Use Adwords to find the best title for your Hacker News post
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Use Adwords to find the best title for your Hacker News post
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Re: Use Adwords to find the best title for your Hacker News post
#2I love this idea, very clever. A small spend can indicate a good option to you, and the traffic HN can generate is well worth it.
The spend isn't even a complete waste of money either, it's still pulling in a few new visitors during the test.
Very smart!
Re: Use Adwords to find the best title for your Hacker News post
#3If hit count is your leading metric, then sure. But if you care what happens afterwards then you need to track what happens afterward, and see how the traffic clicks interacts; Quality over quantity..
Re: Use Adwords to find the best title for your Hacker News post
#4I wonder if the other parameters were controlled in this experiment, like time and type of day of posting, amount of votes of other articles in front page, etc.
Re: Use Adwords to find the best title for your Hacker News post
#5good to know HNers react to the same class of stimuli as the average google search user. I might try some Cialis-entitled posts
Re: Use Adwords to find the best title for your Hacker News post
#6I don't want to criticize, but if getting to the first page is that important to you, I don't know, but it doesn't seems very healthy. Revenues and products are more important than bragging rights.
Ok competition is good, hacking is good, but doing that just for HN sake seems like overengineering for something not important at all (I mean, not central to most business)
However, making a product out of it is something quite different - and it's a great thing you did!
Re: Use Adwords to find the best title for your Hacker News post
#7New guys starting a startup that want to make their website "viral" look at this post, and learn. Give something of value, something that I can really learn from, maybe even not directly related to your startup, and people will give you credit. Not everyone can write a good post, but when you do be sure that I will check you website to understand what do you do. Also a couple of suggestions, your logo should take me to the website landing page, not blog home, this guys did a fine job by putting both links. And don't be ashamed of starting with something like "We at ZippilyBooppily(link) do.." this is perfectly fine, I know that you want my attention for your startup, and if you have something interesting to say I will check it, that link helps and tells me about you. Last and maybe most important, don't spam me, or HN or whatever, write only when you have something to say.
Re: Use Adwords to find the best title for your Hacker News post
#8Huh, an interesting concept. I wouldn't be surprised if, for certain products, HN hits are higher-quality hits than the average (higher conversion rate, possibly higher engagement rate after sign-up).
Of course, this is the sort of thing you need to be measuring. If that's not the case, you absolutely shouldn't be spending your money and, more importantly, your time on vanity upvotes and hits that don't result in a tangible benefit.
As an aside, I'd love to see a blog post from a generous individual willing to share how HN referrals as a cohort tend to perform compared to other traffic sources for their product/service.
Re: Use Adwords to find the best title for your Hacker News post
#9I guess it's somewhat interesting that AdWords can confirm what are good titles and what aren't but I could've told you at the outset that the first two titles are vague meaningless titles that won't draw anyone's attention. "The last frontier in payments"? Really? I know I wouldn't read that because it sounds like marketing BS.
Also, reaching the front page on the weekend has a lower barrier to entry. I see posts with 13 votes hang around for hours.
Re: Use Adwords to find the best title for your Hacker News post
#10I don't want to criticize, but if getting to the first page is that important to you, I don't know, but it doesn't seems very healthy. Revenues and products are more important than bragging rights. Ok competition is good, hacking is good, but doing that just for HN sake seems like overengineering for something not important at all (I mean, not central to most business) However, making a product out of it is something…
I think you underestimate how much attention HN can get you and overestimate the effort of doing what they did here. Seems like a great time investment to me.