Write a post, publish, tweet, share on FriendFeed, open Clicky, view people on my site…
No one is on my site.
Ok, let’s start over.
Write a post, publish, tweet, share on FriendFeed, post to Reddit and HN anynomously, send an e-mail to other Redditors, wait until I am forced on the front page, then check Clicky.
22 people online.
Bomb.
Only issue, try repeating this for your next twenty posts. Yeah, didn’t work so well did it?
I used to do this all the time with my site, TechGeist, when it was but a wee lil’ blip on the tech blogosphere. I would get a few of my friends, submit a post on Reddit or HN and send out a quick e-mail asking them to upvote. This became regular practice because, let’s be blunt, it was damn easy traffic. In all honesty, it felt a little like cheating, but that didn’t matter, it felt oh so good seeing 100+ people online when previous to gaming, I had to to struggle to keep one person on our site at all times.
But, just like cheating, you eventually get caught and boy, did TechGeist get caught.
We eventually got banned for HN, and not just the user submitting, the domain name as well. TechGeist never got completely banned on Reddit but we got punished by some unknown algorithm that is probably more intelligent than me. As for Digg, ironically we never abused Digg but we got banned anyways (later unbanned). Ironic, huh?
From that day forward, every time we were submitted to HN or Reddit, even legitimately, we could never reap the benefits. We screwed ourselves over by being so damn needy for traffic.
Bummer.
This did teach me something about blogging though, don’t push what you write too hard. Sure, you might think that you have written an amazing post that deserves a lot of traffic and when you push out to Twitter and your low RSS subscribers numbers you maybe get ten hits on it, but guess what? That is what blogging is all about.
You have to keep pushing out those great posts that deserve a lot of traffic. Becoming a one hit wonder on Reddit or HN is satisfying for the moment, but damn, is it depressing in the end and it will be more depressing when someone other than you submits a post to these big sites and you can’t get any traffic. Eventually, you are just putting yourself in a hole that is going to be pretty damn hard to dig yourself out of.
So, I gamed HN and Reddit and guess what? It was stupid. I will never get to reap the future benefits of legitimate submitting.
All future bloggers (and current ones… I know you do it too *stares*) learn from my mistakes. Don’t screw yourself over.
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Guilty! I Used To Game HN and Reddit
Write a post, publish, tweet, share on FriendFeed, open Clicky, view people on my site…
No one is on my site.
Ok, let’s start over.
Write a post, publish, tweet, share on FriendFeed, post to Reddit and HN anynomously, send an e-mail to other Redditors, wait until I am forced on the front page, then check Clicky.
22 people online.
Bomb.
Only issue, try repeating this for your next twenty posts. Yeah, didn’t work so well did it?
I used to do this all the time with my site, TechGeist, when it was but a wee lil’ blip on the tech blogosphere. I would get a few of my friends, submit a post on Reddit or HN and send out a quick e-mail asking them to upvote. This became regular practice because, let’s be blunt, it was damn easy traffic. In all honesty, it felt a little like cheating, but that didn’t matter, it felt oh so good seeing 100+ people online when previous to gaming, I had to to struggle to keep one person on our site at all times.
But, just like cheating, you eventually get caught and boy, did TechGeist get caught.
We eventually got banned for HN, and not just the user submitting, the domain name as well. TechGeist never got completely banned on Reddit but we got punished by some unknown algorithm that is probably more intelligent than me. As for Digg, ironically we never abused Digg but we got banned anyways (later unbanned). Ironic, huh?
From that day forward, every time we were submitted to HN or Reddit, even legitimately, we could never reap the benefits. We screwed ourselves over by being so damn needy for traffic.
Bummer.
This did teach me something about blogging though, don’t push what you write too hard. Sure, you might think that you have written an amazing post that deserves a lot of traffic and when you push out to Twitter and your low RSS subscribers numbers you maybe get ten hits on it, but guess what? That is what blogging is all about.
You have to keep pushing out those great posts that deserve a lot of traffic. Becoming a one hit wonder on Reddit or HN is satisfying for the moment, but damn, is it depressing in the end and it will be more depressing when someone other than you submits a post to these big sites and you can’t get any traffic. Eventually, you are just putting yourself in a hole that is going to be pretty damn hard to dig yourself out of.
So, I gamed HN and Reddit and guess what? It was stupid. I will never get to reap the future benefits of legitimate submitting.
All future bloggers (and current ones… I know you do it too *stares*) learn from my mistakes. Don’t screw yourself over.
Share