[HN Gopher] Want to Start a Startup, as a Software Engineer? Sel...
___________________________________________________________________
Want to Start a Startup, as a Software Engineer? Sell Something
Online
Author : yamrzou
Score : 217 points
Date : 2022-07-30 09:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.pragmaticengineer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.pragmaticengineer.com)
| moneywoes wrote:
| Much easier to build a brand online as this guy has done
| tiborsaas wrote:
| Title: "Want to Start a Startup, as a Software Engineer? Sell
| Something Online"
|
| Post TLDR: it's hard to do it, but it's possible.
|
| Takeaway message: "If you're considering starting a company: sell
| something online first to get a better feel of all the other
| things you'll need to focus on top of building a product."
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The author of the Pragmatic Engineer once posted a list of his
| previous failed startup ideas. Nothing wrong with failing, of
| course, and it's important to understand that it can take
| multiple attempts to find something successful.
|
| However, it's worth cautioning everyone to note how much his
| success revolves around newsletters, ebooks (as used as an
| example in this article), and the job boards that go along with
| his newsletter.
|
| I generally like and appreciate Pragmatic Engineer content, but
| it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The premise of this
| post is about starting a startup as a software engineer, but the
| example content is an information product (ebook) and the
| "startup" is just selling that ebook through content marketing.
| In fact this basically a cookie-cutter copy of the early 2000s
| self-help guru books where someone became successful selling
| books on how to become successful, but targeted at software
| engineers. This feels like someone read a Tim Ferriss book from
| the early 2000s and asked themselves how they could resell the
| same idea to software engineers.
|
| The author does have some good resources explaining the internal
| processes at companies he has worked for (Uber), but lately a lot
| of his newsletter content is recycled from The Information and
| random Tweets. In fact, he had to retract a claim that he
| reported on recently because it turned out to be a completely
| untrue rumor that was circulating on Twitter, which he reported
| as a "scoop". I suspect a lot of the quotes where he says "I
| interviewed an engineer at _____" might be just be sourced from
| random Tweets.
|
| As with all content marketers selling advice, please take this
| all with a grain of salt. Some of the information is definitely
| accurate and actionable, but framing this ebook marketing story
| as "how to start a startup as a software engineer" is pure
| marketing spin.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah this seems to be a common trend? It's easier to make money
| by capturing some small group of attention and getting them to
| pay you. In the best form of this you get interesting
| podcasts/writing that can be really great (Ben Thompson, Sam
| Harris, Bari Weiss, Yascha Mounk, Scott Alexander, etc.), but
| the more common form seems to just be mediocre content
| marketing, how-to, and self-help crap.
| michaelsalim wrote:
| Thank you for writing this! This quite align with what I've
| recently experienced. I was looking at a number of Twitter
| accounts that tweets about how to get engagements on Twitter.
| Naturally, they pointed to their own account as a good example
| of what to do. But if you look closely, they tend to find
| success precisely because they talk and sell courses on how to
| be successful. Not exactly the best example.
| victor106 wrote:
| Thank you for the honest advice
| jahewson wrote:
| Unfair. The blog post is pretty clear that it's a recap on
| things learnt about entrepreneurship and not, as you label it a
| "startup". It is most certainly not inviting its readers to
| embark upon that business pursuit. I think the advice is clear:
| go sell something, anything, on the side and you'll be amazed
| what you learn. Now bring those learnings back into your actual
| business aspirations.
| gregdoesit wrote:
| The Pragmatic Engineer here :) And here is the list of side
| projects and their status I posted about you might have
| referred to [1]. I never posted about failed startup ideas.
|
| As I wrote in another comment, this post is from late 2020,
| when I planned to start a startup, and when I had no idea I
| would be successful with my writing - it was maybe a month or
| two after publishing my first book. The context of this article
| was the skills I thought I'd use when going down the startup
| route.
