My launch on PH was a failure
Hi everyone,
A month ago I built a website where people can share their salaries in an anonymous way so you can compare and get a better idea of how much is earning people in similar positions.
I posted about it on Reddit and it was a success (well not completely I'll write about this later). I got approx 50k visitors that day and more than 5k people shared their salary, I took it as product validation and I was very happy with the result.
So a couple of days later I decided to launch it on PH.
As I was confident with my product, I decided to prepare it well: I read about other people experiences on launching, I created some simple but, what I thought, beautiful images, I wrote a complete description to add as a first comment, even I created a small gif.
I checked that everything was perfect using PreviewHunt.
Also, digging into other PH launches to get ideas I found one that the product was based on the same idea as mine,
even the same name. The product was very simple, a simple page where you can filter some twits by a couple of cities, just that, and it got 600+ votes.
At this moment I was very excited, I thought that people would love mine as well, is almost the same idea, with an improved UI, a couple of useful features more, but still very simple, a better-prepared launch with screenshots and description, so I was ready, I scheduled my launch for the next day at 00:00.
Finally the big day, I shared the PH link on twitter, on communities like this one, Makerlog, some Slack and Telegram groups, dreaming about what if my website goes viral if some cool site decides to feature it...
But the reality hit my face. I got approx 50 votes and almost 500 visitors to my site.
Since that day I'm thinking about what I did wrong? it was just bad luck? is because I don't have an audience? or the product is not interesting enough?
So here I am, trying to learn from my failures, I'm asking for your help to identify what I could do better? what do you think I should improve the next time?
Thanks!
TL;DR: My launch on PH was a failure when I thought I had a solid product so now I'm asking for help to identify what I did wrong and what I should improve.
if you continue to think in
binaryoutcomes then you'll continue to operate that way as well.these weren't failures... i mean, you still got
upvotesandvisitors, right? it's only a "failure" if you didn't hit the goals that you had set out to achieve based on the work that you invested and committed to, right?for instance, if you had launched on PH with the goal of getting 10 upvotes and 100 visitors... then, you were a definite and objective
success...! By a factor of5X!i don't want to
soapboxtoo hard here, but... every time i see someone share that they "launched on X!!" and they behave as if that's actually a big deal... is so much 🤦🏻♂️ for me.getting on
betalistor "launching" on ProductHunt... or fill___in___the___blank network marketing website isn't something necessarily ground-breaking or special as it requires nothing more than some time to fill out a few forms and then click "submit".now... i'm not poo-pooing the effort here... going public with your project is a big deal! but, when people make "the launch" THE thing... that's when things get all screwy.
tl;dr: a successful product "launch" is a
continualanditerativeone, not aone-timedeal or event.you will launch 1,000 times before you hit anything close to
product-market fitso stay positive and don't beat yourself up here. part of the process is trying to understand what communities and networks actual "work" effectively for you and the limited time that you have to invest.keep going!
Thanks for your kind words. I agree with you on several things and I want to tell you that this "failure" didn't stop me because I trust in my product and I know that everything needs the effort to succeed and takes time. I'm always working hard to achieve my goals because nothing is easy for me. But yes, maybe you are right, I was dazzled by the Reddit post. At the same, maybe it is a bit unpopular this comment, but I think I took it as a failure because I was comparing y launch with the other one that is pretty similar. Thanks again!
it can be easy to succumb to the "awesomeness" of a viral, one-time hit... but those don't make a business... those are just flash-in-the-pan events, usually.
sometimes, they can be converted into a long-tail growth strategy, but, that takes a lot of sophistication... and i'm not the right guy to ask. i bet there are some folks here that have more experience!
Completely agree. Launches can be nice and get the ball rolling, but are generally overrated. Zoom out and in almost any successful website analytics launch day is a blip you can barely notice.
All PH launches are a failure. Judging by the sheer volume of threads and comments on the topic people expect great results. But here is the reality:
This guy https://medium.com/@guilhermerizzo/i-launched-my-first-product-on-product-hunt-d61d91040656 made $74.55 over four days from 1000 visitors. Doesn’t seem too bad, until you compare that with a programmer’s daily rate and notice he also launched in six other places.
These guys https://medium.com/@MarieOuttier/lessons-from-launching-a-saas-tool-on-product-hunt-launch-591e8e33cbdb got 450 upvotes from 100 sign-ups and 2000 visitors, and no mention of paying customers. It seems the number of upvotes bears no relation to the value of your product. Most upvoters will only read the description.
And these guys https://blog.taskpigeon.co/launching-product-hunt-lessons/ spent a lot of effort preparing their launch and contacting everyone they could about it. They got nearly 2000 visitors, 138 signups, and again, no mention of profits.
I asked my friends on a private Slack channel. One said he got two paid customers.
I myself got over 1000 visitors. Tens of curious Hunters decided to sign up. I spent hours talking with them, it felt so good receiving their compliments. None of them paid.
I'm collecting these types of stories here: https://syften.com/blog/post/producthunt/ - would you mind if I included your story there as well?
Here are my PH results too if they're of interest - https://www.indiehackers.com/post/data-from-product-hunt-feature-a8f7e54c00
Would be nice to have a site that has user data from multiple sites like BetaList, BetaPage, sponsored newsletters - so users can see what kind of results to expect from each
Hi thanks for your answer, and sure, go ahead.
Can’t it be the timing? Launching at midnight can be tricky because at the time people start checking the web your content might already be on the second page or something. I am just guessing. I am might be mistaken.
hmm, interesting, this could be one reason.
It's actually a nice product @ngranja19
Thanks for sharing your journey, upvoted :)
Keen to know your feedback on my PH campaign too
thanks!
Thanks for sharing this! I also went into today's launch date with (some) expectations only to realize that it's probably going to fail hard.
I guess the main takeaway here is to just continue to do your thing. As others have commented, launching (and especially on PH) is a hit-or-miss which we should not judge our products on.
I think if you're not featured in PH then not many people will see it - if you'd been featured your visitor numbers would have been a different story and you may be saying it was a 'success'. It's important not to put too much hope or expect validation from PH, or on any one site alone - as if it doesn't meet your expectation then you'll think it a failure. Marketing involves many different channels and techniques that build up over time to provide some growth in visitor numbers - so I don't think you did anything 'wrong', just keep plugging away at the different channels and see if you get consistent interest.
And congrats on the Reddit post, that sounds like a great success 👍
Yes, maybe the other launch was featured on some way Idk. I will forget about it. At least I could say that I didn't do anything notoriously bad on my launch haha. Thanks for your response!
My launch on PH totally flopped as well. For some reason, the only times I've been able to score some upvotes have been the times when someone else hunted my project ¯\(ツ)/¯
Yeap, that's another reason, But actually comparing with the other PH launch he hunted himself too. So I believe is difficult to explain... thanks!