Could someone write an article about Patrick McKenzie's appeal and techniques on marketing to the HN community? :)
And by marketing, I mean getting their attention and building a brand, not money.
And by marketing, I mean getting their attention and building a brand, not money.
Many HNers feel a sense of personal investment in me, because HN has been my home-away-from-home for ~7 years now and I am a "local boy who made good."
I write decently and have a strong written voice which people like.
A relatively small fraction of what I write is immediately useful to people.
Also: I write a lot. My published output is something on the order of ~3 million words, roughly ~2 million of which are on HN. (Give or take 500k or so. It's been a while since I ran the script and I don't have a few hours to wait before bed.) That's roughly Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones... combined.
There: that's the whole secret. Use these dark magicks responsibly.
https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/patio11.json?prin...
I don't know about Patrick but Algolia correctly sorts my highest comments, too. What number are you expecting from patio11's results that you're not seeing?
I can't say whether it's FireBase or Algolia that's at fault, but my HN search results are definitely wrong.
It look like it doesn't have anything from the past year? But maybe there are other issues too.
When I hit this, the top comment has a score of 12 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:timv&sort=byPopularity&...
That means it's missing all of these (and probably more)
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11084278
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11077893
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070269
I remember reading a comment of yours on Net Benefits years ago on critiques (I think it was about how some critiques more or less used the subject as a one-dimensional cutout to haul out in the middle of rounds and stick back in the box when done) and you talked about a Japanese phrase that meant something along the lines of "wallflower" (?) in that context.
I searched for that comment a few times, but never could find it again. It drove me up a wall in a few rounds because it was always on the tip of my tongue but I couldn't remember. Then it didn't matter after my school decided to screw up our debate program, but it was one of those dumb little things that continued to bug me. Any chance you remember what I'm talking about, now that the annoying itch to know has come back? :)
Sakura are, in the Japanese theatre tradition, confederates who you place in the audience with instructions to be vocally demonstrative at particular points in the play. This is to get the rest of the audience to join in. They're not actors but they are deployed to make the actors look good.
A huge thanks to Patrick for reminding all of us to Raise Our Rates. I've still yet to bill above $200/hour but I aim to have an effective "rate" well beyond that soon.
He is transparent. I first learned about him from the Business of Software forum and it's incredible to see the path he traveled. I feel like he is my close friend and I am rooting for him to succeed.
Not only he shares what he has learned, you can email him about specific things and get valuable advice for free for which he charges his clients several thousands of dollars.
Finally, everyone loves rags to riches story. In his case, he wasn't exactly poor, but he is a guy just like you and me and hustled his way to success [1].
[1] Success not in terms of millions he made but rather by living life on his own terms doing what he loves.
I think it helps a lot that he built a business that's "human scale" - everyone can relate to replacing their salary, whereas building some zillion dollar SV business really isn't in the cards for most of us.
Also, bingo cards was a huge wakeup call that you don't have to do something technically brilliant or with an amazing business model. "Just" find a niche and sell stuff to people with a need.
Patrick's writing and experience have offered us a refreshing counterpoint to that narrative. I don't know if Patrick set out specifically to provide that counterpoint, or to be a poster child for small software business in general. Regardless, he's kinda sorta become one. Which is cool. He reminds us that there is an interesting, livable life to be had running one's own business(es) and not grooming oneself for unicorndom.
It also helps that he's contributed sensible, detailed, thoughtful, honest commentary throughout his tenure in this community -- be it about BCC in particular, or about any other topic he comes across.
Finally, he's been at this slowly and steadily over the course of however many years. That authenticity contrasts very starkly to, e.g., the legions of folks who pop into HN every so often for the explicit purpose of marketing themselves. Patrick's HN fame is a side effect of his contribution to this community, and not the result of some calculated campaign to achieve it. That's awesome for Patrick, and Patrick's presence has been awesome for HN.
I'll stop now, as this was not meant to be a hagiography. I don't know Patrick from Adam. For all I know, he once refused to help an old lady cross the street. Maybe he grabbed an extra slice of pizza from the high school cafeteria once when no one was looking. Who knows. But from what I can tell of him, he seems like a stand-up guy. :)
Not everyone does that, so anyone that does stands out. If you've been on HN for a while, you might also remember the guy doing the Japanese candy boxes.
Years ago, SEO was easy and many of us built low-effort, recurring revenue as a result. But not all of us capitalised by building a personal brand around it. I can identify with Patrick's path:
- build
- wow, SEO is easy
- this is amazing; money for almost zero effort!
- get distracted, ignore declining revenue
- site becomes mental baggagehttp://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/