a single source, nothing corroborates it
Write the title flat and let the fact carry it
Adjectives that lift a headline anywhere else read as hype to this audience and cost votes. A plain description of a privacy first analytics tool took close to a thousand points, and a note about moving servers to Iceland took a couple of hundred; both simply state what happened. Say the thing and stop.
The method
- 01
Write flat, factual, understated titles for Hacker News and strip out every emotional adjective - the hype-driven headline style that works elsewhere gets punished here.
What it returned
- 968
A post announcing a minimalist, privacy-first alternative to Google Analytics took 968 points; one about relocating servers to Iceland took 241. The famously successful onion-selling post is similarly plain.
Sources
- How to get 30,000 Hacker News visitors to your websiteHarry Dry · Marketing Examples · Lesson 1 - Write the title for your audience · undated
the second source
Three plays a week, for the phase you are in
No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.
More in hacker news
- Bank the front page wave as reputation, not revenue2 unconnected
- Test the idea there, then distrust the verdict2 unconnected · contested
- Answer the question first, name the tool second2 unconnected
- Keep showing up long after your launch day2 unconnected
- Plan the front page spike as reach, not signupssingle source
- Publish your own numbers in unglamorous detailsingle source