Any tips for doing a Show HN post?

I did a Show HN awhile back that did pretty well. I think the 3 most important things are:

1. Your introductory comment. Succinctly explain what your product does, why you built it, and let people know you're open to questions or feedback.
2. Thoughtfully respond to every comment, whether positive or negative. People are much more likely to upvote if they see interesting discussion in the comments.
3. Line up 3-5 people who have agreed to leave comments or questions right after you post. Don't tell a bunch of people to go upvote you or post fake praise, as you don't want your post to get flagged. The goal here is to just get some conversation going early to get the ball rolling.

Outside of that, it's mostly in the hands of the HN gods. Good luck!

Hit or miss, but get it done early in the AM and have a few friends who know about it that will "naturally discover it" on the Show HN and give it an upvote. Only need 2 or 3 upvotes to appear on the page.

Ping me when you post it at hello [at] nojvek.com. Will upvote. Sick site by the way. I take you make your money from buying prints. Really well executed.

I'm happy to offer you my vote, so please let me know when you launch: https://contact.do/toni

try to make your title as unsalesy as possible.

Like you are explaining to a friend instead of trying to sell someone.

This article by @harrydry is good https://marketingexamples.com/content/drive-traffic-from-hacker-news

I also did a Show HN and got so much traffic that it crashed my server twice. I did not plan it or manipulate it in any way. But looking back here are my observations.

1. HN crowd likes projects that are creative, unusual or pushing tech boundaries.

2. If they can play with it, that's good.

3. Responding to comments helps.

4. Since then I have learnt that they like it if you give a nice explanation of your projects. See Launch HN for examples. I did not do this. Mine was 2 or 3 sentences.

So there you have it - Something they like + some luck = front page!

Probably too late for OP but if you see your post disappear after having a bit of activity in the comments (like mine did once) it's likely you got automatically flagged. Turns out my post tripped a flame war detector. I reached out and it was manually overridden to show my post again.

Best of luck to anyone posting!