We'll detail the steps we took, the challenges we faced, and the lessons we learned along the way.
There is a mass of articles and recommendations on how you to launch on Product Hunt, but I decided to share our own recent experience of Product Hunt launch.
During the launch, I experienced all kinds of emotions from complete disappointment to joy.
The community of ProductHunt is great and most of the B2C online products aim to launch there.
For us Product Hunt launch was a no brainer, as we target the founders and entrepreneurial spirit folks. So we were eagerly searching for the initial feedback of PH community. Here is the product which was our Product Hunt launch. Founder Learning Hub
#1 Preparation to Product Hunt launch
We started to prepare for the Product Hunt launch around one month before and the last week was especially super intensive. After reading different materials on how to launch on Product Hunt, it was clear what we need to finalize before launch:
- PRODUCT: Prepare all the assets for your product post
- HUNTER: Select who gonna publish it
- SUPPORTERS: Make the list of places, groups, social networks or people to share
#2 Read a lot about launch
Before Product Hunt launch, we spent hours making sure everything was perfect.
I read different resources, how to launch on ProductHunt, mainly focused on the resources provided by the product hunt itself and by the friends who launched before. The first and main resource which I found is the ProductHunt Launch Checklist of what to do and what not todos:
Source: Twitter
In the Product Hunt Launch Checklist, I found general and useful tips about how to design your "Post".
After roaming around over different products, I noticed that the most names are just the names of the brand and the tagline is often referring to some popular product like " Netflix for ..." or if the product relates to some other super popular one, the tagline or name include it " ... for Figma".
The special attention, of course, catches What Not to Do on your Product Hunt Launch Part of the list and two other MOST IMPORTANT TIPS. So who should hunt the product and how to share it with your friends, social networks and supporters.
Regarding the Hunters, we didn't plan to attract the popular hunter from the beginning, and one of the startup advisers (with 400 subscribers) launched the products before and was happy to launch making founder as a maker.
So the last and most important questions were how to share the content. Product Hunt recommends to share straight links without any "cheating the system things", a couple of friends told and recommended not to do that. The author of one of the top in Google search article says " Send your soldiers on the ProductHunt" not on direct link for your Product Hunt Launch page.
#3 Create a list of supporters
"The truth is that unless you already have a massive community of followers, getting on top of Product Hunt will be a constant battle Link
Nobody of us had a great community of followers prior to Product Hunt launch. Overall we hadaround 5000 friends in LinkedIn, and 500 followers on ProductHunt. I think this definitely works for influencers.
However, we made the list of possible people and places to share with :
- Friends via Messengers and Facebook Don't underestimate friends, they are definitely good supporters for you now and also wondering what you have been up to last couple of weeks. This is a great way to show them and garner their support.
- Professional connections via Linkedin & Email. I would recommend creating the list of people who could be interested in advance in your Product Hunt launch so that in the day, no time to decide.
I mostly included in the list the startup founders and active connections with many of them I discussed and shared the product in advance. - Interested community via Slack and Facebook groups, Product Hunt. As many people who launch says that this is one of the places where you can find your future upvoters. Still, there is an issue
#4 Decide on date and time
I was googling around what is the best date and time to Product Hunt launch and found this cool analytic resource.
It clearly says that one of the busiest days for Product Hunt launch Monday to Wednesday. So, someday like Tuesday have significantly more voters and posts also. The activity is less on other days.
So the logic was simple if more people visit the website on Tuesday than we will have more engagement with our product. So we decided our Product Hunt launch will happen on Tuesday. Keeping in mind that definitely a number of popular or some famous brands products can come in this day.
Time was not so clear in the beginning. The ProductHunt Day when your launch and compete with other product counted from 12.00 AM (Pacific Time)/10.00 AM (GMT+3) and you have 24 hours.
So it was intuitive for us to launch from the morning our time in Helsinki because we will have all day to track and check the progress and share with the supporters and groups.
However, it does not guarantee you anything, and according to PH algorithm, you can get in the top even if you launch later and with the fewer amount of vote got on top. As I noticed later, 95% of the top products of the day were launched approximately the same time 11.00 (GMT+3)/ (01 am pacific time).
#4 Product ready to launch
We double-checked our website and made sure there were no errors and checked that everything works smoothly.
#5 Launch day
The day begins last changes on the website made in the last minutes and we ready.
