How we got to the front page of HN and stayed 17 hours with no help
Hi indie hackers,
Yesterday, we posted our product frontendor.com (create landing pages by copy-paste) on Hacker News and got it to the front page without any help from friends (no up-votes or comments).
Results in 24 hours:
- 10k+ visits
- 500+ visited our Gumroad page
- 43+ sales & $2.1k
If you want to make it, consider following these tips:
- Post on Sunday (less competition).
- Reply quickly to all comments (my friend didn't sleep all night 😝)
- Try to open conversations (this will really help you rank higher)
- Choose your headline carefully (we got many compliments about our headline)
- Don't break the rules, read the guideline.
Good luck
Trending on Indie Hackers
Good job! It was nice to see you guys coming from here and going there with no external help!
Hi @orliesaurus, thank you for your support 🤗
Bought your product. Looks great.
Some people already started using it, we've got good feedback so far. if you find any issues let us know.
upcoming updates:
Thank you!
What was the issue with your headline?
People used to read headlines like this: "build landing pages by drag & drop", the COPY-PASTE idea was funny but most importantly, it triggers curiosity.
Simply, try to follow the "self interest + curiosity or news" formula to make your headlines.
Examples where this formula is used:
10 hacks to increase your sales on Gumroad.
10 hacks ==> triggers curiosity
increase your sales ==> triggers self interest
it's all about copy-writing, use words to trigger emotions, because emotions leads to action (when you feel angry you might kick someone, when you feel curios you might click on that link, video... :p).
Sorry for any typo, English is my third language.
right on, thanks for your thoughts, this is helpful!
Wow Hamza, that is phenomenal. Super proud of you guys. I've always wondered how its done. I've just finished my next Windows and Mac app called the Magic Downloader that lets you download videos from any website -- YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, you name it, it supports it.
I've been planning out the launch phase and am a bit stumped, worried about botching it. Would you be open to chatting for a little bit to help me out? I'd appreciate it tremendously.
-Fitz
Yeah sure, email me with your questions at [email protected]
Ok! Thanks so much for your willingness to help!
Hey Hamza! Great work and appreciate you sharing your tips!
When you're saying to try to open conversations, what's your strategy here? Are you making first comments to get the convo going?
No, I mean to reply to any comment even if it doesn't need a reply and try to ask something driving him to a conversation.
In our post, someone commented about a typo on our landing page and people started replying to him about the typo and not about my product, this led my post to rank higher for a few hours.
Gotcha, thanks for clarifying! That's a great tip!
Good one. Thanks for the tips.
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Interesting tool. Does it also record video (user navigation)?
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Want to subscribe just for that Pied Paper reference
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You can do it 💪
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