I increased my traffic by changing a title | Hacker News Reader

I increased my traffic by changing a title

ccampbell.io

64 pointsSoupy16 comments

I think it's not just that "10% of the Top Million Sites are Dead" is a really good title, but that "Fun with DuckDB, curl, and the Majestic Million" is a really awful title. If they had gone with "Checking the top million sites with DuckDB and curl", they probably would have gotten at least some traction here on HN.

Breaking down the original title, I'd read it like:

- "Fun with...": just another on the pile of blog posts exploring some tech but not arriving at any interesting point

- "DuckDB": I've heard of it, not personally used it, there's a million and one DBs out there now so I'm not going to stop and look at everyone without a particular reason

- "curl": curl is boring, everyone knows curl (in the HN crowd at least)

- "and the Majestic Million": no recognition on first read, had to google it

So it's not surprising to me nobody initially clicked on what reads at first glance as "Boring blog about boring and boring", which is really a diservice to the post they actually wrote.

This is a prime example of "marketing" - the title should inform the reader what they'll expect when they read it (even clickbait titles do this!) The "fun with" title doesn't inform anything except parts of the ingredients, which means unless you know what those things are, you're unlikely to read it.

"I call it: 'Billy and the Cloneasaurus...!'"

> "Fun with DuckDB, curl, and the Majestic Million"

> I resisted this title the first time around because it felt too catchy and clickbaity, so I had opted for the more academic title.

This title is not academic at all, I agree that people use clickbait title because they work but there is a middle ground between an arguably bad title and the clickbait title.

To go one step further, I am not even sure that "10% of the top million sites are dead" counts as clickbait, maybe the "dead" word is strong, but that's still just an actually good title in my book.

This article is written with the same "good" approach, the author didn't name it "Fun with Google Analytics", he instead added the actual quantitative value to hook the audience.

> Take a second look at this post’s title [of "I increased my traffic 13,000% by changing a title"] - is it “clear, descriptive, and informative”? Or is it “flashy, gimmicky, and potentially clickbait”? I’d classify it in the latter, but if I went with the former then you never would have found this post (or me).

The author has this backwards, which was part of their initial problem. The title "I increased my traffic 13,000% by changing a title" is clear, descriptive, and informative.

Making the HN homepage with a post describing how you made the HN homepage. How very meta.

Not only that, he submitted this twice and this title worked.

Nah, that's the very definition of spam.

EDIT: Removed.

For some reason, people online seem extremely angry towards attention grabbing titles that are also 100% accurate and descriptive of the article. If you don't go out of your way to pick the most drab title imaginable, you are an evil scammer robbing people of their precious internet bandwidth.

Even the author initially decided not to use "10% of the top million sites are dead" because it seemed "flashy, gimmicky, and potentially clickbait." Well yes, it is flashy, but it is certainly not clickbait. Why on earth do people hate on titles like that, when it accurately describes one of the central findings of the article.

I swear, one day someone is going to find a cure for cancer. They will publish something with the title "I have found a cure for cancer." And the first thing they will hear is some misanthrope complaining about their title being clickbait.

I think you get so accustomed to people making bullshit, hyperbolic claims that honest people reflexively are put off by things that _could_ be bullshit, hyperbolic claims. Not saying it’s totally rational, but when I first saw the “10 percent of top million sites are dead” I thought to myself, “that’s probably bullshit.” Odds are good that anyone claiming to have cured “cancer” is also entirely full of it.

The previous title was just terribly uninteresting, no wonder. It wasn't even what the article was about -- it was four things that were much less interesting, combined into one even less interesting blob.

I mean, "10% of the top million sites are dead" is a surprising, and concrete, piece of information. Whereas "Fun with DuckDB, curl, and the Majestic Million" contains virtually no information about what the article is about- I don't know what DuckDB is but databases aren't that exciting, curl is a well understood tool, and as for the third piece, a million what? Bats? I don't have time to read all the way through every article to figure out which ones are interesting. Anyways, I think you already figured this stuff out but- yeah your second title is a lot better.

> 6 job offers (aka, requests to interview)

I believe those are (very) different things

That stood out to me as well, and then I realized it is the same exercise as the title maneuver.

From Veritasium: Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng

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