If you don't care about SEO, why not just lie blatantly? Title "How I made 5 million dollars in a week working from home" then talk about your vacation to a local beach or something.
How to title your blog post or whatever
11–20 of 36 posts
Re: How to title your blog post or whatever
#12Personal pet peeve is the "I made a" prefix to titles. It adds nothing but an apparently selfish shift to the author/creator as opposed to their work.
That's so selfish of you to expect other people to provide neutral sounding content without claiming some participation in doing so.
Re: How to title your blog post or whatever
#13Personal pet peeve is the "I made a" prefix to titles. It adds nothing but an apparently selfish shift to the author/creator as opposed to their work.
I suppose it depends; if you're trying to showcase the work, then for sure, I'm more interested in what you made than the fact that you made it. Hopefully the work speaks for itself. But while "I made a foo" is not particularly enticing, "I made a foo and here's what I learned about bar in the process" can be a good thing. In that case, the shift in framing works because the focus is less on the product and more about sharing knowledge that the creator gained along the way that they hope might be entertaining or valuable to someone else.
Re: How to title your blog post or whatever
#14I disagree about negative attention being bad. People who dislike your content but still share it out of spite to "tell the world how wrong you are", can lead to more traffic and readers from spillover effects.
Re: How to title your blog post or whatever
#15> You should try to make a good thing, that many people would like
Personally, I would care (much) more about making a good thing over doing something many people likes.
Re: How to title your blog post or whatever
#16My best engagement on Hacker News has come from submitting great discussion topics; content is secondary. You're trying to think of something that people would really enjoy talking about if they just got the chance. So if you can notice systemic issues and perhaps give them a name, you're halfway to the front page already. When they read your title, people think of all kinds of related ideas that they've been dying t…
Agreed, when it comes to writing for hackernews I have had the best results personally when being curious but incomplete.
If I try to actually educate someone or do my research fully, either someone will know more than me, and an expert will weigh in to invalidate some section of my posting- or people will pretend to be an expert- and you’ll spend a day trying to discuss why what they’re saying is incorrect. Both will cause the discussion for other people to die.
The best has been tangents that are tangentially related to the topic presented. There can be multiple of these subthreads and they always make for interesting reading.
Re: How to title your blog post or whatever
#17> You should try to make a good thing, that many people would like Personally, I would care (much) more about making a good thing over doing something many people likes.
I agree , but up to a point. If you want to get paid, get credit, recognition, improve career etc. it's necessary enough people also like it.
Re: How to title your blog post or whatever
#18My best engagement on Hacker News has come from submitting great discussion topics; content is secondary. You're trying to think of something that people would really enjoy talking about if they just got the chance. So if you can notice systemic issues and perhaps give them a name, you're halfway to the front page already. When they read your title, people think of all kinds of related ideas that they've been dying t…
Agreed, when it comes to writing for hackernews I have had the best results personally when being curious but incomplete. If I try to actually educate someone or do my research fully, either someone will know more than me, and an expert will weigh in to invalidate some section of my posting- or people will pretend to be an expert- and you’ll spend a day trying to discuss why what they’re saying is incorrect. Both wil…
Are you talking about writing in the context of HN comment or submitting links?
Re: How to title your blog post or whatever
#19Click-bait titles like "All the best programmers know this..", "Breakthrough might make fusion a reality.." or any other type of title that does not give a hint of what the actual thing is are immediately discarded by me regardless of the creator. I actually wish there was a way of blocking these but they are usually the first items I see on YouTube or reddit.. sigh! This title problem is even worse as an author wher…
My belief has been that the title should describe exactly what it is you're writing about. no cleverness
Re: How to title your blog post or whatever
#20Just have to say, the title of the actual blog post is gold. I would not have read the article if it didn't have the "or whatever." But follow point 6 people—don't just add "or whatever" to your posts.