Wednesday, November 21, 2012

How I hit the front page of Hacker News (and so can you)

This morning, I submitted my latest article to Hacker News, as usual.  Usually, I get 50-100 hits from HN if it's a good post.  Instead of slowly dying in "new" like the rest, this one immediately received enough upvotes to put it at #14 on the front page.  When I came back, I found that the total hits to my blog had doubled in an hour.

Yikes.  When I first started this blog, I had a goal of getting 13+ hits a day.  I never thought that I'd get hundreds  much less thousands of hits after only two months.  I'm just some dumb college student (how dumb?  Find out Saturday!).

Here's the trick: I just did it.  I didn't spend lots of time planning.  I didn't waste time reading books about how to blog.  I set a schedule and kept myself to it.  Admittedly, that resulted in some pretty poor articles.  You can insert your favorite motivational quote here.

So here's my profound tip to everyone who wants to make an impact (and if you don't, why not?): Keep pushing yourself.  Keep working hard at improving yourself, and eventually you'll find you've arrived.

There's a few blogs that have helped me reach this far, and I'd like to give them some love:
Permission to Suck: It's ok to be bad at something, so long as you don't let it stop you.
Always be shipping: Keep producing "stuff."  It's the best way to learn and improve.
Overnight Success: It Takes Years: Success takes hard work.  Don't expect to be an instant success unless you've put in the effort.

I'm incredibly happy with how well this blog is done.  My goal is still the same: 13+ hits a day.  I have some new ones (encourage commenting, get more followers on Twitter).  The central point is still the same: Learn by doing.

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