon leaving for the
day and seeing the absurd number of "new follower" e-mail messages from
Twitter.

I knew something was up but didn't know what until I got home that evening and
could get online. By then, the page had in the neighborhood of 145k page views
and the worst was over. I thought it was cool as hell but the girlfriend, meh,
not so much. I had already arrived home later than expected, making us late
for dinner w/ friends, and she certainly did not share in my enthusiasm, to
say the least.

When it was finally over, that page had received just north of 180k page views
and made me a few hundred bucks thanks to the AdSense banner across the top of
the page. It was certainly a neat experience.

[0]: [http://gizmodo.com/5881627/have-you-ever-unlocked-any-of-
the...](http://gizmodo.com/5881627/have-you-ever-unlocked-any-of-these-
computing-achievements)

------
asdfprou
Sick post, brah-ski.

In all seriousness, great work here. I especially like the point you make
about not fighting back. Too often the HN hivemind will try to take someone
down just for submitting something opinionated ("Why would I learn PostgreSQL
so late into my web development stream?!??!"). Let people say what they have
to say and stay your ground.

Keep it up!

~~~
jonhmchan
Thanks for the feedback. It was such a crazy day yesterday and at one point I
did make some mistakes. I think it's really important to remember that people
probably aren't trying to ruin your life if they give you criticism - just
roll with it!

