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How to prepare for your ProductHunt Launch + Data 🚀

Hello IndieHackers,

A launch on ProductHunt is a huge milestone for many in the community. The startup I work for is currently going through this experience and I wanted to share a few thoughts and tips with you. For this post, I am only going to focus on setting up the ProductHunt campaign, and not the product or marketing copy/assets as they are too specialized.

Most people launching on ProductHunt have two goals in mind:

  • Spread the word and find potential leads/customers
  • Get the "Product of the Day" badge to improve credibility and add social proof

For our launch, we took three things into account:

1. Getting the timing right

The average number of posts per day on ProductHunt is 62.95. That's a lot of competition. However, the number of posts fluctuates widely throughout the day with a peak at 7 AM GMT and again a smaller one at 2-3 PM GMT. There is a similar pattern for the average number of votes by the time of the day. Depending on where your target users are, it might be beneficial for you to opt for a time that is slightly off-peak hours. This way you have a chance to outmaneuver the competition.

2. Picking the right topic

Topics on ProductHunt help users look for cool new tech that's relevant to them. If you are interested in Marketing Software, you probably don't want to have to scroll through tons of other products about Crypto or Artificial Intelligence.

For your product, you can pick up to 5 topics. When putting together your combination of topics, make sure to get a great combination of "targeted-niche" and "highly-popular" topics. This way you get the best of both worlds. People looking for a solution to their specific problem will find you in the targeted niche topics, while users just browsing will drive your overall likes. This way you improve your chances of getting the "Product of the Day" badge - the holy grail.

3. Working with a Hunter

When posting on ProductHunt, you basically have two options:

  • Post it yourself
  • Let a Hunter post on your behalf

Hunters are users on ProductHunt who regularly share new and cool products they discovered with the community. Some hunters have shared hundreds or even thousands of products before (chrismessina is currently #1 with 2,876).

There are a few benefits when working with hunters:

  • They already have a huge following so more people might discover your product through them
  • They have a lot of experience and can give you valuable feedback

When reaching out to a hunter, you can even further optimize your chances by finding a hunter who is relevant to the niche your product is for. If you are working on an email marketing tool, you might want to reach out to kevin (41) instead of chrismessina (27).
Another thing to keep in mind is that hunters are doing this voluntarily so be mindful of that and try to make it as easy for them as possible for them to help you. Have the copy and assets prepared when reaching out to them. Hunters are also more likely to help you out when you are doing something relevant to the product hunt community.

Pro Tip: The big hunters usually have a long list of founders/hackers who want to work with them and usually only post 1-2 per day. Make sure to reach out in advance to get the date you want.

In Summary:

  • Try to outmaneuver your competition with timing & topics
  • Hunters can be a huge asset

BUT

While a successful ProductHunt launch can give your business a huge boost, startups and especially IndieHacker projects are often more like a marathon than a sprint. Don't get discouraged when the results are less than what you had hoped for.
Also, many products appeared more than once on ProductHunt. Big companies like Stripe launched more than 20 campaigns on PH.

If you have already launched on PH, let me know what your experience has been like.

If you are planning to launch on PH, maybe our startup's product, Veezoo, can help you. We have developed an analytics and business intelligence tool with a conversational interface. This means that instead of filters and drill-down menus, you simply ask your question and get the answer + visualization. We set up an open demo with all PH data so you can find the answers you need to make your product take off on PH.
(Check out the links in the comments 👇)

  1. 2

    @MarcGruener Thanks for this - it's super helpful! And this tool is really cool. Is there any way to ask it what is the best day to launch on PH?

    1. 2

      Sure, but it depends on what your definition of "best" is. We looked at this from a few different angles 👇 (all links to the answers)
      Day of the week with highest average Votes Count
      Day of the week with highest average Votes Count for Analytics
      Number of posts per Weekday
      Number of posts per Weekday for Topic Crypto
      average Votes Count by hour for Email Marketing

      You can play around with these and the topics your product would belong to to get a feeling for how much competition there might be and what kind of engagement others have achieved.

      Hope that helps!

      1. 2

        Additionally, you can experiment around with other metrics like Reviews Count, Comment Count, Reviews Rating, ...

        You can click on "Knowledge Graph" to get an overview of all the datapoints in there.

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