|
| On some assumptions of my recent writing:
|
| > "I suspect a lot of the quotes where he says "I interviewed
| an engineer at ____ might be just be sourced from random
| Tweets"
|
| When I write that I talked with someone at a company, it means
| I connected with them directly on various channels (e.g. over
| DMs, Signal, video call etc). I talk with lots of people, and
| incorporate some of these into the "The Scoop" articles and
| sometimes tweet about them (like this [2]). If I base something
| on a tweet, I'd share that. If I use something else as a source
| of information I share that as well.
|
| If I come across things that are not true, I aim to correct it
| immediately (like this [3])
|
| In my new career, integrity is the most valuable asset I have,
| and I aim to make it very clear when I share information that
| comes with directly talking with people, versus taking things
| from other sources.
|
| > As with all content marketers selling advice, please take
| this all with a grain of salt.
|
| Agree on this, and please see the context on when I wrote this
| article.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1481195527467319297?...
|
| [2]
| https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1549867691346956288?...
|
| [3]
| https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1534884178428366848?...
| fredgrott wrote:
| Hi PE, I have found something in how to counter overworked
| SEO. I started re-using the Google tool Google trends with a
| twist:
|
| 1 Pick the High Searched Term of your subject. 2 Pick an
| extremely niche unique term of your subject that gets low
| search hits.
|
| Now combine them as a title to a post. Income wise one has
| two levers, immediate bump which often is just as high as the
| long term tail when it accumulates and the long tail is the
| niche search term.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Thanks for the additional context. However, this is the exact
| issue I was trying to point out:
|
| > this post is from late 2020, when I planned to start a
| startup, and when I had no idea I would be successful with my
| writing - it was maybe a month or two after publishing my
| first book.
|
| The title of the article implies that the content is advice
| for starting a successful startup for a software engineer. It
| literally uses the phrase "a startup".
|
| Then you read the content and it's about marketing an ebook.
| The fact that this was written only a month or two after
| getting some sales of your ebook is exactly the problem I
| wanted to point out: There is always a kernel of wisdom or
| truth inside of Pragmatic Engineer content, but I'm usually
| left feeling like the headline was hyper-optimized for
| maximum clickbait value, but the content doesn't quite
| deliver what the headline promised.
|
| In this specific example, I click because I wanted to read an
| article about starting a startup as a software engineer.
| Instead, I got basically a 1-2 month retrospective on
| marketing an eBook on HN that doesn't even explain why the
| book took off, other than perhaps luck. That's the type of
| disconnect between headline and content that degrades the
| sense of trust very quickly.
| gregdoesit wrote:
| Thanks for elaborating. You're right: the title is
| misleading. I changed the title to reflect what I meant to
| write about: "Want to learn about entrepreneurship, as a
| software engineer? Sell something online".
|
| And yes, your point is a valid criticism on "selling
| advice" without having been successful the space you write
| about. It's also a reason why I'm trying to steer clear on
| offering advice on running or scaling a business - since
| running my own business, ironically. I made one exception
| so far on this, sharing my thoughts on the term 'creator'.
| [1].
|
| I also noticed how writing about business topics pulls in
| people who want to succeed in a similar way, and can go
| down the "publish self help content" in ways that you
| described. It's not appealing to me.
|
| Appreciate the caveats on the publication! I'll also think
| of how to make it more clear to indicate my sources are
| direct and the information is "exclusive" without over
| using the "exclusive" part.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32233437
| sanderjd wrote:
| Hey this is a great answer! Really nice to see a "yep my
| thinking has evolved over time in these ways", which
| always feels really rare to me.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Thanks for responding and being open to some healthy
| discussion.
|
| To be clear: I am a subscriber and I do recommend The
| Pragmatic Engineer to a lot of people, although with some
| of the context above. Looking forward to watching the
| newsletter evolve over time.
| gregdoesit wrote:
| Thanks - I keep evolving the publication; The Scoop is
| barely a few months old and was (still is) a bonus
| addition to the long-form weekly articles.
