How much fraud is there on Product Hunt?
I launched my first project on PH today: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/loaders - and it's doing pretty well given how little I've done to promote it.
I've noticed an interesting thing though, which is that a couple top projects are getting tons of upvotes, but relatively few comments, or lots of "canned" seeming responses. Are people paying for votes? Am I just jealous? Curious if anyone has insight into this.
Trending on Indie Hackers
Yes, people paying for votes.
Here's an upvote report for the one looking suspicious;
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EIYDyRlfBG9hQ0Cv0HdngMXHZz-C7gG7J5tcrVMsWYU/edit?usp=sharing
Good reporting, you should be the paid ph mod
Haha thanks, they shall pay me to keep it quiet. :)
interesting..how to get such report? Does PH have an API to provide this info?
Yes, they offer a graphql interface with a ridiculous rate limiting. So it requires a few jumps through hoops.
That's the one, haha. It appears to be defying gravity.
to the moon 🚀
🙃
Wow that's some crazy shit.
Good investigative work!
Anecdotally, I've heard stories as well. Apparently a PH launch is a super big deal for startups now. And they'll prepare several months in advance with buying/ creating these bot accounts since PH blocks upvotes from recent accounts. All is fair in ... or is it?
Wow this is absolutely crazy! I'm fairly new to the product hunt space so I'm trying to get as familiar as possible before launching and promoting my new service there. It's so sad to see that no matter the platform, these type of things still exist. Guess were all just humans living in a bots world, right?
This is a list of usernames, but how does it relate?
Are we clear about those accounts are bot accounts?
The list is sorted by account creation date for that purpose, they are created within a small time-frame in the same format with their "headlines". No followers on producthunt and linked twitter accounts.
You are right about there is no indication of they are paid on this list. But this is not a new subject and discussed several times with proofs that we already gone through. That's where I came to conclusion.
See;
1 order in queue, last delivery 2 weeks ago
2 orders in queue, last delivery 2 days ago
Oh wow! I never knew how many 'scammers' or 'fake profiles' are there at Indie Hacker. Thanks for the reference!
Wow well done Rusted. This is wild! Agreed, PH should pay you haha
90% of products on product hunt shut down after 6 months. Also I have seen people sending private messages to everyone asking for upvotes.
90% sounds like a magic number. Although you are not wrong about private messages.
But this is a normal situation for any startup/new product when most of them are not successful, right?
Congrats Griffin. Upvote :)
unfortunately, communities win, not good products.
Few products have a community.
And so they get support for their launch.
I'm creating a product about launching a successful product hunt without the community.
Imagine people who are on PH and write "developer" on their twitter profile.
You can reach them with one click.
A low-cost way to promote your product or support its launch.
How does it sound?
Cool idea! My product is a simple, 100% free open source library. I think a paid-for product in a smaller niche would really struggle on PH without an existing audience. So you're definitely scratching a real itch with your idea.
And thanks for the upvote! :)
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Like any automated algorithm on the web, it's been gamed by marketers. You can buy upvotes on Fiverr or wherever else, though it's easy to spot who has been buying.
Yep, fair enough!
There is definately fraud on PH. @Rusted below did some great work but I've observed it plenty, moreso in the last couple of years.
It's really obvious too when the founders are non-US based as you can easily spot new accounts upvoting and commenting are all from the same country as the makers.
It could also be family & friends upvoting and doing the canned comments, similar to Amazon FBA review strategy a few years ago. People will always game the system, just gotta hope the cream rises to the top I guess.
Thanks.
One thing confuses me is, why we call this as a fraud. I'm against buying upvotes but also questioning myself why.
If I pay for a marketing agency/influencer or a hunter to generate same results, would it be ethic?
If my network, co-workers, friends and family will benefit through its success, would it be still ethic?
If I gather a community where members willingly support each other by upvotes, would it be ethic?
Why it's unethical to pay for the direct results, if the platform can't/don't handle fraud and knowing a competitor can beat you to it.
Why would I risk it, does anyone giving any medals to those who lost with their dignity?
Well in the case of Amazon FBA. It was against their ToS to buy reviews or ask friends/family as it's clearly not going to provide a legit feedback on the product.
