
Ask HN: What would make this worthy of Show HN? - DoreenMichele
I don&#x27;t understand Show HN. Reading the rules and looking through the submissions doesn&#x27;t clarify anything for me. Please &quot;explain it to me like I am 5.&quot;<p>My earned income is made online. It helped me get myself off the street recently, in part because it is earned online, so it is portable. This allowed me to move someplace with rent in my price range.<p>Unemployment in this town  is high and there are a lot of homeless. I want to somehow help people here learn to make money online. I am going to public meetings and people just don&#x27;t seem to be all that plugged in. They don&#x27;t seem very internet savvy. My life is very much online and I feel like an alien here.<p>I see an opportunity to give some pushback against the general trend that jobs are concentrating in the big cities and small town America is getting left out and left behind. But I am having trouble figuring out what comes next.<p>So, what makes a site a Show HN? What do I need to do to make this a &quot;project&quot; in the eyes of the world and not &quot;just a website.&quot;<p>I submitted a page of this site as an article earlier today in hopes of getting some kind of feedback:<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;independentdigitalworkers.blogspot.com<p>What are some next steps I can take?<p>Thank you.
======
gus_massa
There is almost no difference between a ShowHN and a normal submission, so
don't care too much about it. (I'm not sure if you would get more visits for a
ShowHN.???)

Originally, the idea was that the ShowHN must be a playable project, but the
rules are not enforced unless it's a fragrant violation, or at least they are
less strict that what I'd like. I think that the original idea was that the
project was a online app, or an easy to download app, but it's difficult to
extend this to other projects like books, videos, github repositories.
Currently even a blog post that is written by the submitter and has original
content will survive. (I'm not a fan of this extension, but whatever.)

Currently the ShowHN only is a signal that the submitter is also that author
and want some feedback. But most HN threads have unrequested feedback anyway,
and in small projects many times the author comes when there is a big spike in
the visits.

An alternative to a ShowHN is to write a small comment in the HN submission,
something like "Author here. Any feedback is welcome."

Some feedback about independentdigitalworkers:

It has too few text! It's not clear that I must click "1099", "remote",
"monetize" to see the content.

The collection of links is too terse, I'd try to add a small description of
the advantages of each site. (Something like a listicle, but a good listicle.)

For example "monetize" has 5 links, but each site has a very different spirit,
they are not interchangeable, and for someone that don't know them it is
difficult to understand the differences and which is better. (What is the
difference between Zazzle and Etsy?)

It would be nice to collect some real use case, some kind of interviews with
people that has a similar profile. (For example a loot of Youtubers are using
Patreon and Teespring to complement the ad revenue from Youtube.)

~~~
DoreenMichele
Thank you very much.

It was set up this morning. It is try number 3, and is pivoting another
project, so I drew some content from that older project, then killed it.

I decided I didn't like the first name too much. My first try was Digital
Independents and I quickly realized that if I am telling people that verbally,
they will probably hear Digital Independence. The next was Digital Independent
Workers and then this.

I want to figure out how to reach out to people locally. I am going to a lot
of public meetings and making connections on the ground. I feel that is going
pretty well and it led to this idea. I initially was just handing out flyers
for my Write Pay site, but I want it to be broader than that.

I could add a Google Group to the site as an embedded forum. My concept is
that it is kind of a water cooler for people who work from home.

------
itamarst
Worst case you can post the website just as a normal link, without the Show
HN.

Re actual project: this seems like a valuable thing to do... but your target
audience, the people who aren't Internet savvy, aren't likely to find it on
their own. So maybe the site is more of a reference at this point, and start
by pointing people to it in person? E.g. teach a free class, and then point
people at this when you're done.

Our local library has Internet access (wifi, and computers for people without
computers), and community rooms you can get for free; perhaps your local
library would be a good place as well.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Yes, I am connecting with people locally on the ground and that is going
fairly well, well enough to help me get this far. But I need the site and
concept better developed and locals cannot help me there.

I could have agreed to do a presentation next Wednesday at a local weekly
meeting, but I declined because I only have a half baked idea so far. I don't
have anything to present. December is booked, so it will probably be January
before they have another slot, but I just don't have this fleshed out enough.

I had flyers for my Write Pay site. The library won't post them. Some places
have posted them, but some people think it is a scam, the same thing that gets
said about it when I have posted links to it on HN under a now retired, very
well established handle. Personal reputation here did little or nothing to get
the site taken seriously.

People here accuse me of being a shill for the service I work for. The person
on HN who recommended the site to me will not vouch for me. In fact, he
dragged my name through the mud for repeating his advice on HN and suggesting
it to someone else here a few months after he recommended it to me. When I
blogged about that years later and someone else posted that to HN, he denied
it. Saving face for himself was his only concern.

There is no good way for me to deal with things like that. Saying nothing
means my name remains mud. Saying something means I am guilty of talking trash
about respected men. The utter and complete lack of respect for me involved
there makes no ones radar. I can't get out from behind nonsense like that.

Anyway, I need a thing -- a site and a program -- that people will not look
askance at as a possible pyramid scheme. I need more than a hand wavy "I have
a dream" blurb.

I did post it here already as a link this morning. It got zero upvotes and
zero comments. Thus, this Ask. Just posting my own writing on HN mostly does
not go that well. Once in a while some piece gets well received. The rest of
the time, I end up feeling like it was mistake.

I very often feel it is an excuse for people who don't like me to justify
their negative opinions and their accusations that my participation is somehow
nefarious. It often leaves me feeling like poor people and women are not
allowed to want financial success. It often feels like it is against the rules
to try to figure out how to succeed in accomplishing anything.

So with the feedback in another comment here, I am fleshing the site out more.
I hope to post it as a Show HN soon.

Thank you for commenting.

------
DoreenMichele
Clickable:
[http://independentdigitalworkers.blogspot.com](http://independentdigitalworkers.blogspot.com)

------
steanne
your other account has a karma of 25k. claiming you don't understand hn seems
a little disingenuous.

~~~
DoreenMichele
It is not disingenuous. I am a woman and, no, I simply don't have the kind of
social connections here that the guys typically have if they have that kind of
karma. Which means, no, I don't understand subtleties here that prevent me
from accomplishing things I want to accomplish.

This kind of dismissiveness is actually par for the course.

I read the rules for Show HN and it says it needs to be something "you can
play with." I see blog posts with some smidgeon of data. I write the mods in
good faith and say "This doesn't look to me like a Show HN." I get told that,
_arguably_ , the spoonful of data in it qualifies it.

I blogged about that on an old blog. I am not going to post it here because
that would be drama.

I am just looking for a good faith answer to my good faith question and
feeling increasingly like the crime of being the first woman on the
leaderboard shall never be forgiven. Because it does not appear to have done
squat to help me figure out how to get my work taken seriously or my questions
answered in good faith.

