
How To Get On The Frontpage of Hacker News - Ataub24
http://alexstechthoughts.com/post/29406022580/how-to-get-on-the-frontpage-of-hackernews
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edw519
_you need to write something interesting_

Please do this and _only_ this.

 _Send the link...to at least 20 people from different locations that you know
will upvote or submit it....Now you change the link...and send the frontpage
to people when asking to upvote going forward. I would try to send to another
10 people._

Please don't do this.

Just let your submission speak for itself. When you game the system in any way
at all, you're just fucking it up for everyone else. Trust the rest of us to
upvote what we like and let the site continue to grow organically.

If you game the system for your own temporary satisfaction, you're turning
what should be quality content for a demanding audience into a middle school
popularity contest. In the long run, the site suffers and we all suffer.

Is slowly killing the golden goose worth that one day surge?

~~~
PaulHoule
You've got to face the fact that the average person who creates web pages is
clueless about how to get traffic. It's harder in 2012 than it's ever been --
and it's just going to get harder when Facebook and Twitter realize that it's
a matter of life and death for them to stop giving web sites free traffic.

If you're going to be successful, you've got to be aggressive, but you don't
want to be like all the people selling e-books and penis pills either.

My favorite tactic HN, lifted from reddit, is the headline that makes an
absurd and overblown claim. If you can get a high clickthrough when people see
the "new" page, that's a big help.

So far as voting rings go, it's hard for me to believe that HN isn't already
strongly affected by them. I can think of so many second rate blogs that
consistently make the front page. These aren't terrible content, but nothing
special, and they don't deserve the level of attention they get.

The most obnoxious thing about HN is that when certain controversial topics
come up (say there was a really provocative article on text editors) we see a
surge of people writing "me too" blog posts and replies and then we get six or
seven of those on the front page.

That's a hell of a lot worse than the occasional guy who spends his nights and
weekends for six months developing a project who wants a little publicity on
HN because he's completely shut out of TechCrunch because he's geographically
challenged.

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p4bl0
"Sending someone a direct link to your post results in an invalid upvote."

Is that true? When I share a story that I find interesting I send the direct
link on identi.ca, twitter, and/or irc, and when I am the one who sumbitted
the link I can see the upvote of people telling me that they have just
upvoted. Has it always been a lucky coincidence? I can't think so.

Anyway, I think the only sure and valid way to get on the front page is to
submit your (or others) stories only when you really think they are of
interest for this particular community. This is what I do and it naturally
works most of the time.

~~~
wkdown
I am wondering the same thing. I have HN RSS in Google Reader. If I liked the
post, I will click the comments link which takes me here. I will then upvote.
Doesn't make a lot of sense if I have to go out to the front page and search
for it (if its even there) to get the upvote to count.

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EzGraphs
Three votes seems to be the lowest threshold to initially make it to the front
page. Not sure on what sort of time frame or criteria is needed. Exception is
the posts hiring for YC Startups which start up on the first page when
initially posted.

New entries display in orange: <http://hn4d.com/>

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shell0x
Posting in the IRC channel seems also like a good solution to get upvotes. But
it feels still a bit odd that your post can't get on the front page on a
normal way.

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gatlin
I made it to the front page one time by doing something neat and hacker-y. It
wasn't business oriented but I had fun.

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philbarr
Well, it worked!

~~~
Ataub24
;)