3..2..1.. LAUNCH Time was 11.30 (GMT+3)
- We published a product which was already drafted two days before. I didn't find any other information about, is it good to draft the project or not.
- Add the comments from Hunter and Maker
- Then we start sharing it in a social network, practically immediately, not asking for votes but asking for support and feedback.
- Using Product Hunt suggestions we published a straight link to groups and friends to provide us with the feedback.
- Basically we didn't do anything else special.
So we didn't have initially the goal to get the highest number of votes through our friends. The goal was to move from newest to popular with the support of friends and network. Because it is kind of clear fact that nobody checks newest!
Hours pass we stay in newest. With the number of likes around 35-40 we stay still in the newest while all the rest of the post get in the top, even for some time.
So I observed that no other project stay in newest all the time. As I said in the beginning most of the links we send were straight. I would say 70/30.
After 2-3 hours we started to send all the straight links to the people. And suggest to find us in the newest!
Our friend and community start writing that they can not find us in the search. I checked, yes the product was not searchable. I checked other products of the day, they were in searchable.
Our Product was not available in search. So as I am searching today you can see already in here.
Nothing changed in the European evening around 16.00 I decided to write to the support about how our Product Hunt launch going. Of course, to that point, we were super disappointed and devastated.
So the answer come at 18.40 (GMT+3) time - morning in US.
Every day hundreds are product launches.... and some guides why we could be flagged for removal. Here is the LINK to PH rules
(https://help.producthunt.com/support/why-are-posts-removed…). Also, be sure to visit your Product Hunt profile (https://producthunt.com/my/profile) to see your product submissions."
This is a normal situation many products did not get in, it is clear, however after noticing this search issue and problems with attaching maker in the beginning, I gave it a try and wrote them again. And 15 min later PH answered.
This was the time of real Product Hunt launch for us, exactly 8 hours later than we published our product.
The PH also changed the tagline for our product and pushed the active advertisement for our product. So they supported our Product Hunt launch. So, it stays unclear for us if it was PH error, but the actions were made to push us in the front page.
In the end, after we missed the 8 hours of being in popular we had 100 fewer upvotes than other similar beginning of the day traction. However, could not get extra day or hours life.
Basically, for the rest of the day of our Product Hunt launch, we gained 100 extra upvotes, which is not bad as we were in the end of the page.
While being in Newest for 8 hours, we didn't get any random upvote coming from Product Hunt? Are u coming to newest to check the products, is anyone coming to newest to select the product.
Overall now we have 150 upvotes
...from our Product Hunt Launch!!!
#6 Numbers & Lesson Learned:
At the end, we got around 50 upvotes people who come from us and 100 from product hunt all after we got in popular.
So while being in Newest for 8 hours, we didn't get any random upvote coming from Product Hunt. Are u coming to newest to check the products, is anyone coming to newest to select the product.
In General we got the first subscribers and working on making their experience the best.
Properly onboard your users Think how your conversion and sign up process look like. It should be clean and easy. Look here is a good example of how you can prepare with No code amazing onboarding for your users for your Product Hunt launch.
Here is an onboarding example for first time users.
Keep attention to progress of your product. We didn't get on one 100% if there were some bug in the system, why we didn't got in popular for so long and after the chat with Twitter support we immediately got in. And also had the previous experience of the bug with the system.
Straight and not straight link. This also one of the questionable thing, but after our experience where we sent both but mostly, from the beggining published through staright link. I would maybe agree that in cases if you can send your people to newest or to search. But still someting like sharing in the social networks, I would definitely do with then satright link
Great way to get your early users. Specially if your product is free it is great way to get the first users on board and first signups
Understand what are your chances. Spending time on PH in advance you can clearly understand how your product can be accepted by the users in there. So for example if you build B2B product the PH maybe not the best place to get your early users. As in our case,
Make a special offer for your Product Hunt launch, we just made 14 days free as a special offer. So the bigger special offer is expected. You can prepare lifetime deals even for your Product Hunt launch.
Top getting even topped The sad tendency which was observed is the top product 1-5 get the most amount of likes, and it means if you push the product having exisitng strong audiene you get more likes on top of that, /
"Tens of products are put on Product Hunt to launch daily but I’m estimating that only the top will get most of the traffic, as per the 80/20 principle. And so the products on top get more upvotes as well, which keeps them on top.
8 hours later Product Hunt launch of course would not let us
Product hunt launch is not easy! But you can make a steps in advance to make it more successful .
