Monthly Archives: July 2025

I’ve been a member of Hacker News (HN) since 2012. You can see my profile here. (Thanks to Jeff Beard for introducing me to it so many years ago.)

I currently hover around the upper 30s on the top 100 leader list. I’ve talked about that community with the good folks at RedMonk. After submitting thousands of stories, including over 400 with more than 100 points, here are outcomes I expect from a high ranking HN post.

Traffic

The first is the traffic. It’s not uncommon to get thousands of visits from an HN post that hangs out on the front page. Make sure you have a CDN at the ready. It is, however, unlikely to convert.

Whether you want people to buy, download, or even sign up for a newsletter, HN traffic isn’t much help. It’s low conversion, brand awareness traffic.

That may be what you need–just standing out among the crowd is tough these days. But don’t think you’ll trend on HN and get a ton of sign ups.

Comments

The second valuable result is the comments. DO NOT SLEEP on these.

You have the attention of a large number of smart people who don’t know you, but are taking the time to share their thoughts. They are giving you precious feedback. Do not ignore it, explain it away, or get hurt by it.

Instead, try to understand why they are commenting the way they are. Engage and ask questions that show you have thought about their comment. The best time to do this is right after they make a comment, but even a day later you’ll get some replies.

You don’t have to slavishly make changes based on comments–I’m not even sure that is possible, given that they will conflict. But you should consider them the same way that you would if someone sent you an email.

Follow-on Traffic

After having a post trend on HN, I’ve seen follow-on smaller bumps in traffic in the weeks after. This comes from someone discovering your post on HN and sharing it. This could be from a newsletter, a FaceBook group, a follow-on blog post, or via another social network. I don’t know if this traffic converts better, but it again adds to the brand awareness of your company or product.

If you can figure out where these came from, either via referrer headers or a Google alert (if the referring site is public) it is also great to reach out to these sources of traffic with other content or advertising.

Since they self-selected and were interested in sharing your post initially, they will likely want to share other things you’ve written.

Gratitude

If you shared a post from someone else, which you should do for the vast majority of your HN posts (~90%), and it hits the front page, you may get a note of thanks. I’ve had both strangers and friends reach out with a quick ‘thank you’ when something I posted from them gets traction. This only works if you have contact info on your profile or they have some other way of getting in touch with you.

There are also results which you should not expect from a high ranking post.

Non-Outcomes

• HN is not a marketing plan. While writing content for HN can be helpful if your target buyer or buyer influencer hangs out there, it won’t lead directly to conversions. It is a piece of the top of the funnel efforts you have, not the totality.
• Broad market feedback. Not everyone is on HN. Not every developer is on HN. Not even every developer in SF is on HN. Plan accordingly.
• Reliable traffic. HN is very fickle. I’ve had more than one story that I posted fizzle, while the same story posted by someone else one to three days later sails to the front page.