When You Don't Make the Front Page of Hacker News

http://blog.interviewsy.com/post/75118833004/when-you-dont-make-the-front-page-of-hacker-news

by timsegraves • 12 years ago

57 30 12 years ago

blog.interviewsy.com

cl8ton• 12 years ago

Don’t take not making the front page on HN as product validity as 99% of posters here are not the target market of 100% of the ‘Show HN’ posts here.

btw: You summed it up pretty nice in your blog post!

timsegraves5• 12 years ago

Thanks! It can be a little disappointing not making a big splash but I just hope that little post helps others in similar situations remember to keep the longer view.

tomasien2• 12 years ago

I can almost 100% guarantee you that having an automatic slider killed a lot of upvotes for you. I'm not trying to be a dick, I've actually seen this over an over, and I experience it as a user - if I see a Show HN, I'm upvoting unless I have a reason not to. I despite automatic sliders, and yours is particularly egregious. Long term, it's a tiny mistake in what seems to be an otherwise interesting project, so I'd do a way with it immediately to avoid the distraction.

timsegraves5• 12 years ago

Fair point. I'm actually not a big fan of the automatic sliding either. I just didn't think to take it off. I'll definitely do that now.

jsankey• 12 years ago

The upside is that people have to be quick to spot the typos, e.g. "miriad" ;).

tomasien2• 12 years ago

Upside really is, hey! Feedback! That's what HN is good for, not finding users!

Truly and honestly, if you don't have a product that is perfect for the HN crowd as a niche, it's still important to get on the front page if you can take feedback well. It's the best you'll ever get, it actually may make or break your business. If you don't get it here, get it elsewhere and fast.

TruthSHIFT• 12 years ago

I completely agree. There is a paragraph of text that you can't even read because it moves to the next slide too quickly. Since I couldn't read it, I stopped trying and left the site.

In addition to removing the slider, it also could help to find a way to quickly sum up the benefits of the site using a very short sentence instead of a paragraph.

__pThrow• 12 years ago

I keep on swearing to myself I'm going to create a Chrome extension that kills all the sliders, slideshows, and welcome pop-up windows of the world.

dizzystar• 12 years ago

Not only that, but there's plenty of data showing that sliders are horrible for conversion. I guess could I pull better sources, but here is one with a bunch of links I found with a bit of light searching:

http://conversionxl.com/dont-use-automatic-image-sliders-or-....

booruguru• 12 years ago

...which is strange since sliders are among the most popular premium plugins for WordPress. In fact, many of then earn six-figures on ThemeForest alone.

paul79863• 12 years ago

Upvoted for the irony!

My 1st two start-ups made the front-page.

My current and I think best yet hasn't had the same good fortune.

good luck to you!

timsegraves5• 12 years ago

Haha, I know, right?? What's your current project? I love checking out what people are passionate about.

paul79863• 12 years ago

Thanks

Our web app turns a crowd & their devices into a huge stereo system; all devices play same audio in sync.

http://SpeakerBlast.com

We think it's cool, but maybe people don't see it being useful? We use it at home to fill our house with audio.

ialex• 12 years ago

Wow, you hacked HN whit this post to be on the frontpage congratz you made it and now i will check interviewsy.com.

dsugarman• 12 years ago

I am interested what happens when you don't initially make it to the front page, but then your postmortem does, and it links you to your original project. What is the conversion % of people who then check it out?

timsegraves5• 12 years ago

Yeah, I think that will be an interesting followup post.

mintplant• 12 years ago

Which will itself be posted to HN, continuing the cycle.

bastijn• 12 years ago

I'm even more interested in the conversion rate for the front page HN generated visitor boom, and actual long term gain. But that might be too hard to measure.

I myself always visit the sites but I cannot remember I have been using one for longer than a day.

Aaronneyer• 12 years ago

Aside from just having a good article/project, it takes good timing, good luck, and sometimes some good upvotes from friends to make the front page. I've had a few things which I was sure would take off not make the front page, including a combined ruby and rails security vulnerability, as well as a project with plenty of publicity and 50,000+ views on XDA.

ahahah• 12 years ago

It's name has a spin-off air about it.

jpatokal• 12 years ago

...Write A Blog Post About It That Makes the Front Page of Hacker News Instead?

trollingineer• 12 years ago

That's what you get when a bunch of virgins decide what gets to the front page.

d-k• 12 years ago

irony at its best...

erikb• 12 years ago

Your landing page is not the thing. And you get the right feedback to tell you that: no votes. So why complain about it instead of working on it? You seem to have spent a lot of time on your tool. Landing page is were you have to work on now!

When You Don't Make the Front Page of Hacker News

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