
How much it's worth to be #1 on Hacker News for a day - arshadgc
http://arshadchowdhury.com/1527-how-much-its-worth-to-be-1-on-hacker-news-for-a-day/
======
chrisacky
Here's some other stats for those interested... and also this might serve as
some encouragement.

I didn't have a blog at the time but wanted to write something to submit to HN
so I set one up on Posterous and wrote my post. Ended up #1 for about 6 hours,
and stayed on the front page for over 24 hours.

[http://www.chrisacky.com/images/stats.png](http://www.chrisacky.com/images/stats.png)

But do you know what I loved the most...

After I wrote the content and submitted to HN, I took my dog for a half hour
dog walk.. and came back to this.

[http://www.chrisacky.com/images/trends.png](http://www.chrisacky.com/images/trends.png)

If you write anything, providing it's: original, interesting, controversial,
echo-chamber'd or otherwise a decent news-scoop, you can usually get enough
upvotes to make front page.

Unfortunately, I've found that the really technical posts which are awesome
never seem to stick around for that long which is why it's good to check out
/new every so often too.

IF YOU DON'T WRITE IT, THEY WON'T COME.

Everyone should have a blog, and providing it's not spam, you will be amazed
at how easy it can be to get readers.

~~~
gedrap
>> Unfortunately, I've found that the really technical posts which are awesome
never seem to stick around for that long which is why it's good to check out
/new every so often too.

That's the kind of... sad? Part of HN. Hardly anything lives for more than a
day on home page. And links on /new have a few hours and then they got lost.

Not sure about others but I personally tend to look at the posts which already
have a vote or two, while skipping the ones which don't. Eh, social proof goes
quite far.

I think there is an opportunity for a tool which would extract the keywords
from the post (not the title) and would give me some content from /new which
you wouldn't have discovered from top pages. Been thinking about it for a
while, what do you reckon folks?

~~~
StavrosK
A fairly technical post I wrote the other day made it to #1 right away and
stayed on the front page for a day or so, so I can't say that no technical
posts stick around...

The post: [http://www.stavros.io/posts/brilliant-or-insane-
code/](http://www.stavros.io/posts/brilliant-or-insane-code/)

------
Miyamoto
I see this all the time on HN. For anyone interested in the formula:

1\. Have an app.

2\. Get some Amazon referral links.

3\. Have a blog with ads.

4\. Author a controversial blog post and fill it with the above three items.

5\. Submit to HN. Hope your post hits a chord on HN.

6\. Follow up a week later with a meta blog post about your success.

7\. Submit to HN. Hope your follow up hits a chord on HN.

8\. Go back to #1.

~~~
arshadgc
The lesson here, for me, is that popular posts on HN aren't exactly a treasure
trove. I'm not complaining about the money, but I'm somewhat underwhelmed. But
you're probably spot on about the playbook.

------
frank_boyd
Nice that you made your money. Unfortunately, you also gave some bad advice:

Working on a laptop only all day long is insane. You need to separate screen
an keyboard, otherwise one of them will be at the wrong height. If you use a
laptop, it means you need to add an external keyboard. Everything else makes
absolutely no ergonomic sense!

Here's an example of what you should have advertised:
[http://www.ergotron.com/ProductsDetails/tabid/65/PRDID/320/l...](http://www.ergotron.com/ProductsDetails/tabid/65/PRDID/320/language/en-
US/Default.aspx)

Plus, you can sit and then stand up by just pushing down/pulling up the table
up easily with one hand.

As for the optimal keyboard: [http://www.kinesis-
ergo.com/freestyle2.htm](http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/freestyle2.htm)
(Freestyle2 VIP3; forget the "Ascent")

~~~
NoodleIncident
$60 product is an impulse purchase. $900 is a lifestyle choice.

Some improvement is better than no improvement at all.

~~~
frank_boyd
The $900 for a desk that will let me work in a healthy way for a few decades
(high quality, very robust), was the best investment I ever made.

------
bdcravens
_Hacker News stories are often scooped up by other news outlets. Within a day,
Fox Business asked me to be on their show, Huffington Post France wrote an
article about it, and I was featured briefly on Yahoo’s homepage. Here’s the
video from Fox._

Congrats, though I'd say your experience happens 1 out of maybe 1000 times?

