How we hit #2 on Product Hunt today (so far!)
Our company, Hoppy Copy launched on Product Hunt this morning (12:01 AM PST): https://www.producthunt.com/posts/hoppy-copy
We're currently #2 Product of the Day with over >500 upvotes and counting.
Here's how we did it.
Disclaimer: I had never done a Product Hunt launch prior to today. So before launching, I researched a ton about how to launch a new product on Product Hunt. And like with anything, when something is new, it can feel overwhelming and can leave you easily distracted by the huge amount of information you receive online. This can result in doing a lot of everything, but not enough of the core things that really move the needle. There really is so much you can do, but so far from this launch, I've found it boils down to putting effort into a few really core things, as goes with most things in building a startup or any business. So I'm going to focus this post on exactly what I believe will have the greatest impact on your launch success. Of course, please add/share if you have anything else to add that's worked for you.
Here are our top learnings:
1. Product Fit: If you're going for a top spot (1-3), your product has to be broadly applicable. It's just got to appeal to a lot of people. If it's too niche, unless you have a massive network, I'd think you'd have a hard time drawing attention from browsers on the Product Hunt homepage.
2. Listing Quality: Your listing's design, value proposition, and offer has got to be clean, simple, and appealing. Put as much time into thinking about it as you would on your own website. I think our listing is not bad, but if we were to launch again, I might spend even more time on it (creating a video, even nicer graphics, etc).
3. Launch Time: We launched right when Product Hunt's day starts (12:01 AM PST) to maximize engagement throughout the entire day. The first 30 minutes of launch seems to be incredibly important for getting upvotes and engagement/comments etc, as it's when you can gain initial momentum to get to the top of the list before others do, and maintain that momentum throughout the day to gain even more organic traction.
4. Network: I feel like naturally the winners are going to be those with the strongest network. We're fortunate to have a lot of super supportive early customers and people who genuinely love what we're building, and are willing to share that with their audiences. This seems so incredibly important to build these networks. For example, one person with a strong network of 100 followers sharing your launch seems like it would be way more powerful than manually posting in some facebook or slack groups where everyone else is also trying to promote something and nobody knows you. You need people who are looking out for you and want to share with their own networks. Something I've also noticed, PH seems to measure quality of engagement/upvotes, not just quantity. I've seen several launches now where people may get less upvotes, but achieve a higher PH ranking. This makes sense as the more influential PH folks simply have more influence.
5. Customer base: We have incredibly passionate customers and we have been keeping them in the loop throughout the whole process, with several emails and posts before the launch, at the launch, and during the launch. Also using the PH badge on our website and inside our app. No doubt our customers have contributed a ton to engagement on our listing (thank u!).
5. Hunters?: Finding a hunter to launch your product sounds really nice, but it seems many still do well without this. I'm not sure I would focus on this unless I was confident I could find someone really influential to work with. Probably worth a try, but we just hunted on our own.
6. Posting on forums like IndieHackers? I don’t know yet! I actually wasn’t even planning on posting here but had some extra time today, so thought why not share this quick recap and see the response :)
It's 6PM PST and we're still sitting at #2 on Product Hunt, and we've only got 6 more hours till the day ends, so we'll see where we land in the end, but so far we're blessed at the response as it's far beyond what we imagined we could achieve.
While it's not easy, if you have built the right network and have the right product fit, and focus on the above, I'm pretty confident you'll have a great PH launch. I know there's probably more you could do, but if I were to do it again, I would double down on the above.
I hope this post is helpful.
If you have a moment, please check out our launch and let us know what you think!