|
| To quote or not to quote from other publications is an
| good question. Re-reading the last two Scoop issues, they
| both, indeed started with The Information quotes as you
| rightfully noted. I didn't mark the information that was
| unreported outside my newsletter clearly either. The ones
| that were all based on directly talking with sources at
| companies - like the internal controversy on Slack access
| at Stripe, compensation rises and the Board's role at
| Adyen, the Meta PSC process as it's playing out right
| now, the details on Google's hiring freeze as confirmed
| with managers at the company, the Graphcore hiring
| freeze, reporting on the upcoming Apple hiring slowdown -
| and then sharing when Bloomberg shared information on the
| same two weeks later.
|
| Here is an un-paywalled The Scoop issue from two weeks
| ago [1] where the first article was, indeed referring to
| The Information as a source, the second news referencing
| Bloomberg - confirming earlier reporting - and the next
| six scoops mostly from my own sources.
|
| I don't like the idea of calling out "exclusive" details,
| but I can also see how quoting from other sources can de-
| value this publication. Also, the reality as a on-person
| publication is there will be relevant news I won't get
| to, but might still be relevant to share as a summary.
|
| [1] (removed paywall) https://newsletter.pragmaticenginee
| r.com/p/fff15093-0d83-41d...
| [deleted]
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yep, after thinking about this and trying my hand at being the
| first "engineer" at a pre-product fit startup, I decided that
| this kind of thing is fine and even sensible advice for people
| who just want to run a successful business, any business at
| all, but just very much isn't for me. I like thinking about how
| to scale up software, not how to get more engagement. I'm just
| a better fit for more established companies that have a product
| with some amount of existing flywheel and need to keep it
| working, improve it, and expand it.
|
| I think the advocacy for these content based businesses would
| honestly make more sense directed to people whose direct
| interest is in business and marketing who just need to learn
| how to do some simple "low code"ing to turn their ideas into
| businesses. I don't think most of us here got into the
| programming game to start blogging and book-writing businesses!
|
| Edit to add: I do really like The Pragmatic Engineer by the
| way! I'm glad the author is interested in this kind of
| business, because I benefit from it. It just isn't the right
| sort of thing for me to work on. Different strokes for
| different folks.
| pyb wrote:
| The difficulty with tech blogging in general, is that even the
| best produce at most one genuinely great, authentic piece per
| year.
|
| So, if you want to be posting regularly, there is no choice but
| to recycle other people's insights, or produce less well-
| researched pieces, or to just repeat yourself a lot.
| eatonphil wrote:
| > The difficulty with tech blogging in general, is that even
| the best produce at most one genuinely great, authentic piece
| per year.
|
| Au contraire, the limit as I can see it is more like once per
| month.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Recycling insight is one thing, but I was referring to the
| sense that a lot of the content feels like "reporting on
| reporting". That is, an article telling me that The
| Information posted an article that said something.
|
| The quotes are always properly attributed with links, but
| given that the original content is behind a different
| subscription I feel slightly sleazy for subscribing to a
| newsletter that basically summarizes and quotes from a
| different paid newsletter as a primary source. (I also
| subscribe to The Information, FWIW)
| gregdoesit wrote:
| Just want to push back on the note that my newsletter
| "basically summarizes and quotes from a different paid
| newsletter as a primary source".
|
| The last issue had the most number of The Information
| quotes [1] plus a bunch of original reporting and opinions.
|
| The one two weeks ago had one such quote [2] and a bunch of
| original reporting.
|
| I hadn't quoted The Information three months before, the
| last time I mentioned anything from that source was late
| April [3].
|
| All linked issues are un-paywalled.
|
| Point taken though on quoting from other publications and
| the perception a few such quotes can create in a paid
| publication, not to mention when these external quotes are
| how an issue starts. And especially when burying original
| or "exclusive" reporting from original sources.
|
| I'm learning the ropes on this one as I go and will iterate
| on the format and the notion of "reporting on reporting".
|
| [1] https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/e0cb6dd3-052
| 7-421...
|
| [2] https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/fff15093-0d8
| 3-41d...
|
| [3] https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/1d8672a5-a2a
| b-48e...
| yunohn wrote:
| I appreciate the links and sources, I'm not sure what
| OP's problem is. I have a feeling they prefer opinion
| pieces, instead of insights into reported news.
