My Product Hunt launch - This Week In NFTs - newsletter

Last week, I launched my newsletter about the news and developments in the NFT space - This Week In NFTs

I know a lot of people from here are looking to launch on PH as well, so I will share my stats, what I did as well as what I would do differently.

TLDR: the launch ended up being the #5 Product of the Day and got me 900 subscribers so far - this number continues to grow, although slower with every day.

The prep

The reason why I chose Product Hunt is simple: I do not have a following at all online, so it seemed like the best place to validate the newsletter idea.
I don't think I did anything out of the ordinary:

• Website is built on WordPress
• I copied The Hustle in terms of the visuals/layout, to optimize for conversion
• Email client is Mailerlite

It took me far too long to finish the website and I was trying to perfect everything so much that I had to ask the PH team to delete my post, as I was unable to launch within the 7-day timeframe. I re-created my post from scratch and decided on Friday as the launch day.
Friday has a lot less competition as the number of users that visit PH is smaller. While this means that the number of users that view the product is smaller as well, I concluded that it would be better to be on the Front Page on a less popular day than be on a lower position on a "better" day.

The launch

It is essential to get as many upvotes as soon as possible.
The way ProductHunt works is that it shows a select few products from the day on the homepage and for the rest, you have to click through to see them.
What also comes into play is that new users have to upvote three products + comment before their account is fully complete.

What does this mean?
It means that they upvote the Top 3 products of the day. So once you get on top, you will organically receive more and more upvotes.
So I got as many of my friends and colleagues to upvote the newsletter at the start of the launch, was oscillating around the 7th place and once the users from the US started coming in, I got a significant boost - as did the other products as well.
I posted a few tweets on Twitter, although with my nonexistent followers, I did not think much of it. I did, however, get these two tweets:

What I would do differently

I would focus more on building up at least a small following on Twitter or elsewhere BEFORE the launch. With a few more relationships, I believe that we could have ended in the Top 4 or Top 3.
I got a 51% conversion (visit to sub), which I am happy with.
The following newsletter received a 50%+ open rate, which I am happy with as well.

The results

I believe Friday was a good day to launch my Newsletter. I received around 350 subscribers during the first 24hrs, around 500 over the weekend, and a slow inflow ever since. I suspect ProductHunt will account for around 1500 subscribers by the end of the year.

What's next

I wish I could do a ProductHunt launch every week, but it is limited to 1 every half a year :)
My initial goal for the launch was 500 subscribers, which was surpassed.

I am now looking for other sources to grow the newsletter:

• Twitter - I will be focusing on Twitter in the coming weeks. I will identify 5-10 relatively large accounts in the space and will engage with them regularly. I have the link to the newsletter in my profile information.

• I am debating whether to post the content from the newsletter on Medium. I am not a big fan, however, it would be low effort to copy/paste the newsletter every week to their website.

• I’ve reached out to a few influencers in the NFT space, whether they would like to do an interview, which I would then publish on my website/newsletter, but have had no response yet. That is understandable, given my low following. It is something I will try again, once the newsletter grows a little more.

• I will try a paid campaign or two in other newsletters. I believe they will be great because I can cross-target a niche that would be complementary and the people who would click through to my newsletter would already be used to opening emails.

Closing Thoughts

I aim to get to 10k subscribers by the end of January. I will be iterating on the sources I mentioned above.

If you want to keep up with the news in the NFT space, you are more than welcome to join the 900 subscribers: This Week In NFTs

I will post here regularly with updates on the road to 10k subs.

Is there another source I should be focusing on for subscribers?

PS: If anyone wants any help with their PH launch, I am by no means an expert, but would be happy to help in any way I can.