Yup - this has really been a humbling learning experience for us... shame as well, because we ended up missing out on the sort of feedback HN community often provides.

Well, from past experience, the difference between my posts drifting into oblivion with one point and actually gaining traction is soliciting upvotes through social channels. Not sure about you, but I think most people are more likely to click a post in the new section if it has 2 or 3 points.

A random button would help with post discovery.

It is common practice to give yourself a few upvotes in the early minutes after a post so we did. [...] Then however, we made a rookie mistake.

Perhaps it's useful in other sites, but each site has it's own uses and customs. I'll quote partially a few comments from dang (read the complete version in the links):

* Sockpuppet votes and comments aren't allowed on HN. [...]— it's bad for HN and gets accounts flagged and/or banned. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9672368

* We ban sites for repeated sockpuppet voting. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9834751

* Votes and comments for promotional reasons are against HN's rules and tend to get accounts and sites banned. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9853578