

Ask HN: Is there a best time of day to post on HN? - Strategist

Out of curiosity, has anyone found a sweet spot in the time of day to make a post?  Like where the site hits it&#x27;s peak traffic during the day&#x2F;night.
======
RKoutnik
There's a definitive answer here (hooray, data!):
[http://nathanael.hevenet.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-
hacker...](http://nathanael.hevenet.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-hacker-news-
a-comprehensive-answer/)

~~~
Strategist
Nice post mate, good information!

------
leknarf
It obviously depends on site activity and thus varies each day, but usually
around 7~8am and 5~6pm eastern times work well. I wrote a little app that
tracks this for you:
[http://hnnotify.leknarf.net/](http://hnnotify.leknarf.net/). The graph is
slow to load, just wait a little while.

I wrote a more detailed blog post that explains how this works, but the core
concept is as follows.

Assuming you want your HN submission to reach the front page, then it’s
important to post at times when scores on the new page are relatively high
compared to the front page.

This assumes your goal is to reach the front page. I don’t actually know how
many people skim over the ‘new’ links, but it’s fairly obvious that a far
greater number of people only look at the first 30 links on the home page.

For the purposes of discussion, I’m going to assume a very simplistic model of
the HN front page: new stories with more points will outrank older stories
with less points. That is, I’m ignoring any effects existing karma has on a
user’s submission and any factors related to when a story gets upvotes. If we
assume that a new story needs to get more points than an existing story in
order to replace it on the front page, then the following is straightforward:
\- It’s a good time to submit when scores on the front page are low. If the
lowest-ranked story has 10 points, it will be much easier to replace than if
the lowest-ranked story has 100 points. \- It’s a good time to post when
scores on the new page are high. If the highest-ranked story on the new page
only has 2 points, it doesn’t seem likely that your submission will fare much
better.

[http://leknarf.net/blog/2013/03/13/find-out-when-to-post-
on-...](http://leknarf.net/blog/2013/03/13/find-out-when-to-post-on-hacker-
news/)

------
brudgers
While there are statistically better and worse times, stories which suck still
suck and even the best stories require luck to gain traction.

For me, I make submissions when I find something interesting rather than
trending. Whatever moderate traction those stories receive tends to come from
submitting at off peak times - weekends and late night US time.

But the first criteria are always the relevance of the article and quality.

------
Strategist
I'm on the east coast here. Most active part of the day for me is around 10am,
where most people are awake here, and the west coast is just waking up.

I'm guessing that most people check HN first thing in the morning.

~~~
Parse
Not I, but I haven't really thought about there being a sweet spot ever
before.

This is something I'd like to know too though.

------
dangrossman
Please ask Google before asking HN; it's been answered many times. "Ask"
should be a way to initiate interesting discussions, not meta-discussion about
effectively gaming the site.

------
a3n
[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=post+%22time+o...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=post+%22time+of+day%22+HN)

------
miaowmix
From what I have observed, the best time would be at 11pm EST.

------
leoplct
9 to 10 AM EST

