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A low-risk way to dip your toes in is to email a blogger to say that you enjoyed their post or that you found it helpful. The message doesn’t have to have useful information in it, just be sincere. Per OP, often there won’t be a reply but also often it’s much appreciated - particularly by non-mainstream writers.
I’ve been on the creator side with 1M+ followers and the amount of times someone has dropped a kind note like that can be counted on one hand. It’s such a breath of fresh air compared to the hate, criticizing and general unpleasantness that is so pervasive when dealing with online communities - even my own.
As a result, I make it a point to send notes to anyone if I’ve enjoyed their work, because I know how much its meant to me, that I hope to pass along those kind, appreciate feelings.
A woman wrote a glowing review about a book of poetry my late grandfather wrote. After he died and I was combing the internet for references to him, I found her blog & post. I sent her an email sharing the news and to express how nice it was to read her words as I remembered him. She got back to me quickly. Turns out she had met him at some point in her youth through her mother. We ended up trading stories for a few days.
Whenever a stranger sends me a well-written - even if brief - email, it makes my day.
So every now and then, I spread some joy by sending an email to a complete stranger.
And I always add that I don’t expect a reply, so they don’t feel obligated to respond.
I do this often and it is something that everyone not only appreciates but sometimes their favorite email of that day.
Even a simple email like "I really like the design of your website/blog" will make their day.
I get dozens of cold emails and LI messages from sales/ recruiting a week. Only about one per year writes "I read your blog and liked your point about xyz." I always take that call. My LI (and HN) profile opens with my blog, so if they did 5 seconds of research they would find it.
I only have my email in my app, no social media or whatever. And received a lot of kind emails from users, issues they found, feature requests.
It is really something and I'm very grateful for their emails.
Oh I really enjoy it when I get random emails from people that have read my posts and have occasionally mailed maintainers of software projects that it is working perfectly for me. It's always a nice change of pace from bug reports.
I sometimes get emails and blog comments like this and always love them. One of my favorites was a comment last year, left on a 15 year old post about building my first gaming PC. I love how the comment said it was a "really fantastic build for the time". Something about "for the time" made me feel so retro :D
As a member of the younger generation, nobody really explained to me how powerful email contact actually is. Anyone who leaves an email somewhere for me to contact them gets a big kudos, anyone who also then replies to my email within 15 minutes is amazing and I always appreciate a direct line of communication.
I do wish IOS would support push mail for private mail servers.... You can't have everything I guess
Even lower risk is to email hn@ycombinator.com with duplicate posts or other issues on this site! It helps, and it gets you a bit over the fear of emailing. ;)
I don't often email the HN mods, but now and then I'll pitch an idea, and they respond. I usually end it with a big thank you to all of them, because they do thankless work, though I think most here on HN appreciate them for their work, this is an out of the norm community. :)
Also authors. Not the mega superstars of the world but even very bestselling novels as long as you show that you thought about it or actually did read the book
I have emailed people based on a YouTube video, podcast episode, blog post, or just browsing a project on GitHub. If their email address is available I see that as permission to contact them for "wholesome" purposes. A few things that come to mind:
1. clarification on something in particular that they have already published
2. engage in genuine discussion about adjacent topics in which their opinion is specifically relevant
3. expressions of appreciation
4. corrections of information to prevent genuine harm or significant frustration for others
My success rate is probably 50-75% but I only do it a few times per year.
Cold-calling to get people try try your new app or answer a survey is rude.
Whenever I write something that gets some traction, I get emails. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. One of them is from a guy that tells me "I love your blog, but you got terrible spelling." If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't bother doing a spellcheck before publishing.
I’ve had about 10 emails about things I’ve said or presented on this website. I haven’t replied to all of them, which makes me feel bad because each one of them was a nice little surprise on any random day. I worry that no response makes people feel bad. I just can’t respond sometimes because of the anxiety I struggle with. But gosh do I love hearing from strangers about anything. I bet if I can get more comfortable talking with strangers I’ll really enjoy being old one day.
I've received a couple of emails about ghidra-delinker-extension, but I would not limit this to only emails. I've also had numerous people contacting me through GitHub issues or Discord messages over the years, with this as a topic starter.
I've had deep technical exchanges with smart people all across the world I would've never met otherwise. I've seen people using my tool for completely insane projects successfully. I've even had a data scientist from India who was inspired and motivated by my story of presenting at ACM 2025 as a hobbyist to put his work out there.
Interacting with all these people has broadened my horizons - literally going halfway across the globe in one instance. All of that happened despite me being an introvert, who hates initiating any form of social interactions with people and sounds like a raving lunatic on my blog.
Maybe I should be the one to send out more emails...
I receive a dozen or so emails a year from people who read my free sci-fi books. they are generally to say thanks, or to point out spelling errors or something factually incorrect that I have usually fixed. Most are shocked I reply. I guess quite a few also get zapped by my aggressive spam filters, which with the amount of spam I get is going to make it a real problem in the future.
Maybe it's because I'm a negative person, but even when I do keep in touch with people, I can count those I've stayed in long term contact with on one hand.
And the knowledge I can offer others is also limited.
Email them because most people these days never receive a personal email from another real human being, instead of newsletters, solicitations, marketing, announcements, notifications and spam.
Hey, I do this too, and I absolutely love receiving thoughtful e-letters, the few times a year they happen!
Here are my reasons, copied from my site's "Standing Invitation" [0].
> Email me just because (not just for work). Whatever feeds your curiosity; silly, fun, nerdy, serious.
