Is your product dead on product hunt if it doesn't buzz on day one?
I have submitted my app to product hunt this week: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/dailys
I wasn't sure about the inner working of the website but I read on various places that it was important to post your product on it. However, within 2-3 hours, my app was already flooded with other apps that got submitted just after it.
Should I consider that it's over? Is product hunt a buzz-or-die type of webpage?
On PH a lot of those products treat them as launches and that's why they get a ton of upvotes and traffic.
They take advantage of the audience they built and redirect them to the PH page hoping it compounds the interest when both people they sent there and the current people on PH will get them good visibility.
If you don't have this I don't think you can expect that many upvotes or traffic increase.
So I should have put the product on PH after I already got users, then redirected my users to PH?
In some ways yes. The most successful launches might have a free version or have an audience for their blog, podcast,email list or something and they are able to send them there for support + some press coverage they purposefully tried to get.
I would suggest you check some articles of people explaining how they did it and you try to find things that apply to your project :)
You don't have to do this. Some do. But you can just add a feature and 'launch again'.
Hey Ryan!
I just launched on PH and would say, you should 100% make sure to read all of the articles, as they were really helpful.
i'd be happy to chat with you about my strategy - shoot me an email at ben@playsweep.com
Awesome, thanks. I will definitely take you up on that :) Sending you a mail as soon as I am done with my current tasks
I think the most successful Product Hunts happen with a lot of marketing outside product hunt. It might be worth running a campaign and getting everyone you know and who is already a product hunter to swarm around it.
I think there is still hope!
Kind of.
I did the same mistake actually.
That's why I launched a side side project, just to test the waters.
Btw, I signed up to your product. Did you build it all by yourself?
Oh, great :) Hope you will enjoy it as much as I do.
Yes, I built it by myself. Actually, there is a bit of a story behind it. I hired a team to develop the mobile app but they are taking way too long (months late). So I did the web version on my own, in a week.
I am constantly improving it and I should release an update today or tomorrow allowing users to vote for what they want me to implement next.
I've been learning the hard way that it's sometimes better to do things on our own. I was looking for someone to build my app as well and that was like a two year journey, people that wanted to do it, but didn't do it, or then backtracked. A lot of wasted time, now I'm almost in the next week or so, ready to launch the first version of it.... let me know if you need help!
PH gives 48 hours to shine any product posted on PH. Most of the products on top page are submitted around 12am-2am PST. You have posted around afternoon so it may not get much attention.
I’m not sure if it still works like this, but I believe there are (were) special product hunters whose special status gave submissions more clout. If one of these hunters submits your product, it gets placed on the daily list and you’ll get a lot more attention. You can’t get on the daily list without it being manually curated internally, I believe.
As a side note, I do agree with the other comment about building and selling your product before thinking about PH. You want to make sure your product is as bug free as possible and have a smooth onboarding process before presenting to a larger audience. For this reason, some people actually prefer not to be PH’ed.
Gave you an upvote :) Looks like a beautifully designed app. Glad to see a purple theme as well as everyone seems stuck on blue these days.
We launched on PH about a month ago and were barely clinging above the fold. If you go below the fold, you're pretty much done. I think that having PH connections is super valuable. A few votes from some high level PHers goes a long way.
Also, if you don't make it to the top this time you can always have another go when you release another version. (see today's launch of Notion for example).
Been on the front page of PH a couple of times as a Maker, I would definitely recommend drumming up the hype through your network to check out your listing on PH. It is very much a buzz-or-die. (It's kind of stressful tbh). And a midnight PT launch is a good idea, and hopefully you get featured by the morning, or worse case get featured the day after.
In my experience, PH users definitely convert pretty well for the volume of visitors you get, especially for consumer apps, so it's definitely a great way to get some initial traction, find loyal customers, and get some valuable feedback on your direction.
Additionally, I believe PH's policy is that you can post again after significant progress on your app (like a v2). So if you can't get it removed to do a repost when you're more ready, not all hope is lost when you're ready for a v2 launch down the line!
Unfortunately, you really only have 24 hours to shine on Product Hunt. After that, people may stumble into you, but you will not see any significant traffic.
Source: I'm the 419th ranked Hunter on Product Hunt.
That's what I was afraid to hear... I guess I messed up then :/
I remember someone linking one of my previous projects on PH way before I was ready to show it to anyone. Is there a way to "relaunch", or have it removed these days?
Good question, I am also interested in the answer.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
Is the producthunt website always super slow?
You mean slow to load? I didn't notice anything like that