Now regarding buying votes for PH, it clearly works/pays to game the system but what you will end up with is a bunch of unhappy/disappointed customers.
If they were giving discounts/free trials then that's fine.
If you advertised in a bunch of communities/channels, that's fine too.
But buying votes just seems shit to me when the site is meant to be about good products being hunted and showcased to the world, not who can clone/whitelabel a shitty product and buy votes to get #1 for the day.
"when the site is meant to be about good products being hunted and showcased to the world"
That site might be build with that in mind. Its current purpose seems to generate visits to sell ads/job postings.
I don't know how much they ask for sponsorship but the questionnaire suggests that it starts from $10K going up to $100K+. If they give me $10K I'd inspect every single voters' profile every single day even it means 10K profiles per day... :)
The thing making it worse is, they remove bot votes so they acknowledge the problem but don't delete those bot accounts and recently changed their UI and non-public API to hide the voters. 🤷♂️
It's an interesting question. Reaching out to your network for votes seems completely reasonable to me. My impression is that most of the top products are hunted and/or founded by people with significant followings. Which just makes sense.
The moment money comes into it, however, I think there are clear issues. If paying for up votes became the norm, then the platform loses any value it had for helping small projects without a significant budget get traction. I'm not really sure there's an ethical question here. But if that happened I think it would lead to a decline in the relevance of PH.
I was honestly shocked at how well my little thing ended up doing given that I have no following at all and couldn't even post on the biggest Subreddits. It proves that a small project can do reasonably well without paying for support or carefully planning a launch with a significant audience behind it.
Those hunters accepts donations and people somehow(?) feels obligated to pay for it. Some of those top hunters also provide consultancy, oddly enough those hunts tend to have bot votes.
To me it's the same thing in a different form that platform encourages, makes it look more bearable/reasonable. So if I have 1000 friends who listens to me about which product to upvote and someone approaches me for help, that's fine?
"But if that happened I think it would lead to a decline in the relevance of PH."
I think it's happening for a while without a decline.
I've done two launches and have had people reach out to me asking me to pay for votes. Kind of annoying, always seemed suspicious to me. I always thought it was my lack of preparation 🤷🏽♂️.
Congrats @GriffinJohnston on your launch! The way I see it is there is a lot of combo between who is hunting and how much fuss the builder had created with their online presence (not necessarily for the product they are launching). Sometimes I see cool products getting 100 upvotes over something way less useful that gets featured for the day label only because it's launched by a name. Brand is everything.
sidenote: I tried to reach out on twitter but your DMs are closed. There is a problem with loaders when I use it with my NextJs project, some unrecognized export. I can provide you logs but you need to enable some form of communication :)
Thanks! I think I basically agree with your assessment. People with an existing audience are going to get more votes, of course. Which is honestly fine, that's just how the world works.
For communication about package problems, I prefer GitHub issues over something like Twitter. I cover Next.js compatibility in the docs: https://github.com/GriffinJohnston/uiball-loaders#platform-support - the TL;DR is that you need to use dynamic imports or use the
next-transpile-modulespackage.That might be unnecessary soon though. I'm currently looking into adding type: module in the package.json for the project, which should allow this to work out of the box on newer versions of Next.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago.
Just released v1.2.6 which supports Nextjs v12+ out of the box. Give it a try!
Cool project, Griffin! Salute for Brazil.
Some might be gaming it but I think most are as organic as they can be.
Congratulations @GriffinJohnston 👏
PH is overridden by paid-for upvotes and comments. A simple google search yields multiple tools. It is ridiculously easy to game the system.
Disclaimer: Product Hunt is very useful, for both those looking for products and those trying to reach new customers.
Yea, seems like there's a lot of that. I do think the success of my project here proves that it's not too badly overrun by paid posts and other system-gaming though.
It's unfair to say "fraud" on product hunt. There are many products which have got recognition due to product hunt.
But as a SaaS/Micro SaaS founder in your priority list product hunt should be way down in your list of priority customer acquisition channels. Too much emphasis is given to product hunt upvotes when other direct methods like Email, Webinar, Linked and cold calling gives far more predictable results.
