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Product Hunt, Gumroad, Twitter and my Launch

Hey Everyone,

Sharing how my launch of LaraNx - SEO and Theme Management for Laravel went starting from planning to today, the day after the launch.

First, I created a list as so many of us do. However, the list is very general. I created 4 phases:

Phase 1: Brainstorm (will this happen)

Phase 2: Launch Preparation

Phase 3: Launch

Phase 4: Evaluate and ...

In the brainstorm phase, I still wasn't sure if I would release the package. It worked for my projects, but in order to make it usable by others, it would take more time to document and refine the installation. Dealing with SEO has been an issue with every Laravel project I've worked on so I decided to move forward with the launch.

Phase 2, is the most important. In the sense that the major decisions are made and implementation begins. More lists are created or I should say my big list gets granular sub lists. Finalizing product offering, marketing, distribution, billing, documentation and how it all comes together. Once the decisions are made implementation begins. And implementation always takes longer than you plan. Creating assets, writing copy, documentation, get landing page ready for launch ...

Phase 3, is all the details. While phase 2 had a lot of big tasks completed. This phase has the details with not much time left. Is everything ready for the Product Hunt launch. Is Gumroad ready, is downloading the package working, is there sufficient documentation, emailing early access subscribers, final posts to Reddit, Twitter, Slack channels and so on.

So now I'm in phase 4. Evaluation. There are things that I just didn't have time to finish. I had planned 5 videos and only completed 1. Documentation is solid, but I still didn't finish changes to the website like adding a video to the homepage. I don't have a big social media following so I got less exposure than I hoped but not less than I expected.

Glad I did:

  • Launched on Product Hunt
  • Used Gumroad for billing and distribution
  • Posted on Reddit
  • Contest on Twitter (using ContestKit.com)

Wish I did:

  • Given away more free licenses.

I figure its not too late to give some licenses away. I'll give away 3 licenses here on Indie Hackers. Just comment what version of Laravel your using and 3 random users will get a free license on Friday Sept 3rd, 2021.

AMA

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