Tripled my subscribers with a front page post on Hacker News -> How to write a good HN headline ✅
I tripled the subscriptions for Slidegame.io with a single post on Hacker News that got to number 20 on the main page.
Here's what I learned about how to write a good headline:
Do...
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Start the Headline with 'Show HN:' if you're linking to your new site or app. This will get you onto the Show page and the main page
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Provide a clear benefit for clicking on the link - what will the audience receive in return for their attention
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Give your site / app credibility - this may be because of who the author is, how many subscriptions / users you have so far, ratings etc
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Give an early reason to sign up / subscribe / buy your product. This will warm the audience up to signing up once they hit your landing page
Don't...
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Include the name of your site - it's already in the link and doesn't make the user want to click
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Be generic - instead be very specific about what the person is clicking on and why they should
Google Whisk - Generate images using images as prompts, not text prompts
After 19,314 lines of code, i'm shutting down my project
Need feedback for my product.
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Is HN a good place to share stuff if you're not familiar with it? I'm always nervous about doing that kind of thing.
So you submitted the site 4 times (see here : https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=UC_Consultant) but the one from the screenshot seems to only have gotten 5 points?
Although another submission with a different title (“SlideGame – Free, editable slide templates”) got 28 points and 7 comments.
Or am I missing something here?
Hey, yeah I’ve experimented with a few different posts, the first few didn’t get much traction at all.
It’s odd, I used the title in the bottom half of my post to begin with - you can see from the screenshot in my picture. Highest I saw the post was at no. 20.
Then I went back on to check the next day and the title had changed - possibly because I used the same link as an earlier post?
I have no idea the exact reason. Have you ever come across this before?
Reposting the same link is against HN policies and gets flagged off [Dupe].
Luckily, your post wasn't flagged. :-)
When you need to repost, ideally, change the URL as well.
Additionally, Show HN is not to be used for content - only applications.
Check out the Guidelines here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Ah, makes sense - thanks :)
So you're saying the title that got you upvotes was "Show HN: Free, editable slides by big 4 consultant - new set every week" when you first posted?
But has since been changed by the moderators to: "SlideGame – Free, editable slide templates"?
I don’t know if it was moderators. All
I know is my clicks declined after it changed
How many subscribers do you have after tripling your subscriber base?
Hi, I had around 100, now up to 340
Good stuff! And how do you do this when you want to show a blog post? (in that case, Show HN isn't the right way to submit an article as I understand).
I'm asking because I've added several articles on HN over the years, and while they consistently bring some traffic, I get barely any upvotes or comments.