TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

Ask HN: Would you pay to get on the front page of Hacker News?

2 pointsby for_i_in_rangeover 1 year ago
Since September 2008, I&#x27;ve checked Hacker News almost every day.<p>Since then, I&#x27;ve had fifty-six of my submissions make it to the front page (not only in this account but my older ones, too).<p>It&#x27;s become almost a game for me, and I really enjoy writing essays or helping companies shape their message in order to get to the front page (or even the #1 spot).<p>For instance, I helped Skyfi get to the number one spot and they received 713 points.[1] This resulted in over 20,000 visitors and an (undisclosed) number of new user registrations.<p>Some submissions that hit the front page, like my one this week, &quot;only&quot; received 2,000 visitors in a day.[2]<p>I&#x27;ve learned there is an art to hitting the front page; however, there are a lot of people (and companies), who have valuable knowledge, products, or services, yet—because they don&#x27;t know how to shape their content, they never see the light of day on here.<p>For this reason, I&#x27;m considering the idea of offering my services.<p>In trying to determine an appropriate price, I was thinking either a $5,000 Retainer + $5 Cost Per Visitor (which essentially maps to CPC).<p>Or keeping it simple: a flat $15,000 to get you on the front page of Hacker News.<p>20,000 visitors &#x2F; $15,000 = $0.75 Cost Per Visitor<p>2,000 visitors &#x2F; $15,000 = $7.5 Cost Per Visitor<p>Even at $7.5 CPV, the caliber of people you get visiting your site, I&#x27;d argue, is worth $7.5 CPV (considering many of Google&#x27;s keywords are well over $10 CPC for keywords many apps&#x2F;companies compete for).<p>Instead of &quot;Front Page&quot;, I could also tranche it: $25,000 for #1 spot, $20,000 for Top 10, $15,000 for Top 20, $10,000 for Front Page.<p>Also, this would be results-based. Meaning, if I don&#x27;t get you to the front page (or Top n Spot), I&#x27;d refund every penny.<p>What do you all think of this?<p>I&#x27;d love help with an appropriate pricing model.<p>Or if you think this is completely cringe, and you think I shouldn&#x27;t offer this service, I&#x27;d love to hear this perspective, too.<p>You&#x27;re also welcome to email me privately here: scott@scottscheper.com<p>[1]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34468644<p>[2]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=37476399

3 comments

quickthrowmanover 1 year ago
&gt; Or if you think this is completely cringe, and you think I shouldn&#x27;t offer this service, I&#x27;d love to hear this perspective, too.<p>This is completely cringe and you shouldn’t offer this service. You would have the perverse incentive to fake upvotes for money, which I would imagine the operators of this site would have a problem with.
评论 #37502280 未加载
评论 #37502313 未加载
JohnFenover 1 year ago
&gt; What do you all think of this?<p>I think that it sounds like SEO for HN. As such, doesn&#x27;t it carry the risk of reducing the quality (and so value) of front page stories?
评论 #37502229 未加载
PaulHouleover 1 year ago
I hope you don’t have a voting ring. I had about 2000 fake users on a portal for developers years ago that didn’t require email verification. People weren’t too surprised that my best blog posts rose to the top but they did wonder how my worst ones did. I lost all their passwords in a hard drive crash.<p>I will confess I have an autoposter script for HN but I think an autovoter (upvotes anything from Cornell) or autoflagger (flag anything from Quilette… but what happened to them?) script is strictly off limits, even if it wasn’t backed by an army of sock puppets, since a very small number of auto voters or flaggers could have a powerful impact on the site. (Now that I think of it my agent <i>is</i> named after a sock puppet but it uses just one account, which is mine.)<p>I think your prices are out of line as it is not as focused and qualified of an audience as you would get with contextual or behavioral targeting.
评论 #37502389 未加载