Achieving Product of the Day on Product Hunt with a Trello Board

I recently shared my Trello board on Product Hunt and was able to reach the top spot there. If you are working on ANY type of project, you can post it and reach the top as well. I wrote an article about this experience on Medium and would like to share some tips with you.

My Story

Let me give you a brief overview of the product. It is a simple Trello board that lists ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and MidJourney Prompts that people can use (if you are familiar with recent AI buzz, you should know what I am talking about). I spent about 3 hours creating the board on a weekend, and an additional 2 hours on design, marketing, and answering questions in the product discussion for the launch.

I signed up for Product Hunt with the intention of launching a real product but decided to test the waters first with my board because:

• I thought it was something useful that people might like

• I wanted to understand how to launch a product and what benefits it brings

• I wanted to see how many Twitter followers I could get using this strategy :)

I signed up for Product Hunt 7 days before the launch (you can’t launch earlier) and launched my Trello board on January 1, 2023 (Sunday). I didn’t have any initial followers, only around 20 subscribers on my PH account that I gained by commenting on other launches. At first, some products outpaced me by generating initial upvotes from their user base. But after 2–3 hours, my board stayed at position number 4 and remained there until the end of the Product Hunt day.

I shared my Product Hunt link on Twitter, Linkedin, and Hackernews. I didn’t post to Reddit because I had already shared my Trello board there before the launch and didn’t want to bother the community again. I received a few likes on Twitter and Linkedin, but was unable to get any traction on Hackernews (I think they may be blocking Product Hunt links, so you may need to be creative and post the link to elsewhere).

Here are some statistics from my PH launch:

• 196 upvotes
• 247 followers on the product page
• ~20 new Twitter Followers
• 26 comments

My tips

1. Engage with the community at least a week before your launch.

This will help you gain followers and also give you an understanding of how Product Hunt works. I started engaging with the community 1 week before my launch.

2. Add your product to the “Coming soon” and “Building in progress” sections

People can subscribe to see your progress and receive notifications. This will help you gain more followers who may upvote your product during the launch.

3. Post early, and get as many upvotes as possible early.

Product Hunt’s new day begins at 12:00 AM Pacific Standard Time (PST). It is important to try to get as many upvotes as possible during the first few minutes of the launch.

4. Contact people and ask them to follow your product before the launch.

A few days after I became active on Product Hunt the person asked me to follow their “Coming Soon” page. Currently, they have over 100 people subscribed to their notifications!

5. When you launch, post a link to your launch on social media

Some people think that they need a large number of followers on social media accounts to reach a significant audience. Post on:

• Reddit
• HN
• Indiehackers
• Medium
• Hackernoon
• Twitter
• Linkedin

6. Before you launch your main product, try launching something small first.

This is my personal tip, and I have not seen it mentioned anywhere else. Launch something simple but useful first, such as a Trello board or a small POC.

7. Be active in the comments of your product and other products on your launch day.

Why is this important? When you are active in the comments of your own product, people are more likely to engage in conversation, upvote your product if they have not done so already.

8. Choose your launch date carefully. It matters!

If you see a lot of great products launching at the same time as yours, your chances of reaching the top may be lower, so you may want to consider changing your launch date.

These tips are just the tip of the iceberg. I cover much more in my Medium article. I wish I had all of this information before my first launch. Check it out for yourself.