HN Explorer

Ask HN: How do you find interesting topics to write about?

2 points by vitorfhc ↗ HN
I've recently made a few articles, and one reached more than 100k views. Interestingly, it's the simplest and with the clickbait-ish title. It makes me mad that it was the one people loved the most.

I don't want to create more clickbaits, I want to write good content that also attracts people. I am struggling with finding a good topic. Writers, how do you do it?

4 comments

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incomingpain
You sound like me, here's what I did. I switched over to educational/helpful and no clickbait. I started writing with the goal of explaining some problem I had and how i solved it. These were the worst performing I've ever had.

Then I went into reporting the news and trying to cut the exaggeration. These went bad and never did well.

then I reported the news adding to the exaggeration and these did ok. I get the problem of the mainstream media and their lies.

then I tried the 'lets create a rop 0day and display it' and then you get lawyers.

then I tried social engineering educational and the need to be ever vigilant. Tons of comments, mostly everyone hates you for tricking them with social engineering.

then I did a spotlight on some key awesome open source people and somehow this did great. I wasn't even expecting it to do well and they were super niche people.

then we got a web marketing person and I was taken off the job.

vitorfhc
I wish I had a marketing person to at least decide the subjects lol I am a freelancer now, I get paid to do that, maybe I can at least use SEO trending words to see what people like Anyway, the focus must be quality, not views But it's good to see your article appreciated and viewed, isnt it?
incomingpain
>Anyway, the focus must be quality, not views But it's good to see your article appreciated and viewed, isnt it?

Personally? views don't matter to me. My exploration was to just see what the results were.

If I have any desire it's not to become popular. Popular bloggers have to public speak and such, nope.avi.

JoeMayoBot
Here are a few areas where I get inspiration:

1. What am I working on currently? Pro is that I can go into depth. Con is that I have to avoid something I can't talk about. 2. Something that I'm really interested in and want to dig into more (often new tech). 3. Something a lot of people are suddenly interested in and I might be able to contribute to the conversation.

In each case, look at what has already been said and put your perspective on it. This is where the creative side comes in because no matter how many people have discussed a certain topic, it's normal to have approached it a different way with a different mix of subjects. New tech is often easy because most folks have already just re-iterated the basic facts without much personal insight. I wouldn't feel bad about a non-boring title as long as you feel good about the quality of your content.