"We weren’t able to hack HN, but we didn’t have to; by putting effort into publishing high-value content, we were able to get our readers to do much of the heavy lifting for us."
I understand folks want to market their business, but I'm glad this is not an easy forum to so.
> Once he was on board, I went to work lining up a team of upvoters from different IP addresses. Following Alex’s strategy, we wanted to get as many upvotes as we could, as quickly as possible.
That's pretty scummy.
> Less than ten minutes after executing on our bulletproof strategy, our post was nowhere to be found.
Good. If you're going to try to game the system, you deserve to get your posts deleted.
Also, this:
> And interestingly, he changed the headline from "7 Lessons We Learned Going from Zero to $30k/Month in Under a Year," to "Lessons Learned Going from Zero to $30k/Month in a Year".
> Shorter, simpler, more direct. Flies in the face of the copywriting wisdom I had been reading about specificity and numbered lists. And yet, it worked!
is a really revealing thing to say. It means that your plans to make the front page somehow didn't include reading the submission guidelines [1]:
> If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."
It would appear that this method is more or less common knowledge at this point. I knew most of what they listed myself, although it's not something I've ever employed as you can see from my submission history.
8 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 28.0 ms ] threadI understand folks want to market their business, but I'm glad this is not an easy forum to so.
That's pretty scummy.
> Less than ten minutes after executing on our bulletproof strategy, our post was nowhere to be found.
Good. If you're going to try to game the system, you deserve to get your posts deleted.
Also, this:
> And interestingly, he changed the headline from "7 Lessons We Learned Going from Zero to $30k/Month in Under a Year," to "Lessons Learned Going from Zero to $30k/Month in a Year".
> Shorter, simpler, more direct. Flies in the face of the copywriting wisdom I had been reading about specificity and numbered lists. And yet, it worked!
is a really revealing thing to say. It means that your plans to make the front page somehow didn't include reading the submission guidelines [1]:
> If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."
1: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
stop doing what you're doing or a similar level of organization will form to bring wrath upon you