~~~
kevin_morrill
Probably closer to 1 in 20 if you really get to #1 for that long. It also
depends a lot on topic, and how many people it strikes a nerve with.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2057706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2057706)
had 12 votes and only made it to the middle of HN frontpage, but got written
up in TechCrunch on a slow news day.

~~~
bdcravens
Yeah, but how many go on to major media, like Fox Business News? I suspect
that had a lot to do with the success.

------
nathan_f77
I was thinking about writing a 'me too!' post about the hits from my Raspberry
Pi Microwave [1], but maybe I'll just post it here. I was on the front page of
HN for a day, front page of Reddit, had articles on TechCrunch, Popular
Science, BBC, and a few other technology sites. The blog post got about 91,000
page views: [http://imgur.com/MpYNaHu](http://imgur.com/MpYNaHu) I had one ad
at the bottom of the page, and made something like $30. But the most
interesting part was the YouTube video, which has had over 250,000 views. I
monetized it from the beginning, and earned about $750. I regret not putting
much effort into the video, and wonder how many more views I would have got
for a more polished video. I also received a 0.8978 BTC [$78.75 USD] donation
from Reddit user chrisrico, which was pretty awesome!

It's been a very positive experience, and I've reinvested all of the money
into components for my next project. Watch this space :)

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6025221](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6025221)

~~~
drcross
You should quote the amount of bitcoin, in BTC. It's more meaningful

~~~
nathan_f77
Good point, updated

------
patmcguire
Yeesh, 12 new blog subscribers vs hundreds of app sales? I guess I'm guilty of
not coming back to sites I find on here or twitter, but that's still a
shockingly small number. I feel like it didn't used to be like that - is there
a difference in the way people consume blogs vs how they did 5 years ago?

~~~
madsushi
If I like an article I see on HN, I'll go back and check a few of the previous
entries on the blog. If there are a couple of similarly interesting articles
in the last 10 entries or so, I'll add it to my RSS reader. If not, I'll just
wait for the next interesting one to get upvoted into my sphere of visibility.

------
cthackers
back for round two i suppose ? you have my vote.

------
kintamanimatt
The most startling aspect of this writeup is the iOS / Android revenue
difference. I'd have expected Android revenues to be lower, but not by about
1/3.

~~~
arshadgc
I think the difference is explained by the structure of my landing page. The
iOS link is most prominent at the top, but the Android link requires some
reading.

I'm going to update the Power 20 site to give equal airtime to iOS and
Android.

Android sales have actually recently outpaced iOS sales because I'm able to
iterate on the app's name more frequently in Android. I can find out which
titles work faster on Android. With iOS, one must submit a new app every time
they change the name. Crazy.

~~~
Zaheer
Just commented above, I'd love to know whether those modifications change
results but based on my prior experience I highly doubt it.

~~~
arshadgc
Yeah, it's alarming to hear that even with millions of apps, you're seeing
such a huge difference between iOS and Android sales. I'm going to change my
future development plans if this is the reality for everyone.

~~~
Zaheer
Ya I've actually dropped Android support moving forward. Here's some more data
on the stark differences in revenue:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6193605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6193605)

~~~
eevee
I'm confused; where is the difference in revenue coming from if you're selling
the same product to the same number of people on each platform?

~~~
Zaheer
Exactly where you just stated yourself... the platform.

~~~
eevee
As in, Google takes a bigger cut?

~~~
kintamanimatt
No, both Apple and Google take 30%.

------
kzahel
Thanks for sharing this. It's pretty amazing how much you made from Amazon
affiliate revenue. Did that many people buy standing desks?

~~~
frakkingcylons
You'd be surprised by how lucrative Amazon's affiliate program can be. Keep in
mind that the referrer will get a commission on any Amazon purchase made
within 24 hours. So while the blog post in question had a large focus on a
single product, I can confidently assume that the majority (or around 30-40%)
of the revenue came from purchases made that were unrelated to the product
linked to by the original affiliate link.

------
bishopknight
Did Fox pay you to be on their show?

~~~
arshadgc
Nope, Fox didn't pay. Although I met Steve Forbes in the Green Room.

------
wil421
I am going to be mad if I find an Amazon tracking cookie that makes you money
ever time I buy from Amazon from now on.

Anyways, the blog was an inspiration for me to start my own blog (which I have
been putting off) and gave me some ideas for a way for it to fund itself.

~~~
leephillips
"I am going to be mad"

Why? It doesn't cost you anything. You can delete it if it bothers you. It
expires after one day (so no "from now on").

~~~
wil421
I may visit 100s of websites daily and none of them have anything to do with
what I usually buy on Amazon. I don't want someone to profit off the measuring
cups I bought off Amazon or the alternator I got on eBay because I visited a
blog about a guy with a standing desk.

~~~
pkroll
Your issue is with Amazon's system, then, not with the affiliates themselves.
It's what Amazon has set up. There are plugins to replace any Amazon Affiliate
link with your own, if you're absolutely dead-set against it.

------
pauloortins
More one day in Hacker news first page. Congrats =D

~~~
arshadgc
Thanks!

------
a3voices
You posted really good, original content, so you deserve it!

~~~
arshadgc
Thanks for that!

------
mumbi
Congrats.