> Why?
> 1. Do unto me what I have done unto others. I habitually cold-email anyone who moves me in some way (joy, insight, utility, mind shift…). I also love to receive such email!
> 2. There is too little unsolicited positive feedback in much of most of our lives. At some point in the fuzzy past, I decided enough was enough. At least someone somewhere ought to feel good sometime for no reason whatsoever. Since that realisation, I have cold-emailed people willy-nilly. See also: Saying Thank You [1], and Days Are Easily Made [2].
> 3. It's always been a delight; no regrets. You should try it too!
> So, let serendipity reign; write away!
[0] https://www.evalapply.org/about.html#standing-invitation
You can email anyone if there's something you need to communicate to them. Since when was it ever a big deal to email someone you don't know?
I think the last time I emailed a stranger when I had no business reason to do so was to thank someone for creating an excellent set of instructions for running OpenBSD on the exact model of laptop I wanted to use. I didn't expect a response and I didn't receive a response. I just thought he should know that something he did helped someone else, and now he knows.
Forget emailing strangers, I have a hard time talking to my neighbours.
If I haven't chatted with a CEO or other builder in a week I've probably not spent a ton of time online.
Obviously different people have different time and attention; they don't all get back to you.
But it really doesn't take very long to just throw together a note sharing your thoughts or questions for them you may have. They may not answer. But they might.
If it does fail though, I've also been finding that asking an LLM what so and so would say to whatever I have to share can sometimes be insightful and based on their public comments. Though obviously, probably best not to hold what an LLM said against the person the LLM said might say it...
The Prince of Nigeria does the same.
I still somewhat like the email format, but I am also unable to deal with it, accumulating literally thousand of unread (non-spam) emails. I just can't keep up with the volume. I saw others use clients such as mutt or what not, and read through email on the terminal, so perhaps I should do that, but this is never the bottle neck for me. It is writing replies that is the bottleneck; it takes too much time away. I also need to think before writing, which is another bottleneck. I am very bad at thinking.
I’ve never received a heartwarming message before.
(Though maybe that’s just because I haven’t been sharing any useful information so far.)
Instead, I’ve received a few emails that seemed like copy-and-paste sales pitches, so I naturally became wary of emails from strangers, thinking, “Oh, another sales pitch…”
But I had no idea there were people out there who thought this way! Thank you for introducing me to this new way of thinking.
> Social media platforms rise and fall like ancient empires sped up a thousand times. Yet email endures.
I do use Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and Proton mail for various things but I also run my own email server for some things (mostly personal), which I've done since the mid-late 1990's and plan to continue doing so. Because I control it and I feel that gives me a small bit of power compared to the trillion dollar companies.
> The first time I emailed a stranger, I swear my cursor hovered over Send for a full five minutes.
I would estimate communication is 95% non verbal and 5% verbal. The problem with online interaction is you are limited to this 5% while interacting with an almost infinite number of social groups and people.
Learning how to adapt to online socialization is learning how to adapt to being blind. Only you aren't blind, you are choosing to wear a blindfold.
I tried this with a blogger I admire. Got no reply. Felt weird for a day then forgot about it. Still glad I sent it though.
Leaving a proxy email on my HN profile has given me tons of interesting messages, highly recommend it!
What's the best way to contact someone about to get real feedback on a paid app / SaaS? Give them a free license? Mention something specific about them, so they knew you actually cared enough to check out that person and manually write the email?
Their silence says nothing about your worth. They might be busy, taking a break from email, or not in a place where they can engage with new folk…who knows? And what does it matter?
Or it gets filtered as spam. very common
I read a whole article about how cool it is to email people and I’m opening to the idea… then I see the signature and realize it’s probably just a cheap way to get dates, that come to him.
I agree with this and have received insights on difficult challenges, but I've found that each year it gets more difficult to find an email address for someone.
I emailed Lenstra about some ancient history, we had a nice chat.
RSA129 - I have a color copy of the prize check. I asked how many he sent out.
i do this with some frequency, maybe a few times a month. i'll email bloggers/poets/researchers i like or founders of interesting companies that solve very specific problems in a satisfying way. i've gotten more responses than you'd think! even when emailing founders or writers you'd expect had hundreds of much more important emails to attend to.
not to make this yet another 'in the age of AI' comment, but i can't help myself: given how cold and barren the mainstream internet feels now, cold emailing strangers in a non-transactional way is a humanitarian act. when i get emails from strangers about my own personal blog it makes me feel a little brighter about things for like an hour after. it's why i keep my email on my blog, despite the occasional spam/anonymous hate
I email strangers all the time relating to my businesses. But for "personal" time? Gives me the shivers.
Well I wouldn't email anyone.
LinkedIn, X, WhatsApp
and even reaching out through friends seems much more effective
But the key is to get to know anyone that you think it is minimally (or surprisingly) reachable and try to get the best out of them.
And always be reachable up to your limit. Help people whenever you can to reach their goals, you'd never know :)
I used to. I do much less now that email is no longer available for whois results from domains because of GDPR. It really killed communication on the internet. The switch to non-protocol based corporate communication services was the other half of killing it.
actually spam filters have evolved to make it so you can often not even email people you know and have pressing need to contact.
Needs [2025], as it was written last year.
I assumed this was a longform "Ode to Spam"
...I'm still not sure it isn't. :)
> Allow me to explain.
No.
He's right, we really have forgotten that email can just be about reaching out to strangers for honest communication.
Maybe I'll have Claude send him a thank you.