| pyb wrote:
| I think Gergely's ambition is to be more than just a news
| outlet.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| There's unique authentic content and then there is expanding
| what is already known with a voice. Something that I refer to
| when I reflect on this is https://xkcd.com/1053/
| mouzogu wrote:
| > A similar - though much more impactful - example was how Traf
| Icons saw over $250K in sales after MKBHD - a YouTuber with
| over 13M subscribers - made a video with over 7M views of him
| installing these icons
|
| these post usually based around survivorship bias, that's
| assuming there was no prior relationship/agreement.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| A good book (free to read online) for founders getting to sell
| for the first time - https://www.foundingsales.com
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Oh nice, seems very relevant to me - Thanks for sharing!
| gizmo wrote:
| This guy puts a LOT of effort in marketing. Much more than the
| typical software engineer is willing to do. Twitter, substack,
| blog, youtube, SEO content, ads, he does it all.
|
| Of course you'll be successful if you spend years marketing
| yourself and learning all the tricks of the trade. What most
| engineers want, though, is to do well online while spending most
| hours on interesting software projects and putting in a minimal
| marketing effort. I'm happy for the guy, but I'm pretty sure most
| people here wouldn't be happy if we had to do his job.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yep, I won't work anywhere that doesn't have a good marketing
| department that I'm not involved in. Marketing is super
| important, usually more important than what I'm doing, but I'm
| not the right person to do it.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| A regular job has similar issues. Instead of marketing it is
| meetings, estimates, status reports, process, politics, etc.
| sanderjd wrote:
| This isn't the same thing. All of those things are part of
| the overall effort to engineer some kind of software
| artifact, which is what I enjoy doing. A meeting trying to
| come to consensus on an approach or to prioritize competing
| work or what process we should be using to avoid production
| issues or keep documentation up to date is not the same thing
| as running a twitter account or experimenting with different
| headlines or copy. Both kinds of work are very important, but
| the first kind is what I enjoy doing and the second kind
| feels like pulling teeth to me and that makes me bad at it.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| This is the "secret". Without a huge follower base, it's really
| hard to do sales without spending loads of money on marketing.
|
| An alternative though is to jump on a hype train and pray that
| the momentum will pick you up.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I think there's something to be said for effort to outcome
| ratios being the limiting factor.
|
| This is why making something you genuinely enjoy can be the
| best approach. Because the reward you get is the satisfaction
| of having done it and the money you make plays a much smaller
| role.
|
| Some of the most successful people I know had the initial
| reaction of "oh this is getting too much attention I should
| stop" when their things initially became popular before
| leaning into the interest and making businesses out of them.
|
| There's a reason common start up advice is "solve a problem
| that you have."
| tiborsaas wrote:
| I've tried a few things that I genuinely enjoyed and I wish
| I haven't, they were also problems I personally had.
|
| Now I think the best question to ask before building
| anything online is: "can I sell this to people?" If the
| answer is no or maybe, then consider it a hobby.
|
| Unfortunately sales is not solved by building things I
| love.
| eatonphil wrote:
| I think everything you're saying is exactly right. I think most
| developers wouldn't be happy doing what needed to be done to be
| successful (mostly the emphasis on marketing).
| jordanmorgan10 wrote:
| I never know what to think about these posts. As I've mentioned
| in other comments or posts around similar topics, I've had a
| successful eBook and still do. But when I'm asked for advice, I'm
| not really sure what to say. It just feels like dumb luck
| sometimes, honestly.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| Luck is always a factor in everything, but what really matters
| is being prepared to take advantage of it when luck strikes.
| jordanmorgan10 wrote:
| That is true. I often fluctuate between thinking I've done
| something right and just got lucky, or perhaps a combination
| of the two.
| orzig wrote:
| Certainly a combination! Here's a study I think every child
| should be taught, where they created artificially
| compartmentalized worlds for new music. They found:
|
| 1) many songs had almost no downloads in any world. They
| were "truly bad", and avoiding that is the skill
|
| 2) amongst the non-bad, different song is went viral in
| different worlds. That is the luck.
