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How far in were you with your product when you submitted it to sites like Hackernews or ProductHunt?

Personally I'm thinking how much "progress" do you need to have to submit your product there and not come across as "spammy".

For instance, on my product I don't have a mention of pricing yet. I'm missing some crucial features that are on my list. And yet I'd like to acquire a small user base that could point me into the direction the product should go.

Did you start right away or were these crafted, more refined scenarios?

  1. 7

    I don't think there's any risk of coming off as spammy. Hacker News has a "Show HN" section for the very purpose of sharing your projects.

    I posted to HN first because it felt like that community was more receptive to MVP's and it required less crafting (no logo, video, or images needed). Worked out really well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20688044

    And then a few months later I shared to PH when my feature set was better. One advantage to spacing out launches is if you get some traction from the first you can probably get some of your users to support your next launch and do a bit better. On the other hand, there's risk of someone else sharing your product to PH and blowing your launch. That happened to me, but luckily it got no traction so the PH staff agreed to remove it so I could launch it myself: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/divjoy-4

    Anyway, that's just my experience. Hope it's helpful!

    1. 2

      Thanks, it's super helpful! I needed that confidence boost, haha.

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        I should also add that I got like 5 early better testers to drop questions in my HN launch. This is probably my #1 recommendation. This is an easy ask, as you're not telling them to pretend to love your product, just asking them to drop a question to help get the conversation going. A lot of people browse HN and read the comments first. If they're no comments they move on. If there's a discussion that intrigues them they might check out your product and upvote.

        1. 1

          Awesome, sounds like a great move! I'll see how this turns out.

          <pitch>Would you like to become one?</pitch>

          1. 2

            Sure! Feel free to DM me on Twitter anytime: https://twitter.com/gabe_ragland

            1. 1

              Thanks, will do :)

  2. 5

    Both PH and HN are going to give you a short burst of users for the day, maybe a few days, and that's assuming your submission does well. So I'd say don't launch until you've done both off these:

    1. Beta test on real people to ensure your app works, it makes sense, and people like it. Otherwise your launch is much more likely to end up as a dud.
    2. Set up a plan for post-launch growth. In other words, figure out how you can use the traffic from your launch to get to the next step for growth, and implement that.

    "I want to get a few users in the door," usually isn't a good reason to launch. For one, you can and probably should get your first beta testers via one-on-one sales convos and other "things that don't scale," because it's crucial that you talk to your early users personally. That's the best way to learn. For example, before I launched Indie Hackers I cold emailed many dozens of people about the site and got lots of feedback.

    Additionally, if you don't have a post-launch growth plan, you're just going to find yourself in the trough of sorrow not knowing how to grow, having somewhat wasted your launch.

    (Yes, it's possible to launch on PH/HN platforms multiple times, so it's not technically a waste to launch prematurely. But I don't believe it's kosher to continually relaunch in a short time frame, and in the early days you should be operating on short time frames.)

    For Indie Hackers I set up a mailing list and added some subscription forms to the site before launching. My plan was to get the visitors during launch to sign up for the list, so I could continue to publish interviews and then email the list to get them back to the site.

    1. 1

      Thanks for the tips!

      I'd love to beta test it on real people, but the problem I'm having is I'm still trying to define my target audience. My audience at the moment is "anybody with a need to scrape data periodically" and as such it's hard for me to cold email just anybody.

      I figured greater exposure might make it easier to find what the typical use-case is and target that niche accordingly. And without cold calls I can barely think of other channels.

      Or maybe it's the lack of product-market fit. I'm wondering.

      1. 2

        Yes, it's hard to have product-market fit if you don't know who your market is. This is why I'd advise building a product with a market in mind, rather than building a general purpose tool then trying to find a market. That way, not only do you know where to find your customers (bc you know who they are), but you can also tailor your product's features and your website's copy to directly appeal to those customers.

        In your particular situation, probably what I'd do is take a step back and research. What are the competing or related tools? Where are they doing their marketing? Who's using them? Etc.

        Ofc there's the possibility that if you do a wide launch you'll reach tons of people and uncover the ideal customer. Or you also might be building a general purpose tool with no single ideal customer… something like Webflow or Evernote. But that path is fairly difficult, as it's the opposite of picking a niche. I've seen it work best for companies whose products spread through word of mouth.

        1. 1

          I wish I had realized it sooner, but it's an important lesson nevertheless. Definitely a step forward compared to my previous attempts where I'd just lock myself in a cave and code without ever surfacing the product.

          I'm wondering, do you know of any people that have attempted splitting a product into separate offerings? Like having one underlying mechanism, but a separate website for general vs niche customers - and different startegies for promoting them as well?

  3. 4

    I posted my screenshot API on product hunt after 1 year of development. I had arnoud $2.5k MRR at the time.

    I think it's a lot easier to get upvotes if the home page is well polished but that doesn't mean you should wait for the complete product to be polished in and out.

    Also, one quite important thing is to launch at the exact correct time. Despite what the product hunt documentation and guides tell you, you should launch at the very begining (00:00) of a week day PST.

    1. 1

      Thanks for the advice!

      I see you had another screenshot product previously - I assume you're talking about the current one, right?

      Also a good catch with the PH timing, I'll definitely take this into consideration... somewhere in the future I guess :)

      1. 1

        Yes I'm talking about the current one. :)

  4. 3

    https://saaspages.xyz/ two weeks

    https://versoly.com/ - 10 months

    Paid products need to be very polished to get traction on PH

    1. 1

      Maybe the growth hack is to start as a free offering, submit to PH and convert to paid some time afterwards? 🤔

      1. 1

        That can work for some products.

        But as bootstrappers the goal is to get to profitability as fast as possible.

  5. 2

    If you are to the point where you think people will come back, then it'd be a good time. Keep in mind, the audience on those sites are very similar and may not be actual 'customers' or 'users' depending on what you are providing. Expect a spike for a day and then back to normal levels afterwards as a general rule of thumb. Don't let that discourage you - have a general marketing / growth hack plan and try to present the product where your target customers/users actually are. Also, better to have someone else 'hunt' your product on Product Hunt - those seem to get more traffic.

  6. 2

    Probably not far enough :)

    We made a list of features that we wanted to launch viyo.io with and we were able to accomplish that. We were missing some major features to compete with competitors, but our thinking was that if people saw value in the product and could get on board with our approach then perhaps we could carve out a piece of the pie in our niche.

    We used the launches as a learning experience and were really surprised at the result. We ended up with 5000+ visitors and 130 sign ups on our launch day.

  7. 1

    I’m using the Show HN tag for any project with an MVP. While PH needs a bit more effort to make it right, so I’d rather use it for project with some users /customers on it.

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