PDFShift will be ready to be Featured on ProductHunt on September 11 and we are working toward making that day worth it.

We worked hard to list all the things we can do to get a few upvotes and try to stay as high as possible on the list.

Here’s a list of tactics we are implemen/will implement:

Prepare your ProductHunt page
Write on communities
Implement a chat system
Contact a few key people
Write to your users

Here we go:

Prepare your ProductHunt page

This is the most evident, but also the most important part to work on!
You will need to work on all your wording, from the small short description to your introduction comment!

Yes! You should write a comment explaining your story, why you built your product, the current stage, what you plan to do, etc. This gives your product a personality, a voice the community can connect to, and improve the discussion.

If you don’t have your product already present on ProductHunt, you can work with a few services that simulate ProductHunt to get a preview of how it will render:

Write on communities

Your list of communities can be big and will certainly vary from product to product.

In our case, we plan to write to:

IndieHacker
Reddit
Some Facebook groups
Some Slack channels

One important thing to keep in mind is how you will reach out to these communities. Don’t simply throw a “We are on ProductHunt, please upvote!“.
Too many - lazy - people do that and the result is that often, your post will be ignored.

Instead, study how each community work, how each community handles various “ProductHunt release” posts and do your best to provide a great message specially crafted for each community.

Of course, this is more difficult, requires more work and time. But the result will be tremendous! You want your PH release to succeed? You got to work for it :)

Before the big day: Write a list of communities that will help you with your release, and for each community, write a dedicated message that works best. When it will be the big day, you won’t have to do that work, and focus more on your current visitors.

Implement a chat system

If you read a few blog post about how a ProductHunt release went, you’ll often see that for those who put a chat on their website, the stats were impressive.
There a few key reasons for that, but all points to one rule: having a chat system will give you a tremendous help.

Here are a few reasons why you need to install a chat system for your PH release:

Your visitors don’t understand exactly what you offer

It’s highly possible that a few visitors clicked on your link because you where one of the firsts on PH, but don’t have much clue about what you offer.
By having a chat on your website, you will be ready to explain to your potential customer what you do and be there to help them along the way.

=> You’ll increase your conversion!

Your visitors need help setting their account.

The way you built your product may be logical for you, but not everyone has the same pattern of usage.
By having a chat on your website, if a user is stuck, he will be more likely to chat with you asking for help.

If you don’t offer that option, your visitor won’t bother finding your support email, leave your website to never come back.

=> You’ll increase your conversion!

Use Intercom (plus a secret tip)

There are many services today that offer a chat service. I respect all of them, but Intercom has made themselves the de-facto standard for big/serious companies.
It’s better if you have their UI tool present on your website as it will convey a more serious service. (I’m sorry about that if you run a competitor).

Now, one of the issues that may stop you from doing this is the price. But you don’t have to run the chat module forever, just for your PH release and keeping it for a few days after that.

So, our secret tip is: Create an Intercom account a few days before your PH release and take advantage of the 14 days free trial. That way, you won’t have to pay a dime while enjoying a great service.
And who knows? Maybe it will work so great that you’ll keep it after those 14 days and pay for it (definitely worth it :))

Before the big day: Create your account the day before or two days before. Test the code, make it run and work, then comment it out.
For the big day, uncomment the Intercom code and push the changes. Estimated time: 3 seconds!

Contact a few key people

Hopefully, by then, you have been in contact with some people that are influencers or have an interesting network.
You can reach out to them letting them know you are on Product Hunt, but the same rule applies as “Write on communities”!:
You need to work on your message, and a bonus point if you write a dedicated message per person.

Granted, it’s, again, more work, but one more time, the result can be gigantic so it’s worth it!

Before the big day: Like for the communities, do a list of key people you plan to reach out, and write a dedicated message for each.
Send them the message the day of your release (or even the day before if that can help, depending on the situation).

This raises the discussion of working on your network. Even though I’m not personally a fan of spending all your nights networking, staying in touch with important people, creating new connections from time to time and helping each other is still an important role for your success.

Write to your users

Of course! I kept it for the end, but it’s one of the biggest things to do!

There is a one silver rule here that may be too often overlook: Don’t hunt your product right after you released it.

I know the excitation can be high, and you may want to share that excitation with everyone, but unless you are an influencer and/or have a big network of people ready to upvote your product, you will more likely end in the “newest” part of ProductHunt without getting more upvotes.

All this takes is a bit of patience.

Release your product, write about it, mention it wherever you can, but wait before doing those “big” release. Why?
Because that way, when you’ll release it, you will already have a few users on your product.

On your big day, you will be able to send them an email letting them know about your ProductHunt release and hope for some upvotes.

Again, this section calls for a key reminder: Don’t send a basic “Please upvote” email! Work on it!
Send the best email you can with an awesome subject that will have an open rate so high it would make a marketing guru cry!

Before the big day: Prepare your message, prepare your list of users. Maybe use an external tool to send your mail, like MailChimp, depending on your preferences. For the big day: Send that email!

Closing up

This list is not exhaustive at all. There are more technics you can use to increase the odds of being the top of your day on ProductHunt.

But in the end, the key reason that will make the difference is how hard you will work toward your big day.
Work on finding the best communities for your product, work on each message you’ll send, work on tricks to increase your odds of success.

There are no secrets here if you do your best, there is no reason it won’t … work.

Now, even with all that, if your product never reaches hot, or stay hidden from the main products, it doesn’t mean you will never succeed!
I’ve seen some great products have one upvote and stay at the end of the “newest” page of ProductHunt.

What will make the difference, is how you commit to it! Regardless of your ProductHunt launch, keep pursuing and stay committed!

ProductHunt is not an end, it’s just a (great!) helper. In the end, what will make your product a success, is you.

The suspense is killing us, we can’t wait to be September 11 and hope for the best for that day! A few days after the release, we will write a blog post sharing our adventure and update this part to link to it.