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?
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.
I agree with you in principle - good content is what makes HN great. That said:
"you need to write something interesting"
As long as you include the link title as the most important bit your write. Unfortunately, hits, votes and comments are often largely based on the title. In many cases the actual article is not even read.
I agree that you shouldn't game the system... but to be perfectly honest, good shit sometimes doesn't rise because there is an insider crew on HN. Not saying it's bad, just the truth. The post is helping just get noticed. 10 upvotes total is not going to keep you on HN frontpage forever, but it will get you noticed and then if you wrote something good it will stay there and move organically. All I'm saying is the first 30 minutes is the most important time and just put yourself in a position to get on the frontpage and in front of people.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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?