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Ask HN: Are ignored "Show HN"s a reflection of the project?

20 points by jacktasia ↗ HN
Obviously to some degree the answer to this is always "yes" ...but timing of post, quality of title, etc. all must matter to a certain degree too, right?

I've done 4 or 5 "Show HNs" over the last 2 months for my current project (as I've added new features) and I've gotten basically one comment. I can't decide if this is a reflection of my project not being interesting, something about HN, or my total lack of marketing skills (or something else)?

I'd really appreciate any input... or "just" ideas for marketing for hackers. Every tip I read seems to basically be: spam but don't spam. For whatever reason I have a real problem reaching out to people because I feel like I am spamming them...and then when I go ahead and do it anyway I just get ignored anyway. Thoughts?

Thanks!

16 comments

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bhauer
You're obviously spot-on when you say it's a combination of both timing and appeal to the readers. I clearly have no magic solution since I've similarly struggled to draw any attention to my own project.

That said, for you in particular, I can give you one data point: I never saw any of your previous Show HNs. Items fall off of the "new" page so quickly and all of us only have so much time we're willing to spend on the site.

I've seen previous efforts made by some readers to upvote all Show HN votes in order to encourage our peers, but there's not much consistency in those efforts.

I did click on this one, and then through your username to your previous submissions and ended up at your app. So there are tricks to be played, whether or not we are comfortable calling them tricks.

Nice app, by the way. It's not something I personally would use, but it looks like something you have put great effort into and I really appreciate you making it cross-platform. I'd be happy to give more opinions and/or random passer-by comments if you would find that valuable. But since I am nothing but a random passer-by, I'll refrain from that unless you ask.

Edit: one other thought. Although it's done nothing for me, I like the idea of including my project's URL right in my HN "about" box. Maybe you could do the same?

jacktasia
Thanks for the response and the nice words about the project. Interesting note about the "tricks"...that side effect certainly did occur to me although I was pretty certain this post was going to be ignored/noise though. I'd certainly be thrilled to get any other feedback you may have. Thanks again.
abdophoto
While I'm not a seasoned HN user, I'd say that it's not a reflection of your project. I personally think that time-of-day and title of post have big impacts on how many people click through to your link. It's quite easy to put your post up and within 30 minutes see it at the bottom.
brudgers
Show HN shouldn't be primarily about marketing. It should be about showing the community something "interesting to hackers." New features probably won't cut it.

You may be better served by blogging. But as a caveat, write about people and their stories. A press release isn't usually going to get much traction.

bennyg
Timing of post probably matters the most. I think I've done 4 Show HN's and only one made it to the front page - and that's because it was an HN Reader for iOS... I've seen some Show HNs be posted multiple times (the guy who made the github for recipes is one that came to mind) with only the last one reaching the home page. For one of my github projects I made a Show HN, got 4 upvotes, no comments and it was gone from /new with the quickness. Then I posted the project, relevantly, as a comment in a thread for something else and it absolutely blew up from there. Got enough stars from that post to trend in Objective-C language that day, then was picked up by random blogs and was trending number 1 on github for the next day.

Show HN is totally hit or miss, but the power of this board is real, so don't discount your project yet or stop trying. Speaking of which, what is it?

jacktasia
Awesome. Thanks for the response. It's nice to hear about your experience and the process. I have thought about mentioning the project as a comment on a related HN submission...but I can never think of a way that seems natural enough. To answer your question the project is here: http://moviepileapp.com
bennyg
Looks awesome man, slick design. Don't worry too much if it doesn't take off here on HN - from breakdowns of traffic analytics after Show HNs and other sources it still seems like word of mouth and cumulative use effect make everything else look like a drop in the water.
brudgers
I don't think the lack of traction is anything more than the app being largely irrelevant to the HN community. It's not going to help anyone develop software or build a business. While the website is professional (and presumably the app as well) the HN community isn't going to learn much of anything - other than the app is for sale - or be entertained by visiting the site.

Compare your previous posts to this one. Here you tell a story. One relevant to many HN members. What makes it compelling is that it is about you and the challenges of your business - not about features of an app that solves a problem most people don't have.

Your question here comes across as genuine not marketing noise. That's why its got traction. Interest in your project will come as a byproduct of your contribution to the community, not by treating HN as just another social media outlet.

Good luck.

speg
I feel like the best time of day to post is a weekday morning. This gets people when they first get into work and check the news, and also hits the lunch break on the East coast. YMMV.
6thSigma
I've seen people submit multiple times using question marks in the URL e.g. submitting once with www.yoursite.com/?1 and then later with www.yoursite.com/?2.

Not sure about HNs policy on that though.

brudgers
I suspect that at some point any link to "www.yoursite.com" will automatically be [dead].
Mz
I did a post mortem once about how little traffic resulted from someone posting something of mine on HN. I think there should be more of that. We hear too much about the (positive) "black swan" events here -- the hn equivalent of winning the lottery. I think it seriously skews perceptions.
traxtech
It also depends of who's the target audience. I did two Show HN for a medical literature search engine and got a total of two comments. On a medical-related reddit, I got much much more comments, thanks, suggestions, etc etc.
DanBC
Timing of project is, unfortunately, crucial.
seanccox
I showed off a non-hacking related idea yesterday, having read that a good posting time was roughly 9-10AM EST. In terms of votes, it was a disappointing experience, but today I realized I was chasing the wrong dynamic. Yesterday, 176 people visited my project site, more than the previous two weeks.

No one donated (it's an e-commerce project for refugee aid), but I was ultimately pleased to get the visits.