3 ms·

> HN and reddit will also immediately block self-promotion even if relevant to the audience ( HN doesn't block self promotion if it comes up as part of a conve

> HN and reddit will also immediately block self-promotion even if relevant to the audience ( HN doesn't block self promotion if it comes up as part of a conversation, e.g. "I'm having this technical problem." Re: "I wrote a book about how to solve that!" Also you can at least put a link in your profile! Reddit has tons of self promos all the time, it just depends on the subreddit. Also it helps if you're a long time active member in a community.

modeless 2y ago
HN doesn't block self promotion in stories either. There's a whole section for it, "Show HN".
- boznz 2y ago
  My comment was because my last three submissions were blocked. I emailed the moderator the first time it happened, and he said the algorithm probably thought it was self-promotion as I cross posted it to medium.com which I now know everybody hates. By blocked, I mean the articles showed as normal on my browser but was hidden to anybody else. I did not use the "Show HN" option because I have had articles submitted in the past from my website without this issue. I am not a prolific poster, maybe 2 or 3 a year, and appreciate HN efforts to keep the spam out, so I will give it another shot on my next original article using the "Show HN" option. Ironically my last submission that was rejected was exactly about this https://rodyne.com/?p=1400 https://rodyne.com/?p=1400
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    Right, I seem to get the same result on things I post from my medium publication - which started after I posted some links to some time travel stories I wrote in a post about time travel which seemed to me to relate and which got a few upvotes. After that if I posted a link to an article I wrote it got shadow blocked (at least for a bit) the thing is I only post things here that I think fit the site, which is about 10% of what I write, and I am a relatively prolific poster. Looking at my current submissions - in the last 30 submissions one was to an article I wrote. Why? Because I thought it fit HN, just like all the other things I post I think fit HN. Personally I think that's being a relatively well-behaved user of the site, but evidently not.
    - joenot443 2y ago
      Lots of people submit their own work to HN all the time to great success. If your post was flagged, it probably just wasn’t as relevant to the community as you might have imagined. Perhaps take it as constructive criticism on your writing, rather than blaming the poor reception on the community.
      - raydev 2y ago
        Funny to call it "constructive" when the reasoning for the flag is absent.
      - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
        so I wrote >After that if I posted a link to an article I wrote it got shadow blocked and you responded >If your post was flagged please take that as constructive criticism (explanation if you don't get my point: I did not use the word "flagged")
  - jsnell 2y ago
    You shouldn't use Show HN for an article or blog post. See https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html I suspect the suggestion was made due to you talking about books originally, which (given a sample chapter) are the one stated exception to written materials being out of scope for Show HN.
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    I asked about this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40612321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40612321 it seems that a lot of my submissions over the past 7 months to my own stuff were with Medium's link shortener and that gets banned, mainly because if you follow a link from Medium's stats the url is the shortened form. I noticed you mentioned Medium, perhaps your problems also stem from the same source?
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  the Show HN guidelines as I understand it says it is not for stories or articles, but for projects you are working on or have made? Am I misunderstanding that.
hombre_fatal 2y ago
Reddit is a good guerilla promotion platform. You just can't be overt about it. The stereotypical version is to change "look what I made" to "look what I found" and all the ad complaints go away. You see this a lot in r/gaming where people post clips of games all day, but if you mention that you made the game in the clip, you get inane comments about how it's an ad. That said, books are hard to market no matter what. There's no visual hook like you have with games and movies. You can't just guerilla-shill it like a SaaS.

modeless 2y ago

HN doesn't block self promotion in stories either. There's a whole section for it, "Show HN".

boznz 2y ago
My comment was because my last three submissions were blocked. I emailed the moderator the first time it happened, and he said the algorithm probably thought it was self-promotion as I cross posted it to medium.com which I now know everybody hates. By blocked, I mean the articles showed as normal on my browser but was hidden to anybody else. I did not use the "Show HN" option because I have had articles submitted in the past from my website without this issue. I am not a prolific poster, maybe 2 or 3 a year, and appreciate HN efforts to keep the spam out, so I will give it another shot on my next original article using the "Show HN" option. Ironically my last submission that was rejected was exactly about this https://rodyne.com/?p=1400 https://rodyne.com/?p=1400
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  Right, I seem to get the same result on things I post from my medium publication - which started after I posted some links to some time travel stories I wrote in a post about time travel which seemed to me to relate and which got a few upvotes. After that if I posted a link to an article I wrote it got shadow blocked (at least for a bit) the thing is I only post things here that I think fit the site, which is about 10% of what I write, and I am a relatively prolific poster. Looking at my current submissions - in the last 30 submissions one was to an article I wrote. Why? Because I thought it fit HN, just like all the other things I post I think fit HN. Personally I think that's being a relatively well-behaved user of the site, but evidently not.
  - joenot443 2y ago
    Lots of people submit their own work to HN all the time to great success. If your post was flagged, it probably just wasn’t as relevant to the community as you might have imagined. Perhaps take it as constructive criticism on your writing, rather than blaming the poor reception on the community.
    - raydev 2y ago
      Funny to call it "constructive" when the reasoning for the flag is absent.
    - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
      so I wrote >After that if I posted a link to an article I wrote it got shadow blocked and you responded >If your post was flagged please take that as constructive criticism (explanation if you don't get my point: I did not use the word "flagged")
- jsnell 2y ago
  You shouldn't use Show HN for an article or blog post. See https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html I suspect the suggestion was made due to you talking about books originally, which (given a sample chapter) are the one stated exception to written materials being out of scope for Show HN.
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  I asked about this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40612321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40612321 it seems that a lot of my submissions over the past 7 months to my own stuff were with Medium's link shortener and that gets banned, mainly because if you follow a link from Medium's stats the url is the shortened form. I noticed you mentioned Medium, perhaps your problems also stem from the same source?
bryanrasmussen 2y ago
the Show HN guidelines as I understand it says it is not for stories or articles, but for projects you are working on or have made? Am I misunderstanding that.

hombre_fatal 2y ago

Reddit is a good guerilla promotion platform. You just can't be overt about it. The stereotypical version is to change "look what I made" to "look what I found" and all the ad complaints go away. You see this a lot in r/gaming where people post clips of games all day, but if you mention that you made the game in the clip, you get inane comments about how it's an ad. That said, books are hard to market no matter what. There's no visual hook like you have with games and movies. You can't just guerilla-shill it like a SaaS.