I'm in a telegram group with 200 local indie hackers, and they usually announce in that group when they release something on producthunt. I believe people in the group upvote each others project as a way of supporting. I don't unless I actually like the project.
Hey Griffin,
Firstly love your work, to your question of fraud. I have been with the PH community for sometime now engaging in discussions , yet to post something myself but honestly I don't believe there is.
What I have definitely noticed is that how someone has launched a product makes a big difference. A lot of things come into play. for a simple example did you hunt yourself or had hunter. This can influence a lot since with hunters with following you already have higher chances of upvote. There are loads of different approaches that people use there are even guidelines on how to orchestrate your launch day. If one is thought leader or a known figure in the community that gives a lot of leverage as well. Of course there are many more things but I think you already get what I mean to say.
One more thing I see is that not everyone goes on product to be number one (getting it is great of course) some get on to get feedback, increase exposure, start a minimum viable community etc.
BottomLine : All this variation makes PH an interesting platform for many to launch their product.
Again, Thanks for raising this question loved the discussion around it and Congratulation on getting 300+ votes. That’s loads I have seen product win product of the day with less votes. So great work 👍
It's very much a popularity contest, so people with big networks are always going to win the top spots. What's interesting to me is that a project without that could make it to 4th place.
Congratulations on 4th place! Your library can help; thanks for creating it!
When I saw Product Hunt, I thought, "Can we just throw in fake votes !"
Then I did my analysis, and this is what I found:
Yes sometimes crazy to see.
However, if I'm not mistaken PH algo does its best to take this into account:
Like votes from new/inactive accounts, votes coming in peaks (in stead of more naturally throughout the whole day) don't weigh as much, ...
not sure about fraud but they have preventive measures to minimize it but what fascinates me is their is a strong network between Twitter n PH. If you have a community on Twitter it directly benefits you PH. Basically an avg app with great community beats a great product with no community. It is almost like people will buy from other people even if the product have bugs, flaws, issues etc
This is definitely true. Like anything vote-based, people with a significant existing audience or network are always going to do best. No getting around that really.
Congrats for the milestone Griffin. Upvote :)
Maybe you want to share about how the launch process of "Loaders" in different post, It's pretty good product, love it
Thanks for the kind words, and I'll consider a separate post! Might be worthwhile if I can think of something useful to say about it.
Congrats on the launch. Having done a couple of launches, I've had an after thought of whether these launches do more for PH growth vs. for my product. LOL!
No insights, but some some stuff I've noticed:
In one case, a product came out of no where at the 6th hour and ranked 3 right away. Some of the comments on the product were from a few hours ago, but the post itself didn't exist then. I've also seen upvote counts reduce the following day (some interesting PH algo). Here's a dashboard you can use to monitor your/other products through the day: https://productwars.phantombuster.com
Regardless, don't let this demoralize you. Focus on YOUR launch, and most importantly HAVE FUN with your team to celebrate the launch!
Appreciate it! I've definitely observed some weird stuff going on with other posts throughout the day. One of the current top products came out of the blue fairly late this afternoon, similar to what you describe. You're right about what to focus on though! Cool tool, by the way - thanks for the link.
This is totally irrelevant to the question, but I love your library and I gave it an upvote :P Looking forward to trying it in my next project!
Thanks so much! Let me know if you do, I'd love to see it in action. 🙏
I see more of gamification than scamming, many PHers know that creating engagement in the early hours will push their app on Featured page which inturn creates even more engagement
To create early engagement, they basically have a private group who upvote their product as soon as they launch it and then later use Twitter to create hype further.
May be a few.
That's great, I never knew how many 'scammers' or 'fake profiles' are there at Indie Hacker. (https://evergreenapk.com/)
Yes noticed that as well! We launched today and our upvotes are more or less the double of our comments! It's very weird when I see products with tons of upvotes and only like 2-3 comments.
(btw here's our PH link: https://lnkd.in/e7NjKMEJ)
Why doesn't product hunt allow company accounts?
