Tips on how to hack Hacker Information (and persistently hit the entrance web page)
I do know I’m on skinny ice with a title like that. Getting featured on the HN entrance web page is excessive on each Indie Hacker’s bingo card, to not point out “hacking Hacker Information.” Nonetheless, we discovered a technique to persistently get to the entrance web page utilizing a repeatable course of that you should use too.
Let’s dive in.
Along with @adriaanvanrossum, I personal Easy Analytics, a privacy-friendly and easy Google Analytics different. Adriaan began Easy Analytics full “indie hacker type” and grew to 100K ARR by understanding the wants of his viewers extraordinarily properly. Most of our customers are like Adriaan, and the place can you discover individuals like Adriaan? Sure, Hacker Information.
To me, persistently getting on the entrance web page of HN appeared unrealistic. If it might have labored simply as soon as, I might have thought of myself very fortunate.
However as soon as the dopamine of my first HN front-page second kicked in, I wished extra, extra, extra. I spent too many hours figuring this out, however in the long run, we discovered a technique to get that HN entrance web page protection repeatedly.
These are our web site analytics from final yr, the place I marked the HN spikes. Be at liberty to mess around with our reside analytics here to see for your self.
Here’s what labored (and continues to be working for us).
Understanding Hacker Information
First, you have to perceive Hacker Information. I’m not a developer. Hacker Information had by no means been my jam. Earlier than posting, I wanted to know what labored for the HN crowd.
You’ll discover out that the HN crowd shouldn’t be the simplest. The individuals on HN will actually slay you in case your stuff shouldn’t be 100% on level. Additionally, don’t even attempt to dump your semi-interesting weblog posts on HN, not to mention promote your product.
Competitors is fierce, and solely a certain quantity of articles will get that front-page spot.
However after spending many hours making an attempt to know HN, its customers, and the content material that’s doing properly, I recognized a sample.
Your content material must be both:
- Newsworthy
- Investigative (analysis)
Two examples:
Investigative: “Fingerprinting is worse than I thought”
If you happen to test the hyperlink, you will notice just a few issues which might be necessary right here:
- Somebody did analysis and located one thing fascinating. The author really put within the work.
- It is written with out company bs
- No self-promotion or any CTA’s within the textual content
It screams worth.
Newsworthy: “Apple wins antitrust court battle with Epic Games, appeals court rules”
There is just one purpose this ranks on the entrance web page of HN. It is information that’s related for the HN group.
Different issues you have to take note of:
- Discover the right time to publish: Weekends – Much less competitors. Nonetheless tons of site visitors.
- You possibly can publish a number of occasions: HN understands that high quality posts can go unnoticed, so you may attempt the identical publish once more. Don’t overdo it. I might say max 2 or 3 occasions.
- Preserve participating with the viewers.
Our Technique: The Struggle Room
Sure, funnily sufficient, that is what we really referred to as our method to HN. As soon as we obtained an understanding of HN, we created a technique round it: The Struggle Room Technique
We selected to rank on the entrance web page with “newsworthy” articles. This gave the impression to be a greater repeatable method than the “investigative analysis.”
The Struggle Room Technique has three steps:
Step 1: Newsbot
Step 1 is to remain on high of reports that’s each in our area of interest and related for HN. To make sure this, Adriaan created a “newsbot” to inform us instantly about information we may act upon.
For us, information on privateness points, big-tech fines, information breaches, and something regarding Google Analytics is relatable to us and related to HN.
Right here is how Adriaan constructed the bot (just for the tech-savvy ones — I do not know how this works. Skip this if you’re like me):
- Fetch information from Hacker Information API
- Arrange Google Alerts in your question
- Fetch information from Google Alerts XML
- Enrich information and retailer in SQLite file with a cronjob
- Ship alerts with different cronjob to Twist API or Telegram API
Then add chatGPT within the combine and ask for a ranking between 0-100 and a purpose why the article is getting that ranking. We ship ourselves alerts when the ranking is 30+
Adriaan tweeted about it here to get the complete concept of this.
Anyway, this manner, we’re the primary to get that related information from the supply.
Step 2: Struggle Room mode
Step quantity 2 is triggered by our information bot. When this occurs, we drop all the pieces and begin investigating the information merchandise: Struggle Room mode. If we really feel there’s something there, we begin writing about it.
To be related for HN, you may’t simply copy/paste the information merchandise. Information gadgets are sometimes very plain, so by offering extra context and implications, you may create one thing related that may coexist with the supply.
Instance: Norway takes a stance against Google Analytics – 144 upvotes
Define:
- State the information merchandise and hyperlink to the supply (so individuals can select what to learn)
- Clarify what the issue is
- Clarify what the implications are
- Clarify what we are able to count on sooner or later
Step 3: The key sauce
We all the time finish with a bit that is known as: Closing ideas. That is your second to shine and drop a punchline that talks about your product/service.
Nonetheless, be tremendous tremendous tremendous cautious with self-promotion. We solely do that on the finish of the article. After offering tons of worth to the reader, solely embrace one sentence that’s the least salesy you are able to do.
We do it like this, and typically even that backfires:
Relying on the information merchandise, we are able to create an article in 1-2 hours and publish it on HN. This fashion, we’re all the time the primary to cowl the difficulty and take a broader perspective than simply the information merchandise itself. That’s the worth you add.
Timeliness + Worth = HN entrance web page
Facet-effects
Clearly, the purpose is to get site visitors to your web site and enhance model consciousness and all, however there was one side-effect I didn’t anticipate: search engine optimization
As a result of we’re the primary to cowl these information gadgets, different web sites began to hyperlink to our content material.
Three of our hottest articles obtained tons of backlinks (and much more site visitors from these sources):
We even received the Dutch Search Awards for this technique, whereas I’m not notably good at search engine optimization.
In a single occasion, even the Indian Occasions linked to us:
How are you going to reproduce this?
- Perceive Hacker Information. Get a sense for what works and what doesn’t. Even if you happen to attempt to “hack Hacker Information,” it’s essential to present worth. As defined, there are two methods to method this, however with out worth, no entrance web page.
- Keep on high of related information in your area of interest that can be related to the HN viewers. If you wish to recreate our bot, test Adriaan’s Twitter, or be happy to ship me a message.
- Be the primary one to behave on the information + add perspective to the information merchandise.
Timing + Worth = Frontpage (consistently-ish)
Clearly, it doesn’t work on a regular basis. We’ve posted sufficient stuff that we thought was related and hung out on that was simply not fascinating sufficient.
Anyway, this method generated many upvotes and have become a repeatable course of for privacy-related or Google-focused subjects. In case your viewers is on HN, it’s best to give it a spin. And clearly, if you happen to attain that entrance web page and need to monitor that juicy site visitors coming to your web site, try Simple Analytics.