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Comment by ArmandGrillet | Hacker News Reader

"A good lifestyle business could even be turned into a multi-million dollar company, if that’s what you want.": I've stopped reading there, I don't understand how articles that empty can arrive on top of HN. These questions (where to work? On what? How much?) get way better answers in "Ask HN" threads, articles coming from nowhere with a topbar selling me something are really not making me dream anymore.

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Genuine question: how do you know the article is empty if you haven't even read 20% of it?

The sentence I mentioned made me wonder if anything in the 20% I've read taught me something, I then looked at the top of my screen and saw the discount, that's when I decided to go back in this thread.

Interesting point. We actually had set up the HN discount long time ago for the whole site. But I do get your point that it makes this look a bit scammy. Thanks for answering and pointing this out.

I would suggest adding the discount at the bottom of the article so that you know that the people using it are already kind of engaged. The sentence was a deal breaker for me as I was on my phone thus in a context pushing for snacking content instead of going further.

We're using Optimizely for that. We'll look into it and see how easily we could put it inside the content or at least at the bottom. Thanks for the constructive feedback :-)

That doesn't seem like an effective marketing strategy.

If they moved their coupon code, would that change the content of their article? Or would it just set you at ease temporarily because you are jaded (rightfully so)?

Despite HN having a very critical readership it still falls victim to the biggest problems in internet journalism: click bait headlines and controversial topics(as in "...better than a startup" in a startup-centric message board).

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