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Launching on Hacker News (Show HN) and Reddit

Marc Lou's rules for Show HN posts ("Show HN: I made X that does outcome", tech vocabulary, no emoji, never ask for upvotes, engage before reposting) and for Reddit (side-project subreddits with a demo video, story-only posts in big subreddits) — 25k+ HN visitors and one 50k-visitor Reddit day.

Updated 2026-10-24·2 sources·launchhacker-newsredditcommunityindie-hacking

Launching on Hacker News and Reddit

TL;DR

  • On HN, post only in Show HN; title starts “Show HN: I made …” and states the outcome, not the tool.
  • Write in the community’s language: technical, a bit nerdy, no emoji. Karma and followers don’t matter.
  • Never ask for upvotes (moderators detect traffic from your link and ban). To post repeatedly, participate first.
  • Reddit hates promotion: use side-project subreddits with a short founder-on-camera demo video, or post a pure lesson/story in big subreddits and let the profile do the selling.
  • Study best-of-Show-HN lists for title templates.

Details

Hacker News. Marc Lou drove 25,000+ visitors across his sites from HN; it costs nothing and takes minutes, but virality is not guaranteed. Best fit: digital products for developers or using trendy tech such as AI.1

How Show HN works, per Marc: a new post lands in “show new”; 3–5 early votes push it into the main Show list; staying at the top of Show for a while can put it on the HN front page.2

Title rules:23

  • Start with “I made …” — it tells a personal story. His very first post (“I made a movie recommendation app based on your mood”) worked with zero karma.
  • State the outcome/why (“habit tracker to fight procrastination”, 152 upvotes) rather than just the product.
  • Use tech vocabulary (“gamified”).
  • Browse bestofshowhn.com — the recurring winning pattern is “I made…/I created a new type of…”.
  • Don’ts: asking for upvotes, emoji. HN requires activity (votes, comments) before you can post repeatedly.

Reddit. One Reddit post gave Marc ~50,000 visitors in a day, but results are unpredictable.4 Tactics:45

  • In side-project subreddits that allow promotion, reuse the HN formula (“I built X and Y happened”) and add a short video — you on camera explaining why you built it plus a demo.
  • In large subreddits such as r/Entrepreneur, post zero-promotion education (his viral one: what he learned selling his AI tool for $35k); interested readers click the profile, which lists his products.
  • For free tools, hide the promo when posting (see Free tools as marketing for a paid product ("engineering as marketing")).
  • Marc’s habit-tracker visualiser post reached ~6,000 upvotes.6

Disagreements / caveats

  • HN mechanics (ranking, repost rules) are as Marc describes them in March 2025; check the current Show HN guidelines.
  • Marc’s “hide the promo” trick is risky — subreddit moderators may ban the account.

See also

Footnotes

  1. How I made $2,000,000 with my side projects @ 12:35 — Marc Lou ↩

  2. How I made $2,000,000 with my side projects @ 14:09 — Marc Lou ↩ ↩2

  3. How I made $2,000,000 with my side projects @ 15:45 — Marc Lou ↩

  4. How I made $2,000,000 with my side projects @ 28:04 — Marc Lou ↩ ↩2

  5. How I made $2,000,000 with my side projects @ 29:38 — Marc Lou ↩

  6. I made these 10 SaaS (and earned $237,631) @ 02:17 — Marc Lou ↩