13
3 Comments

7 launches on Product Hunt. 7 lessons learnt.

So we had 7 Product Hunt releases over almost 2 years. Each release taught us something. I am happy to share the insights with you:

  1. Discounts work, always.
    Dashly team said "hi" to the world with the PH release. We knew the product was totally new to the market, and it aslo had competitors. So we decided to stimulate signups and "dives into trials" with 50% discount. That's how we got almost 100 signups during 24 hours. Not bad!

  2. You don't necessarily need a hunter.
    We had 2 launches with hunters, and 5 launches throught the "ship" button. They say hunters add you more credibility and trust. Also, a hunter is supposed to guide you through the launch steps. However, we didn't notice the big difference. The launch itself is not a big deal. Also, one of the hunter posted our release 4 hours later than agreed upon. Obviously the whole process is much faster without a hunter.

  3. Make sure you qualify and engage the visitors.
    Once we released an ebook on PH and got 2000 leads in 24 hours (everybody loves free stuff, don't they). Just a few of them converted into standing customers. The mistake: we built a sales funnel which didn't start with proper qualification. It gave us "dirty" analytics.

  4. It takes around a week to get ready for the launch.
    You need:

  • a video (might be just a screencast with comments),
  • pics for the carousel (either screenshots or designers production),
  • description,
  • first comment
  • and the topics.
    I'm sure you already have the product - that's the number one thing that you need :)
  1. Be ready to fail.
    You may think "oh that's a super cool product that everyone will want!". Please, don't generate expectations. Stay calm. When we were releasing something really unique on the market, it was our worst release. No emotions, only lessons learnt.

  2. Unstoppable traffic source.
    Product Hunt will always be an unstoppable traffic source for us. Treat PH like a catalogue where everyone needs something - including your product. Make it stand among thousands of intriguing and captivating products.

  3. Build connections
    The Product Hunt platform is not only for telling the world about your product. It's also about making connections, getting insights, inspiration and advice. Check the "makers" section and "ask".

What was your experience with Product Hunt like?

p.s. if you are planning the release - feel free to ask any questions!

  1. 2

    Thanks for the insight. What do you mean by qualifying visitors?

    My experience was as you described: I was ready to fail, and indeed failed. I shared my experience with launching a newsletter on Product Hunt.

  2. 1

    Great insights. We launched https://bullish.email on Product Hunt last week and we failed miserably but then somehow we got manually featured in their Sunday edition and that got us close to 200 upvotes.

  3. 1

    This is incredibly insightful. We haven't launched on PH yet but hoping to very soon. Thanks for sharing!

    💙LearnStash

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 18 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments