Ask HN: How do you get new readers for your blog | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you get new readers for your blog

2 pointsalcidesfonseca7 comments

TLDR; how do you get more eyeballs on your technical blog in natural ways (I'm excluding SEO dark magic)?

Ever since Google Reader shut down, I think the next generations of engineers and developers stopped using RSS feeds. I still use them to this day, relying on a local installation of yarr for my blog following needs.

In the meanwhile, Feedburner is dead, so I no longer track my subscribers (and I know it was always a somewhat noise number) and I've recently installed umami to track analytics and I was surprised when I learned that browsers no longer track the full referral URL for privacy reasons. So I can no longer find out where people link to my blog.

Given the demise of RSS feeds and this obscurity, how do the HNers with blogs find new readers? I assume Linkedin, X and other social networks, but I am finding you only reach the people who already know you. I think planets (websites that aggregate RSS feeds on a particular topic) are also kind of dead, from my point of view.

Additionally, if you don't use an RSS reader, how do you follow blogs of people who you find interesting?

I don’t publish my own content often but what I have seen work is posting to relevant subreddits where people may find the topic interesting.

As for your second question, I find most of my tech content here, Reddit, and (oddly) Instagram. I find The Almighty Algorithms to be a better source of interesting content than my own curated list of sites.

You can post your own stuff here, just don't abuse. (In case my comment is confusing, for me your activity looks fine.)

I took a look ar your blog. Most posts are too short, I prefer longer posts for HN. I think this may be a good post https://wiki.alcidesfonseca.com/blog/lessons-learned-buildin... You already posted it, a few repost are ok. Try again once or twice and cross your fingers. (I have AI fatigue, but people like it.)

Also, a few months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48000028 got like 400 points that is a lot. Congratulations!

That was a different account (doesn't seem related), as was Alcides (looks like an old account of this user)

It was posted three times. In consecutive days, in order

#1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47985042 4 points (by the OP)

#2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47994401 2 points

#3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48000028 425 points

The submmiters of #2 and #3 look unrelated. Sometimes it happens, the author post it and later someone else is more lucky with a repost.

I post here my blog posts that I believe are interesting for the community, but I never repeat it. Let the algorithm take its course.I remember someone studied the best times to post, but if everyone does the same, it changes the best times.

I'm optimistic about this one. Let's try one more time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50305444

The traffic comes from search intent, not RSS subscriptions.

Find the search intent first, then write the blog.

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