However, if there were no advertising anywhere, how would we know what products to buy ? Mainstream advertising channels make users extremely susceptible to 'banner blindness', 'channel flipping', etc.
Of course, the more sensitive users on HN would question your motivations. It's because advertising is becoming so insidious these days that you can never be sure whether an 'expert' is just talking out of his hat or actually giving 'expert advice'.
In this case, since your product is yourself, I'd still give you the benefit of the doubt. Anyone getting annoyed at that needs to think about what's being sold and why :)
I don't know how it's elsewhere but in India lawyers and chartered accountants aren't allowed to advertise their services. They can have only a small board (very discreet) outside their workplace saying who they are and what they do. I wonder if programmers are ever going to go the same way :O
Anyway, for your curiosity, the end result was only one little gig for now - vs 0 from the first post, for what this is worth. I'll have to work on my portfolio etc I guess.
I think that's a pretty bold claim. I can't remember ever being annoyed by a blog post which included a brief "This is me and what I do" plug.
Right now we have on or just falling off the front page
- 37signals writing about Siri
- Thumbtack writing about ab testing
- weddinglovely on why a startup has a print product
These are advertisements disguised as random bla bla written for HN.
In this order of ideas related shameless plugs are better than most other forms of advertising.
Why reinvent marketing best practices? At least be aware of them before you test something.
Design - 3-4 C2A at the bottom pointing to your consulting page (or about page) and then A/B test those C2A. Readers are probably more annoyed by a shameless plug then a well designed C2A.
