

No upvotes? No problem. - sosuke
http://diveintothepool.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/no-upvotes-no-problem/

======
JacobAldridge
This is true - when I post articles on HN I usually get between 5 and 30 click
throughs, and it also does wonders for the speed of Google indexing.

Having said that, I ensure submitted articles remain relevant and of interest
to the community. We're releasing three new articles this week - I'll
certainly put one up here, but the other two are less relevant. They might
garner traffic to my site, but I don't want noise on HN so why create it
myself?

~~~
jacquesm
The google indexing is absolutely true. I've tried to time it, usually it
takes only about 45 minutes from the moment it gets posted to being indexed.
You can see how long it took by searching in google for the hn submission and
then check to see how long ago it was spidered, versus how long ago it was
posted.

The google bot must re-visit hn very frequently, 10's of times per day for the
'news' and 'newest' page.

~~~
_delirium
The 'newest' page links all have rel=nofollow on them, though. Does it still
index the targets despite that?

~~~
jacquesm
Good one. I don't know the exact implications of nofollow, but I think it
might be that if google considers the destination to be legit that it will add
the url to its crawl queue without giving it any 'pagerank juice'.

Only a googler could tell you for sure though.

I've seen google ferret out results that were _never_ linked through the
toolbar or some other mechanism outside of the regular crawl process. (in that
one case the toolbar was my only possible explanation, or it was through
analytics).

------
chime
What surprises me is how often old HN comments keep sending visitors. I made a
comment about my JS/Canvas games 19 days ago (
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1281730> ) and I still get 5-10 clicks a
day from it. It's pretty surprising actually. Reddit has a similar effect.

~~~
leftnode
Same with upvotes. I'll post a response, get a few upvotes, post nothing for a
few days, and usually get an upvote after the article is long off the front
page. Guess people are a lot more backlogged than me! :)

~~~
Pistos2
I very often get backlogged, but still try to keep up. I submit comments as
distant as 2 days beyond the original submission date. I vote no matter the
age of a submission or comment; if something is worth reading, age almost
doesn't matter (excepting newsworthiness, etc.). I'm glad to see I'm not the
only one that browses HN with a little delay.

------
KirinDave
I've long been suspecting that there is something weird going on at reddit.
Frequently we'll post something and see it get nuked. Then a few days later
one of a few familiar names posts it and suddenly it does very well, usually
with a pass through another blog as opposed to a direct link.

I wonder if that entire system is silently rigged to control traffic.

~~~
bd
No need for rigging the system, few simple rules and many individual actions
can produce complex behaviors.

New queue on reddit moves very fast - currently the oldest item is just about
7 minutes old. It's very easy to go unnoticed by target audience (people who
would upvote the submission) in such short time window.

Multiple submissions mean post has higher chance to get noticed.

Eventual downvotes come from people who want to decrease competition for their
own submissions, giving them extra few minutes in new queue.

Also people may check submission queues of familiar users because they like
their submissions, thus increasing chances of such submissions being noticed.

Similar thing already started to happen here on HN. Even with new queue being
much longer (at about 1 hour) there are multiplicities.

Many times the same post (though not necessarily the same url) gets submitted
multiple times and only later submissions get promoted to the frontpage.

Well, sometimes it even happens that in a span of few hours/days the same
story appears on frontpage several times, with completely disjoint set of
commenters not being aware of earlier discussions.

~~~
KirinDave
I fear the flag button may become the new downbote tool for people with flawed
metrics for success.

------
apike
There is a big difference between users clicking and users reading. Not
everything that causes clickthroughs is a net win.

~~~
_delirium
There's also different metrics on what constitutes a net-win, that may come
out differently for different kinds of traffic sources. For example, is the
primary reason you want traffic (a) some sort of influence; or (b) ad revenue;
or (c) signups for a service?

~~~
apike
Exactly. The sort of writers who are excited by thirty clicks are probably
interested in influence. For them, measuring RSS subscriptions, comments, or
inbound links is better.

~~~
sosuke
I'm not actually sure what I'm looking for, it wasn't necessarily traffic. I
wouldn't expect HN to lead to signups on my site and I don't actually monetize
my blog at all. However I have gotten something great already; I got a comment
to correct my spelling or grammar, I don't know which but I appreciated it.

------
shortformblog
The thing with Reddit is that it seems biased against new users and
accusations of linkspam are far too prevalent. Sites like Reddit are going to
have to learn, eventually, that the nature of sharing content on the Web has
changed and self-promotion isn't a bad thing. If it were, Facebook Fan Pages
and Twitter accounts wouldn't exist.

In terms of submitting stuff and actually getting traffic from it, I'd
recommend 2leep ( <http://2leep.com/> – disclosure: I helped with the site's
layout, but I did it for free because I liked the idea and thought it deserved
more attention), which at the very least is a consistent stream of traffic and
gets your page in front of a lot of eyeballs.

I think that one shouldn't put all their eggs in traffic. Traffic is nice. If
you have a good idea and good content, people will notice. I have a steady
freelance writing gig from my work on <http://shortformblog.com/>, along with
fairly regular mentions on The Atlantic's Web site and lots of awesomely
random notices.

It's not major startup fund capital or anything, but I'll take it because it's
exposure. And that exposure pays more than ads do when you're starting small.

My point? Do cool stuff and you don't need upvotes.

~~~
_delirium
I actually sort of like Reddit's model on those two points. Essentially, that
you should: 1) lurk initially, not submitting links until you understand the
community and its culture; and 2) primarily submit links you think people will
find interesting, not your own links that you're trying to promote (or at
least, actively identify when it's your own link, e.g. "hey reddit, I made an
X").

Not every site has to be like that, but it seems fine for some sites to be
that way. The fact that Facebook fan pages _exist_ is different from saying
that everything on the web has to go in similar directions.

~~~
shortformblog
I guess, to me, there's a difference between what you're saying and vigilantes
calling you out because they think you're a link spammer. To a degree, it
discourages growth in the community because it scares people off.

And it does feel, to a degree, double-standardish. For example, the dude from
The Oatmeal submits tons of his own links but seemingly nobody bats an eye.

<http://www.reddit.com/user/GiantBatFart>

Just sayin'.

But either way, that doesn't get away from my original point, which is that
you shouldn't freak out over getting upvotes.

------
jacquesm
The only comment on the HN submission is 'is your site down?', that can't be
good news. Maybe it was unreachable for a bit right after posting, that's a
surefire way to scroll of the new page without upvotes, which will effectively
kill your post.

~~~
sosuke
I actually cleared that up with the commenter directly but thanks for checking
in. I saw that comment and was worried it was down too and had to check
everything out immediately.

~~~
jacquesm
I've had my site go down _because_ of submitting. Dumb, dumber, dumbst.

Never figured on the number of people that would make that click...

