What it's like hitting the front page - twice(jonhmchan.com)

5 pointsby jonhmchan13 anni fa3 comments

What it's like hitting the front page - twice

http://www.jonhmchan.com/thoughts/2013/9/21/lessons-learned-hitting-the-front-page-twice

3 comments

~18 months ago, Gizmodo linked to[0] a page on my web site. It was then posted to Reddit, was shared several thousand times on Facebook, and also linked to by The Atlantic. (I'm not sure if it was ever linked to on HN or not or how to even check.)

I was at a customer's site that morning (one where cell phones are absolutely not permitted and I couldn't exactly pull up my personal e-mail) and my first hint that something was up was when I looked at my phone upon leaving for the day and seeing the absurd number of "new follower" e-mail messages from Twitter.

I knew something was up but didn't know what until I got home that evening and could get online. By then, the page had in the neighborhood of 145k page views and the worst was over. I thought it was cool as hell but the girlfriend, meh, not so much. I had already arrived home later than expected, making us late for dinner w/ friends, and she certainly did not share in my enthusiasm, to say the least.

When it was finally over, that page had received just north of 180k page views and made me a few hundred bucks thanks to the AdSense banner across the top of the page. It was certainly a neat experience.

[0]: http://gizmodo.com/5881627/have-you-ever-unlocked-any-of-the...

asdfprou13 anni fa

Sick post, brah-ski.

In all seriousness, great work here. I especially like the point you make about not fighting back. Too often the HN hivemind will try to take someone down just for submitting something opinionated ("Why would I learn PostgreSQL so late into my web development stream?!??!"). Let people say what they have to say and stay your ground.

Keep it up!

jonhmchan13 anni fa

Thanks for the feedback. It was such a crazy day yesterday and at one point I did make some mistakes. I think it's really important to remember that people probably aren't trying to ruin your life if they give you criticism - just roll with it!