I think a more productive approach is to "not" look for links to post to hacker news.

I think stories are beginning to "churn" where good stories arent sticking around very long because there are so many mediocre stories being submitted.

I post stuff that I or my friends have written, or from new stuff from communities I participate in.

while I understand submitting is a form of contribution, its only a positive contribution with high enough quality, if people sit around looking for stuff to post I cant see the quality rising.

a shorter version of ^ would be

there just isnt enough interesting news in the tech world to have 200 interesting links posted a day, better trying to make the news than to find it.

You mean besides Ask HN and Polls... :-p :-)

http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=amichail

Yeah, the guy just refuses to understand. This is from 422 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182193

Personally, I don't care whether or not I see, here, things that are already hot on other networks as I only use this one.

The way you said, would require much more effort compared to posting links to the interesting news you received on your feeds.

Most of the links I see here are completely new to me.

Another technique is to write something original and meaty for your own blog that's relevant to the audience here. Then submit that link. Instead of looking for the work of others, create your own.

I thought people would resent that as shameless self-promotion. Is it really acceptable to post my own blog articles, if they're relevant? Or should I let other people post them (rudimentary peer-review?).

and then spell check it... :)

Read what you normally read. If you spend an okay amount of time here you know what's appropriate, probably interesting,etc. Submit it. It's really that simple. I never go link hunting for HN.

If had to condense what HN likes to a phrase it'd be: actionable ideas.

What's the reward in finding links that aren't popular elsewhere? Surely posting something that has clearly garnered interest on other sites is a faster route to karma?

Also, I'd say: subscribe to interesting RSS feeds and twitter accounts and post stuff from those. (That was mostly my strategy as a pro-blogger, though without the twitter part :P)

If you're posting the link for the karma, please don't bother.

Oh, personally, I don't. (check my posting history and you'll see I rarely post links.)

I'm just thinking from the point of view of a value-reward system. The only quantitative reward on HN is karma, hence an optimisation strategy to post new links is surely best based around said reward.

I feel there are three other value-reward systems in effect:

1) If I post links that I think people will find interesting, they will feel more inclined to share links they feel interesting: most of us have an innate sense of quid pro quo.

2) If I post links and they are voted up, others will recognize that as an interesting subject and post other links on the same subject, providing me with information I wouldn't see otherwise

3) If I post a link, people will comment on the story and provide valuable insights/feedback, helping me to determine the value of the link.

One word: software