|
| So you're both; half-congratulations!
|
| https://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full
| ....
| amelius wrote:
| rule #1: don't take advice from soneone who sells shovels.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| The saying needs context. Not everyone can infer the gold rush
| aspect.
| corobo wrote:
| Don't take advice from the only person making money?
|
| I'm not sure the metaphor fits
| Kaze404 wrote:
| Is this an actual saying? It made me think of Twin Peaks
| (season 3) where one character runs a conspiracy, conservative
| radio show and sells golden shovels that his listeners proudly
| display.
| croes wrote:
| More like this, don't try to mine gold when you can sell
| shovels.
| marc_io wrote:
| I wanted to hear more about the "is there a demand for this?"
| part, as choosing a suitable niche is one of the most important
| tasks before starting any kind of online venture.
|
| Finding a middle ground between "what do I want to do" with "what
| people want" and "which specific niche still has some space
| available" is a tricky task.
|
| One simply shouldn't even think about doing any real product work
| without pondering about and validating this choice, as a bad one
| can pretty much invalidate all the solid work done afterwards.
| jollybean wrote:
| '1st time founders talk about product, 2cnd time founders talk
| about channel'.
|
| If you go to the Drug Store and look at the variety of aisles,
| note that the products don't change much.
|
| The channels to those spots on the shelf are locked down hard.
| New products into that space are usually by companies who control
| distribution.
|
| What happens when a crack dealer shows up on the corner in
| someone else's turf? They get shot. Well, you're not going to
| just walk into some market without being a target.
|
| Hence the dilemma.
|
| Products that have natural breakthrough aspects already have a
| big advantage.
|
| There are so, so many cool physical products that would exist but
| don't because channels are locked down by big players.
|
| Also another note - the author's attempt at digital advertising
| seemed to be a big glib! Throwing $40 on Twitter won't get you
| much. Most of it has to do with the ad and the target market.
|
| The author definitely has some natural marketing skills, due to
| their obvious ability to narrate a story and capture attention
| with this article I'd recommend he leverage that in some way,
| possibly with a YouTube ad of some kind to try things out.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Kinda confused. What ended up working in the long run in terms of
| their marketing? Am I wrong to think they left that out and only
| mentioned the success of their marketing for launch?
| scottydelta wrote:
| > I wrote a Show HN post, then crossed my fingers... and with
| luck, the post ended up upvoted, and eventually on the front page
| of Hacker News. Well it doesn't help when HN quietly shadow bans
| your posts. I have been a member of HN since 2013 and have barely
| submitted like 10 posts over this time. I only comment where I
| think I can contribute but recently I have realized that HN has
| shadow bans my posts. Once I wrote a comment on HN about slippery
| slope of self hosting apps which I host and people seemed
| interested. So I decided to write a substack article about it and
| post it on HN. Guess what, HN shadow banned it because I am not
| supposed to submit stuff that I wrote but submit things I found
| on internet interesting.
|
| Then recently I shared a reddit post on an Upwork scam and HN
| shadow banned it too. smh..
| kordlessagain wrote:
| Is your first paragraph a quote or your own comment? I usually
| post a ">" in front of quotes from articles or other users.
|
| I've seen posts I put up get lots of votes, go to the top
| position and stay there. I've also seen others go up, then drop
| off. It stands to reason if someone reports something for a
| site guidelines violation that it would weigh the article.
| However, I'm not sure that's how it really works.
|
| You could reference Dang's comments about things like this for
| more insight. I wish we had the source code of HN to inspect,
| but then again it's written in a custom language, so I'm not
| sure I'd understand it!
|
| Either way, this place is usually awesome and they do a good
| job policing it in a way that it has stayed awesome for a
| really long time. That's not to say some individuals here and
| there aren't burned by it. It's just letting go of it that is
| important. I don't think anyone here has time for long term
| grudges. If they did, they aren't worth the effort thinking
| about them.
|
| This place isn't going to make or break you or your idea. The
| only thing that can do that is you! Good luck and I hope you do
| well with the writing!
