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I launched 10+ products on Product Hunt, most made it to top 5. My take on 11 things you must do BEFORE launch 👇

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    Pretty good thread but stresses me out a bit.. feel like I need to nail it or face obscurity (at least on PH)..

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      I did a PH launch back in October 2020 right as we released V1 of our product. Looking back, we hadn't nailed our value prop at all yet (not to mention the amount of onboarding issues we had which took us until March 2021 to reeeeally iron out).

      Having spent the guts of 7 months trying to figure out our positioning, we did a Customer Problem Stack Ranking 2 weeks ago and found that our value prop ranked as lowest priority for our two top target segments. We used the top ranking results to re-write our entire website and onboarding and had more traction last week than this whole year so far.

      Long story short, I wish we had taken more of a data-driven approach to our messaging and value prop before trying Product Hunt (plus I wouldn't have done PH straight away, you need to have A+ onboarding and a user base to drive your upvotes imo). I wrote an IndieHackers post on the Customer Problem Stack Rank approach here.

      Great post @hrishikesh1990 - bookmarking your thread to use these tips for our V2 go at launching OpinionX on PH in the coming weeks.

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        Great points Daniel. My first-ever PH launch (https://www.producthunt.com/posts/remote-tools) ended up being #2 product of the day but you won't believe that I didn't even have subscribe CTAs on the website. 10K users in a matter of days, all gone in a week. We did close 4 client deals for my primary business due to the traffic & made good money. But it would have been drastically different if we had taken PH as a platform more seriously then.

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      True, it is stressful & PH has become fiercely competitive over time. More than that, you also need luck on your side.

      Regardless, I have realised not to entirely depend on PH & use it as one of the many channels to launch.

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    Have you made any money or had any successes with any of these product hunt projects? If so, can you show some examples?

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      Sure, I have launched my primary business, Flexiple, on PH multiple times (when we had updates). We got many client leads this way. This is one of the listings - https://www.producthunt.com/posts/flexiple-2.

      Most other projects have been not-for-profit ex. https://www.producthunt.com/posts/the-remote-weekly

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        Have you measured the amount of sales or customers you've received from this channel?

        Or is there a ROI of the amount of time you spent promoting it on product hunt? And how has it helped days or months later down the road... or is it a one time pop in terms of traffic/sales that were sent to your site.

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    Thanks for sharing, @hrishikesh1990. About your second advice. I've now tried to comment and upvote on PH for months. Find it hard to get followers, even if the makers respond to my post, they don't refollow me. Do you have a better and more effective approach to get followers on PH?

    1. 1

      I actually didn't find the followers part much helpful. Instead, I feel the threads in the makers community are much better to get traction on launch day. Plus, if you use the goals feature, people usually cheer & support you too. You may connect with people outside of the platform as well.

      Now I know it's a long shot and hence, having an audience outside of PH really helps.

      About followers specifically, they are good from the perspective of them getting email notification when you launch. But the only reliable way I saw to get more followers on PH is to make successful launches or have a good following on Twitter (they borrow your Twitter following from what I know).

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        Ah. Right! Thanks - will check out the makers community as you mention.

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    Great thread, @hrishikesh1990! Thanks for sharing.

    We've been eyeing a PH launch for Butter (https://butter.us) -- which is like Zoom but laser focused on workshops (and hopefully more delightful 😉) -- for quite some time now. It's all very new to us though since our team hasn't really launched there before. So just imagine the nerves we're all getting! 😆

    Aside from general PH advice, I'd also love to know how you sustain the momentum post-launch! Let me know if you're up for a chat. 😊

    1. 1

      Hey Cheska,

      Butter looks really great! I've actually been in touch with Jakob back when it was MeetButter :)

      I would love to chat -- we can connect on email: hrishikesh(at)remote(dot)tools

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    I launched My first ever product yesterday only on Product hunt and now i am regretting why i didn't got this thread earlier.

    But anyways thank you so much for all advices, i have save them for future as they are going to help me and my team in the future for future product launches on product hunt.

    1. 2

      No worries Priyanshu -- hope this helps you in future :)

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