How we massively failed our ProductHunt launch but we still managed to get featured in 21 countries the AppStore

Hi!

Yesterday I launched the version 2.0 of Mindful Affirmations. I won't go too much on details of what Mindful Affirmations is, you can read about it in here.

Version 2.0 has been a big thing for us, we planned it in early January and we have been working hard since. One of the big updates was that we added new languages - French and German. Our app depends on content, so adding a new language is a BIG deal. We hired translators and voice actresses. Another thing we added was a new feature called Daily Quotes - inspirational quotes from famous people.

All of this had big costs involved and our project is not very profitable yet, but we believed in it. We thought this would be our break through - 23rd of April would be for us the day we could finally focus 100% on our side project.

And we launched. We sent a newsletter to our users (+6K), we emailed every single person we know - heck, I even emailed my ex girlfriend! - and told them about the app and the ProductHunt page, we created specifics visuals and we re-wrote the post 100 times. And what happened was that we were having votes and comments - all from real people - but they were not enough. We were monitoring it during the day but we soon realised we wouldn't make it to the top 3. They wouldn't tweet about us nor be in their daily newsletter. We ended up in the position 15, with 149 votes and 44 comments.

We bought some pizzas and beers and we forgot about the disaster, we told ourselves that we would do it better next time - because there's always a next time!

This morning we woke up and did normal life until I got a notification from AppFollow:

Mindful Affirmations: Featured in Apps in 21 countries: Germany, Spain, Portugal and 18 more

We have been featured in the AppStore! Today, we are in the list of Apps We Love Right Now in the AppStore in almost every single country in Europe.

And how it happened? What did we do right after all?

• We have a great product. Our design is fresh, clean and curated. We take care of small details and we focus on doing something we are proud of.
• We are fair. We don't try to scam our users or make as much money as we can. This goes by explaining clearly what you get from being premium, by giving free trials and by having most of our content for free.
• Localisation! Turns out, if you want to get featured in Europe your app needs to be in the main languages (English, French and German). We didn't waste our money, after all!
• Accessibility. We have put an effort in having our app accessible, we can - and we will - improve it more but it's a first step.
• Make as much noise as you can! We didn't manage to be in the Top 3 in ProductHunt but we tripled our daily downloads yesterday.

These are our main tips and take-aways from how to get your app featured in the AppStore!

PS: In our newsletter we added a link to a form for users to give us feedback. We gained a lot of insights about both what our users want and also don't like about our app.

PS2: In the newsletter, we forgot to put the link to the launch page which was the main purpose of the email - massive fail. Please guys, don't make the same mistake and triple (we doubled) check the emails you send before pressing send.