A failed ProductHunt launch, and lessons learned

Hi IndieHackers 😊,

After spending 1.4 years in creating FileAgo, I decided to launch it on ProductHunt yesterday ( check https://www.producthunt.com/posts/fileago ) . Like everybody, I too wished for a great launch day, but was prepared to face the worst.

Having done my homework, I had everything ready:

• posted around 00:10 SF time
• had a nice animated gif as logo
• few nice screenshots describing the product
• a warm first comment

What I didn't had:

• a video
• user base or mailing list

At the end of the day I received around 46 upvotes and ended at 15th position if I remember correctly. This was my first PH launch, and was a good learning experience. I hope this will help the next indie guy who is planning to launch on PH soon.

Okay, so here it goes.

When I posted (at around 00:10 SF time), there was already many listings active in the Popular section (how come?!), some with 20+ upvotes. FileAgo first showed up in Newest section, and after 10-20 minutes it got 6 upvotes and I saw it debut in Popular at no. 8.

I scrolled to the top and to my horror saw someone hunted Red Dead Redemption 2 that day! I thought, okay top position is sealed already. But I was wrong. RDR2 debut in no. 2 position (~20 votes). The top position (~30 votes) was being held by Darkdocs, a simple chrome extension which enables dark mode for Google Docs.

And then new products start to appear in the Popular section and FileAgo somehow held on to no 8 for about 2 hours before slipping to no 10 (still in the Popular list though). But the I noticed one particular thing - few new products that were getting ahead of me already has around 40-50 votes.

Only then I realised what was happening - these products were hunted many hours ago (I can see comments that were clearly posted on the previous day), but guess what? The PH guys featured it only now, and it got a straight forward entry into the main list.

This pattern repeats every 2 hours. A product that already has comments from previous day magically appears first under my listing (I was still hanging onto 10th position), and then after 30-40 minutes take a sudden jump to the main list.

This was when I realised that I badly needed some support. I should have aggressively made a mailing list, told them about launch and hopefully got them to help me fetch some upvotes (it is totally against the rules to ask/beg for upvotes, but it fine to inform your users about launch). This was the only reason why I could not hold on to the top 10 position. I had a bunch of people in my mailing list, so I emailed them and I am sure nobody showed up (which was expected 😆)

On the brighter side, all 45 votes came from souls whom I did not pursue in any way or form.😆

Posting around 00:01 SF time plus having a mailing list, and getting people to upvote is perhaps the most important thing on a launch day

I will tell you why. It is important that your product get around 50-60 votes in the first few hours. That's it. And then, there will be steady flow of upvotes from people who dont even bother to read or understand your product, but they will do it anyway as if it is their daily routine.

I came across many profiles (who voted for me) who has done 2k+, 4k+ votes, what they do is upvote on everything they see. It is as if they wake up everyday and upvoting all products on PH is the first thing they do. Seriously!

So, although my vote was increasing, they were increasing the votes of all other products as well.

Only then I came to realise that without having a community who is willing to show up on the launch day and post some comments on your page, it is impossible to survive on PH.

Moral of the story 1: Build a community. Get them to like and comment in the first few hours. That is probably it. Votes and traffic will come in plenty as long as you stay in top 10.

Not to be done with the disappointing show on PH, I showed up on Reddit and posted about FileAgo in a couple of sub reddits, and literally had so much quality conversation with people there who were genuinely interested to know more (compared to PH where the only comment I got was from a guy who wanted to sell me his service).

Ever since I posted on reddit, I am constantly getting atleast 4 visitors browsing my site (even right now). The posts are sitting pretty on top, one with 3.4k views!

Moral of the story 2: Failing on PH is not the end of the world. Get your product out to communities/people who wants to engage with you, and not solely to those who merely upvotes everything because they themselves have to launch their 1st product next week .

I was expecting the worst, and it happened. Don't get your hopes too high. Launch early, and hope for the best. Have a plan B in place, and execute it if necessary.

Good luck!