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Has anyone submitted their project on HN, and without any friends' help, reached front page? My hope is at least on HN, if your project is cool, it will get tr

by volaski 15y ago

Has anyone submitted their project on HN, and without any friends' help, reached front page? My hope is at least on HN, if your project is cool, it will get traction without asking friends to upvote your entry (which happens a lot most of the times). Am I too idealistic? Please share your story if you used to be a nobody and just posted your project/startup on hacker news, and it got significant traction just because people thought the project was cool, without any social factors involved. I think a lot of people on HN wonder about this too, and it needs to be demystified. Thanks!

Udo 15y ago
I don't know anyone in here. I'm usually not submitting links, but among the very few I did submit, there was front page traction more often than not (if I remember correctly). So, yes, it's absolutely possible to "make front page" if that's your goal. It's different when you're talking about your own project - I only submitted general news stuff. I understand that it can really sting if your project doesn't get picked up. There could be many reasons for it and, unless you're one of the top-ten superstars around here, I don't believe HN familiarity plays a big role in a story's success. The main thing about the /newest section is that it is very low quality. It's dominated by spam and trash, so it's easy to overlook interesting stuff in there. Due to the high rate of new submissions a new entry doesn't last very long. Even good links vanish in record time if nobody sees them in the first few minutes. In my opinion the main reason why good links do not get picked up is purely technical. Ideally, only accounts with good karma would be allowed to submit links to the queue and there should be harder limits on the number of things you can submit in a certain timeframe. That being said, HN's success rate is still pretty high regardless. Personally, when I see a "Show HN:" article I make it a point to vote it up (if the project isn't totally lame).
untog 15y ago
Absolutely. I don't know anyone on HN, but my post yesterday (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3586260 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3586260) made it on the front page, I think peaking at #9. One thing I did that might have helped- I tweeted a link to both the blog post and the HN entry, and was retweeted by MapBox, the makers of the software I was discussing. It didn't generate a ton of traffic, but it might have generated those 3 or 4 upvotes you need to get going.

by volaski 15y ago

Udo 15y ago

I don't know anyone in here. I'm usually not submitting links, but among the very few I did submit, there was front page traction more often than not (if I remember correctly). So, yes, it's absolutely possible to "make front page" if that's your goal. It's different when you're talking about your own project - I only submitted general news stuff. I understand that it can really sting if your project doesn't get picked up. There could be many reasons for it and, unless you're one of the top-ten superstars around here, I don't believe HN familiarity plays a big role in a story's success. The main thing about the /newest section is that it is very low quality. It's dominated by spam and trash, so it's easy to overlook interesting stuff in there. Due to the high rate of new submissions a new entry doesn't last very long. Even good links vanish in record time if nobody sees them in the first few minutes. In my opinion the main reason why good links do not get picked up is purely technical. Ideally, only accounts with good karma would be allowed to submit links to the queue and there should be harder limits on the number of things you can submit in a certain timeframe. That being said, HN's success rate is still pretty high regardless. Personally, when I see a "Show HN:" article I make it a point to vote it up (if the project isn't totally lame).

untog 15y ago

Absolutely. I don't know anyone on HN, but my post yesterday (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3586260 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3586260) made it on the front page, I think peaking at #9. One thing I did that might have helped- I tweeted a link to both the blog post and the HN entry, and was retweeted by MapBox, the makers of the software I was discussing. It didn't generate a ton of traffic, but it might have generated those 3 or 4 upvotes you need to get going.