| [deleted]
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> For the book, I spent_ 2.5 _months writing, editing, and
| refining the content of over 200 pages._
|
| Two and a half months to write, edit and refine 200 pages?
|
| Kudos!
| gregdoesit wrote:
| Thanks. The book ended up as 61,000 words - which is not that
| much compared to all-text books - but lots of pages of resume
| examples. A "normal" 200 page book could have up to double the
| number of words (100-120K words). Just want to add that detail,
| as a "normal" 200-page book in two months would be much more
| impressive.
|
| I originally aimed for a ~40 page book - a PDF initially -,
| assumed it will have a few chapters at most. As I started
| writing and pulling in more advice from recruiters and hiring
| managers, the chapters added up.
|
| In what is pretty usual for projects you do the first time, I
| under-estimated the scope, as well as the time it will take. My
| original budget for time was a month. Not too different from
| some software projects in a completely new domain :)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I can relate. I have done my share of writing (and missing
| deadlines).
|
| I don't know if I could match your velocity, though.
|
| Good luck!
| borroka wrote:
| I guess it is probably 1000 words a day on average. I don't
| know whether the book have plots, graphs and other
| illustrations.
|
| It is fast writing, but doable. It requires knowing the subject
| in advance well--that's a given--consistency (starts and stops
| double the time, the longer one writes, the easier it becomes),
| and to copy and paste here and there paragraphs and articles
| that one has written and saved through their career--there are
| many "additional_material.txt" in my folders.
| gregdoesit wrote:
| I'm the author of this article. Please note that 2020 should be
| added to the title, as I wrote it late 2020, after I left Uber
| and my plan back then was to start a startup some months later.
|
| I had recently left Uber, and launched this e-book, and wrote
| this post with notes on what I thought might be useful skills as
| I go ahead with that startup.
|
| Note that I did not go ahead with founding a startup, so most of
| this post should be taken as "skills I thought would have been
| useful if I launched a venture-funded startup."
|
| I do think you can learn things better if you have some skin in
| the game. Specifically, learning about entrepreneurship can be
| easier if you start a small venture, even if on the side.
|
| Also, as PragmaticPulp pointed out, the title is misleading given
| my advice is based on a book launch, not a startup. I changed the
| title on the original blog post to "Want to learn about
| entrepreneurship, as a software engineer? Sell something online."
| hopineer wrote:
| gls2ro wrote:
| What is wrong with leaking news about layoffs?
|
| Or to ask the reverse: in case of layoffs that are kept secret
| who is benefiting from secrecy: the users/consumers, the
| employees, the investors, the founders?
| a9h74j wrote:
| > If you're considering starting a company: sell something online
| first to get a better feel of all the other things you'll need to
| focus on top of building a product. This experience has only made
| me more excited about doing something from scratch
|
| This article did not read to me as _Tim Ferris for X_. Nothing
| that couldn 't be read elsewhere, but to me not blameworthy or
| anything.
|
| Generically: Don't make your _important_ product to get out there
| the _first_ product you try to get out there. So business
| structure first, then important product or service.
| siddontang wrote:
| I joined a startup 7 years ago as the first employee to build an
| open-source distributed database and have been working as a chief
| engineer since then. I write a lot of code, but most of the time
| I'm actually doing something other than code:
|
| I visit customers to show our product proposition and listen to
| their requirements, write articles online to introduce our
| product, participate in meetups to talk about the technical
| architecture, operate the community to attract contributors, talk
| to ISVs or other companies about product integration...
|
| Many of them are not programming, but why I still have to do
| these? I think even we have a good enough product, if nobody
| knows about it, it is nothing. We must try our best to improve
| the awareness of our product.
|
| By the way, doing these things also make me grow faster, become
| more focused and even better at programming. So if you are a
| Software Engineer, please have a try, this is another kind of fun
| :-)
| davidw wrote:
| Rob Walling's book, "Start Small, Stay Small" was full of great
| advice for exactly this demographic. Some of the advice is kind
| of dated at this point... what would people recommend these days?
