Ask HN: Would you pay to get on the front page of Hacker News? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would you pay to get on the front page of Hacker News?

2 pointsfor_i_in_range9 comments

Since September 2008, I've checked Hacker News almost every day.

Since then, I've had fifty-six of my submissions make it to the front page (not only in this account but my older ones, too).

It's become almost a game for me, and I really enjoy writing essays or helping companies shape their message in order to get to the front page (or even the #1 spot).

For instance, I helped Skyfi get to the number one spot and they received 713 points.[1] This resulted in over 20,000 visitors and an (undisclosed) number of new user registrations.

Some submissions that hit the front page, like my one this week, "only" received 2,000 visitors in a day.[2]

I've learned there is an art to hitting the front page; however, there are a lot of people (and companies), who have valuable knowledge, products, or services, yet—because they don't know how to shape their content, they never see the light of day on here.

For this reason, I'm considering the idea of offering my services.

In trying to determine an appropriate price, I was thinking either a $5,000 Retainer + $5 Cost Per Visitor (which essentially maps to CPC).

Or keeping it simple: a flat $15,000 to get you on the front page of Hacker News.

20,000 visitors / $15,000 = $0.75 Cost Per Visitor

2,000 visitors / $15,000 = $7.5 Cost Per Visitor

Even at $7.5 CPV, the caliber of people you get visiting your site, I'd argue, is worth $7.5 CPV (considering many of Google's keywords are well over $10 CPC for keywords many apps/companies compete for).

Instead of "Front Page", I could also tranche it: $25,000 for #1 spot, $20,000 for Top 10, $15,000 for Top 20, $10,000 for Front Page.

Also, this would be results-based. Meaning, if I don't get you to the front page (or Top n Spot), I'd refund every penny.

What do you all think of this?

I'd love help with an appropriate pricing model.

Or if you think this is completely cringe, and you think I shouldn't offer this service, I'd love to hear this perspective, too.

You're also welcome to email me privately here: scott@scottscheper.com

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34468644

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37476399

> Or if you think this is completely cringe, and you think I shouldn't offer this service, I'd love to hear this perspective, too.

This is completely cringe and you shouldn’t offer this service. You would have the perverse incentive to fake upvotes for money, which I would imagine the operators of this site would have a problem with.

Thanks. I think it's 50/50 on the cringe department, which is why I ask. On one hand, the pay-to-play model is cringe, but on the other hand, there are many developers/startups who have great products and knowledge but do not have the time or priority to communicate it properly and rank on HN (even though many should).

I like to think HN is skilled in spotting fake upvotes which means I'd not have the "perverse incentive to fake upvotes for money."

> What do you all think of this?

I think that it sounds like SEO for HN. As such, doesn't it carry the risk of reducing the quality (and so value) of front page stories?

I wouldn't be doing headline tweaks or SEO stuff; that stuff is trash. I'd be doing the stuff that matters end-to-end: the writing, the research (getting on the phone with the company and diving into what is "HN-worthy"), even creating the page/website if they don't have one (easier for me to do everything myself).

If the quality is poor, it won't get to the first page of HN. Thankfully, I (or anyone) can't "game" the system with SEO/headline tricks. The name of the game is helping people/companies unearth valuable content/knowledge to share and letting the people upvote/downvote.

My value-add would be having an eye for what is more likely to be valuable (and upvoted) vs. not, and how to share that value through writing/copywriting.

What you are talking about is the high end of SEO or SMO. I’d say the companies that play this game the best are the ones that blog consistently about a technical topic, I’d say Pinecone is a good example. You can’t say that one post is going to get consistent results but if you are posting 50 blog posts that’s something different.

At that point it is not just getting on HN you are going to be happy to get hits on other platforms too.

> What you are talking about is the high end of SEO or SMO. I’d say the companies that play this game the best are the ones that blog consistently about a technical topic, I’d say Pinecone is a good example.

Another example is Hubspot and Zapier.

You search "Best SMS service" and you get a Zapier article: "The 7 best SMS apps for small businesses in 2023."

These rank high, yes. But they're shyt content. I don't trust those articles, and it doesn't change my opinion of Zapier being insanely over-priced.

> At that point it is not just getting on HN you are going to be happy to get hits on other platforms too.

One of the secondary benefits of ranking high on HN is that Google directly factors that into their SERP rankings.

Skyfi is now the #2 result on Google for "buy satellite photos"

I hope you don’t have a voting ring. I had about 2000 fake users on a portal for developers years ago that didn’t require email verification. People weren’t too surprised that my best blog posts rose to the top but they did wonder how my worst ones did. I lost all their passwords in a hard drive crash.

I will confess I have an autoposter script for HN but I think an autovoter (upvotes anything from Cornell) or autoflagger (flag anything from Quilette… but what happened to them?) script is strictly off limits, even if it wasn’t backed by an army of sock puppets, since a very small number of auto voters or flaggers could have a powerful impact on the site. (Now that I think of it my agent is named after a sock puppet but it uses just one account, which is mine.)

I think your prices are out of line as it is not as focused and qualified of an audience as you would get with contextual or behavioral targeting.

> I hope you don’t have a voting ring.

I do not. My twenties were spent being a "conjuror of cheap tricks," as Gandalf would put it. I learned the hard way that it's not worth it.

My thirties have been spent basically doing what I should have done in my twenties: doing things the slow way, the deliberate way, the right way.

> I think your prices are out of line as it is not as focused and qualified of an audience as you would get with contextual or behavioral targeting.

How so? GDN remarketing and targeting buyers who are "in-market" audiences? Those clicks will still cost >$3 and there's no guarantee they'll purchase (or are even part of a click ring).

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