Hit the Front Page of Hacker News
What if you could get your blog, business, or idea in front of 4 million people for free?
That's how many engineers, investors, and industry leaders visit Hacker News every single day.
If you've ever submitted something to Hacker News you'll know: what makes the front page can feel completely random.
Posts that make the front page follow a few common patterns. And once you know what to look for, you'll see them everywhere.
In fact, you can learn these techniques and use them to succeed on Hacker News.
Why Listen to Me?
Since I started posting to Hacker News four years ago, 18 of my articles have landed on Page 1, leading to 500k pageviews per year. In the last twelve months, over 80% of my blog posts have hit the front page, and four of them shot all the way to the #1 slot. My current $15k/mo business owes its success to an effective launch on Hacker News.
When you share content on Hacker News, there are only two possible outcomes: "Front Page Glory" or "Fail in Silence." There's no in-between, so it will take you years to learn through simple trial and error. Why suffer through it when I've already done the hard work for you?
What You'll Learn
In this 7-part video course, I'll show you my proven process for:
- Choosing topics Hacker News will love, with specific examples
- Understanding Hacker News' distinctive etiquette and culture
- Writing content that establishes credibility and engages your audience
- Avoiding common writing pitfalls that sabotage your work
- Transforming your failed submission into a success story
- Preventing hostile comment threads
Whether you've participated in Hacker News before or are a total newcomer, this video course will help you leverage this tremendous platform to showcase your products and content.
Course Outline
1. Understand Hacker News (25 mins)
- Hacker News culture and etiquette
- Respecting the rules
- What makes posts succeed?
2. Choose Winning Topics (45 mins)
- Case studies of successful posts
- Estimating audience size
- Minimizing required background knowledge
3. Find a Plan B (40 mins)
- Finding backup channels
- reddit, Twitter, Google Search
4. Elevate Your Writing (40 mins)
- Telling it like a story
- Investing in quality
- Avoiding common mistakes
5. Submission Day (30 mins)
- Presenting your article effectively
- Participating in discussion
- Handling hostile comments
6. Recovering from Failure (15 mins)
- Mentally preparing
- Understanding possible outcomes
- Salvaging a failed post
7. My Process: From Start to Finish (35 mins)
- My tools for writing
- My writing habit
- My editing process
Reviews
"I got to preview this course and it was genuinely fascinating and really practical. To color this recommendation: I actually paid for this, and I rarely buy courses. It's legitimately good."
— Monica Lent, Founder of the Blogging for Devs community
"The value I got from this course is a life-changer. I see blogging with a different lens: how to write well, make people engaged, write valuable content for people. Michael put a lot of effort into summarizing his journey with blogging, so I learned a lot from his own success/failures stories."
— Stefanni Brasil, creator of theplantbased.club and co-host of the hexdevs podcast
"The material in this course helped me make the front page of HN twice last month. Michael is a craftsman who put a ton of work into this course, and I highly recommend it to anyone trying to produce content that gets shared widely!"
— Cory Zue, founder of SaaS Pegasus and Place Card Me
"This course really 'de-mystified' HN for me - why posts get removed, why certain posts thrive and others flop, and how to optimize my content to do well."
— Tim Jones, author of The MVP Sprint
"You may know some of these tips already, but I guarantee you haven't thought through it as deeply as Michael. You'll pick up something useful and in the end, it'll make you a better writer - HN or no HN."
— Dhruv Kar, wints.org
"Michael's course illuminates how Hacker News works, the audience of people that hang out there, and what kind of content does well on it. This gave me confidence to start submitting to Hacker News more regularly and my blog has seen increased traffic and engagement because of it."
— Sean Connolly, blogger at seanconnolly.dev
"Before I watched the course, Hacker News felt intimidating. I didn’t know what kind of articles to submit. This course answered my questions and showed me writing techniques I can apply to succeed on Hacker News."
You'll get