| It's still probably worth a read, because some of the advice is
| fairly timeless.
| thosakwe wrote:
| I read "Start Small, Stay Small" in 2021. More modern advice is
| on YouTube instead of books. Try channels like Noah Kagan, or
| Microconf.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| _I wrote a Show HN post, then crossed my fingers... and with
| luck, the post ended up upvoted, and eventually on the front page
| of Hacker News._
|
| I genuinely have no idea how that happens. Everything I've
| submitted falls immediately off the front page and gets zero
| comments.
|
| At first I figured it's just because it was my blog (hello
| imposter syndrome), but I've also posted old classic articles
| from others that usually get a heap of comments, and they too got
| nowhere.
|
| I'm guessing HN front page is either dumb luck, or requires some
| deep SEO voodoo that's beyond me.
| synu wrote:
| It does happen sometimes. It's actually allowed to repost
| something that didn't originally get traction, as long as it
| isn't excessive.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I've submitted 11 things on HN. Three things were my content,
| three I'd seen posted here before that got a lot of comments
| but hadn't been posted for a while, and the rest were just
| random things of interest.
|
| Had much more success submitting stuff to reddit. So I guess
| I'll stick to the comment section on HN :)
| yamrzou wrote:
| 11 is not that much. Out of my 442 submissions, only 35
| reached the front page and had significant activity (>= 20
| points and >= 10 comments). That's an 8% chance of reaching
| the front page without optimizing anything (apart from the
| interestingness of the submissions themselves).
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Those are awful odds. I'll leave HN frontpage to the
| lucky and the professionals.
| synu wrote:
| Looking through your submissions, all of those are such
| interesting topics. It's a shame there isn't time and
| space for all the interesting topics that must be being
| submitted all the time.
| input_sh wrote:
| > or requires some deep SEO voodoo that's beyond me.
|
| Timing and somewhat clickbaity titles.
|
| By timing I mean if the last item in /newest is like 30 min
| ago, don't bother, it'll go to the second page too fast to get
| traction. If it's like 2h ago, then post.
|
| And by clickbaity titles I don't really mean "you won't believe
| what happens next" kind, but to use your submissions as an
| example, "You Can't Sit on the Sidelines and Become a
| Philosopher" is the only one I would click on. The other 10
| didn't make me curious one bit.
| em-bee wrote:
| i found about half of those topics interesting
| themulticaster wrote:
| Interesting - normally I never look at /newest, but after
| reading your comment I had a brief look. And apparently some
| users post 4-5 links in quick succession. At first I
| suspected they were bots, but apparently said users simply
| decided to post a few links today. Not the typical submission
| pattern I would have expected.
| michaelsalim wrote:
| The other day I saw someone explain how they made a habit
| of posting interesting news they saw at the end of the day.
| I imagine that user might be doing something similar.
| tuxie_ wrote:
| I asked this same question some time ago and it went nowhere:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27278175
|
| > as of this moment we even have stories with 3 votes in [the
| front page]. At the same time I've seen some stories go
| unnoticed with 9 votes in the "new" section.
| tootie wrote:
| The unwritten rule of startup success is to be lucky. As with
| anything, luck favors the prepared but you still need luck.
| tarsinge wrote:
| I have an alternative for B2B that worked not too bad for me as a
| typical introvert sales-averse SE: working a few years in
| customer support, pre-sales and solution engineer, ideally all
| three at the same time (in B2B obv.). Then you'll hopefully have
| a good grasp of the sales process, how to make a good demo, how
| is organized the typical medium big company, which will help both
| close deal and build relevant features by talking to the relevant
| persons.
|
| Then by knowing both how to build software, how works a typical
| company and how to sell, I was ready when an opportunity showed
| up.
| sanderjd wrote:
| But, like, do you _enjoy_ that work?
|
| I got bit by this same "I want to run a business" bug in the
| past, but I've been much happier since I concluded that it's
| actually better for me personally to do engineering work on
| successful products that I believe in.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Do you have a blog? Alternatively are you open to questions
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