My Show HN reached Hacker News front page. Here is how you can do it.

I recently did a Show HN, which was a huge success for me.

It stayed on the front page for about 13 hours and brought 11k unique visitors, 300+ sign-ups, x2 my (embarrassing) MRR and increase my Domain Rating by 12 pts overnight.

Although it was mostly luck, here are my tips to prepare for a good Show HN.

TL, DR:

1. Avoid sales-y title
2. Tell your stories
3. Give them something they can play with
4. Thoughtfully respond to every comment
5. Bonus: luck & the HN second-chance pool

1. Avoid sales-y titles.

This would be the most important rule. On HN, using marketing or sales language is an instant turnoff. Instead, use factual, direct language.

The most common Show HN title is "<Product Name> — <What it does>". Although I find it resonates better with this: "I built <Product Name> to help you achieve <outcome>"

2. Tell your stories

HN folks are smart, and most of them can tell how your product work instantly. And that means they will quickly ask why.

Tell them your personal stories.

• Why do you build your product?
• How is it different from other solutions?
  
- Which technical challenges did you face?

And don't forget to ask for feedback in the end.

3. Give them something they can play with

To get the most valuable feedback, you need to present your work in a way that people can try it out. Best if it doesn't require an account.

For KTool, I built a specific page for HN users: send HN discussion to Kindle.

Protip: offer a one-click demo. Cache that request. My $7 Heroku dyno handled HN traffic just fine.

4. Thoughtfully respond to every comment

People are much more likely to upvote if they see interesting discussions in the comments. Try to respond to every comment, whether positive or negative.

There will be people complaining about your price, or some features were missing... It's likely that they are not your target customers. Politely tell them so.

5. Bonus: luck & the HN second-chance pool

It's mostly luck that brought my Show HN to the front page. My first submission got just 30 upvotes or so. But mod found it interesting and invited me to repost, for the second-chance pool.

HN's second-chance pool is a way to give links a second chance at the front page. If it interests the community, it gets upvoted and discussed; if not, it falls off.

If you believe your Show HN is particularly good for HN, you can send an email to hn@ycombinator.com asking for it. With a little bit of luck, you could reach the front page ✌️

PS: I recently found that you can learn from the best Show HN on https://bestofshowhn.com

Thanks for reading!

I hope my sharing here has been helpful!

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Thanks! 😊