Hi Griffin, I really like your open source react Loaders bar. Thanks for making it of you have other project let us know.
Thanks Daniel! If you sign up for the email list on https://uiball.com you'll get an email when I release new stuff! You can also check out my other project https://behold.so
Yeah, I have particularly read posts that encourage paying your way through to a successful launch. That's mostly for promoters though. But in the 'backend', people pay for upvotes too. But you know, it is kinda disguised as marketing strategies.
I'm not sure about how so many upvoting happens all of a sudden in PH, but I have clicked on upvote for you :-) after visiting the PH loader's link to make sure you are not behind and loosing the race.
I'm sure people pay for upvotes on PH, I knew a guy from Reddit that ran a business, he paid for upvotes all the time. The mods even messaged him because they thought it was suspicious.
I am not sure people pay for votes. Most people make use of their communities to get these upvotes
I have limited experience with Product Hunt, but each time I visit, I wonder this same thing.
Why does Product Hunt allow this? Don't they realize that it hurts their brand and users' experiences? Perhaps is a detection and enforcement issue. I can't imagine it'd be easy to do but it seems pretty clear whenever I visit.
Just curious,do we have any brave IHers that are willing to admit they've employed these types of click farms? I have no interest in shaming them. I'm just genuinely curious about what the process is like and what the impact is. I can't imagine it's a very useful impact in the long run.
Anything with the potential to be exploited for net arbitrage will be exploited, given a long enough timeline. I'm sure they devote resources to manipulation, just like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc. but its an infinite game of cat and mouse.
That makes me sad to hear, but it makes sense I guess. Fraud sneaks its way into most things I feel like
a lot...
loved your project, sweet stuff.
I love the idea and execution, Griffin. Congrats on the 4th place!
Looking forward to see what's next on uiball.
Hello Griffin, congratulations on the Product Hunt launch.
I see your product is free, how does that work? I thought Product Hunt was for paid launches.
Did you launch it for free for just few days for getting things rolling?
I launched my Saas app on appsumo and stackcommerce, and have made some sales and got some reviews and feedback.
I can recommend especially appsumo, they seem to have a huge community, and there is nothing like feedback from someone who paid for the product.
Are you thinking of launching in some other similar websites, or will you keep it to product hunt only for the moment?
Again congratulations, would love to hear more about your Product Hunt experience, thanks & kind regards.
"I thought Product Hunt was for paid launches." - where did you get this idea? It's totally not true, loads of free things are launched on PH and generally tend to perform better from what I can tell
Hello Ramy, that is good to know, I wasn't aware of it. Still learning about all these product websites.
And did you launch there a paid or free product? l can't really give my product for free at this stage anymore, and I also noticed that feedback from paying customers is usually a lot more useful, even if they only paid a relatively small lifetime deal amount like $89, $99, or $129.
Did you try paid or free products, what was your experience with Product Hunt? Cheers, Vasco
I've launched a bunch of stuff on there over the years, both paid and free (https://www.producthunt.com/@ramykhuffash/made)
It's been great for me, but it's hit and miss. Some things do well on there and a few flop and I'm never sure how it will go before posting
You can certainly post free products on PH. I see quite a few of them. I don't have any plans to monetize this. This was just me wanting to create a FOSS project. I've been coding in isolation for too many years, and I'm trying to engage with the community more.
Congrats! Your work looks beautiful! About your question, I may have a perspective to share. For example, we already have a lot of users in one country. So when we decided to launch on PH, we will ask a few of our users to upvote for us. So most of them may do so without leaving any comments. Maybe that's a reason too.
Congrats, I upvoted :)
I launched a book on how individual contributors can improve their business skills on PH. The upvotes were nice, and we did OK for a relatively unknown player who had done their homework and got a few big twitter influencers interested. But what was REALLY useful was the number of people downloading the free chapter we included. We didn't win the competition that day, but we definitely got some buyers over the longer term ...
(The book https://www.amazon.com.au/Master-Expert-Expertship-performance-seniority/dp/0645046639)
Absolutely, however well you do in the "race", traffic is traffic. As long as you do well enough to get featured, or even make it above the fold, it's a great source of eyeballs.
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