[austenallred]

There's a principle at work that true marketers use to their advantage. It's quite simple, and is avoided all too often, especially by detail-oriented people who operate a little bit differently than non-detail-oriented people. I assume that HackerNews has a lot of engineers who are by nature detail oriented, and therefore this principle is ignored far too often.

The post that converted at the better rate had a link MeetingBurner in the first paragraph (above the fold, as we like to jargon-ize it).

People don't really read things online, they scan. some things jump out, and only if you're very intrigued will you actually read the individual words. In fact, very few of you will even get to this line that I'm writing. The chances that you'll read each line decreases exponentially.

Note that I've made all of my main points in the first sentences of what I've written. Did you even read everything, or did you just scan through and pick up on a few words? The attention paid to each line decreases exponentially as you continue.

[kiba]

Note that I've made all of my main points in the first sentences of what I've written. Did you even read everything, or did you just scan through and pick up on a few words? The attention paid to each line decreases exponentially as you continue.

I read every single sentence.

Everybody else scans.

[jbigelow76]

I don't disagree with what you state but another important difference between the two is that the "boring biz" version mentioned Noah Kagan of Appsumo (semi)fame. Everybody on HN knows who Kagan is, Appsumo has been discussed in more than a few HN submissions over time. In addition Kagan was just in the HN frontpage and tech blogosphere about how he got canned from FB and lost out on $100 million. I think the "boring biz" article, by mentioning him in the first line, piggy-backed off his fame and credibility within the tech/startup community. In other words somebody did some name dropping (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Readers probably thought: "hmm, if Noah Kagan paid this thing some attention, maybe I should too."

[ryanbraganza]

> People don't really read things online, they scan. some things jump out, and only if you're very intrigued will you actually read the individual words. In fact, very few of you will even get to this line that I'm writing. The chances that you'll read each line decreases exponentially.

I only read that first sentence of that paragraph.

> Note that I've made all of my main points in the first sentences of what I've written. Did you even read everything, or did you just scan through and pick up on a few words? The attention paid to each line decreases exponentially as you continue.

Then I read this and went back through it.

[bpatrianakos]

I went back and read the first sentence multiple times and didn't see a point. There's a principle at work? That's the point? If it was then I'm disappointed. I thought there might be some kind of mention of what it actually was.

[Swizec]

> The attention paid to each line decreases exponentially as you continue.

Man, with that writing style ... absolutely!

Or maybe I'm just writing a comment that is intentionally long to prove my point that people don't read comments, which are long and very obviously without much more content.

Here I am admiting that this comment is longer than it needs be because I'm lazy and trying to prove a point which was marginally hinted at by the parent comment, which was also an example of a comment that is too long for its own good, albeit that one was trying to prove a different point.

No there is no punchline, I am just trying to show that writing in an overly baroque style and often repeating fluff phrases that don't really mean anything or add any new information is useless ... again, there is no punchline. This whole comment is a punchline.

See?

[austenallred]

It's not as interesting, you're right, so it depends on your purpose. If your sole purpose is conversion (not providing information), that's the style of writing you should use.

Of course, where you are in search of more legitimate and technical discussion, you would be much more elaborate, but that is (strangely enough) unlikely to convert as well.