Successfully failed product hunt launch result! (Removed from featured page)
Hey Indies,
I launched my product yesterday on product hunt. Everything was fine but my product just didn't show on featured page or any other page.
My solo project is a no code directory platform for no code tool and also marketing, management and sales tools.
Some people said product hunt do not feature directories and that is fine, but 4 days prior to my launch another directory launched and got to 2nd place.
Anyway, thanks to community on twitter, linkedin and reddit I got 300+ upvotes, 60 new product submissions and 18 people signed up for no code course.
That was enough upvotes to get good exposure and easily reach 4th place of the day but product hunt decided to keep my product hidden from all pages.
I'm active member of PH society with 10,000 upvoted launches and 280 days streak and that was no enough for PH support to give me simple answer why my product is hidden from all pages.
I am happy anyway with getting hq backlinks for my seo but seems like PH have double standards.
Sorry to hear that! Yeah, PH has been getting a lot of fire recently. Hope they can add a bit more transparency since it seems many indie makers put a lot of weight on their launch.
Do you have any advice/things you plan to do differently for the next launch?
Would love to hear your insights as well!
No insights here :) I am pushing a few launches back until I hear from PH support on them. Seems to be a bit volatile there atm.
hmmm... Seems to be the best course of action.
Is there any proper alternative to PH rn?
There is no purpose reaching out to them, I did the same. Reached out to PH 5 days prior to my launch. Here is the reply: "Hi Vlad,
While there is never a guarantee to be featured on the homepage, I've passed your desire along to our Moderation team."
I guess as an Indie you are not as important as some of the bigger companies.
It's better to add another maker, even your random friend so you won't be solo maker.
Maybe it's good to pay someone from India to hunt you as they have massive amount of upvoters behind them. You can see that 90% of top 3 places have some paid hunter. As much as it sounds bad it will bring you up for your visibility and into eyes of the public.
You need real users not random upvoters, but upvoters will make you visible at the top where real potential users are more likely to click on your product.
Don't count on the support of PH for anything.
Prepare for your launch in advance, talk to people on social media and reach out to people in PH groups everywhere.
Me personally I didn't want to pay for any hunter so I hunted myself as a solo maker and that might brought me down. I do have big community behind me since I have 300 days streak and 10k supported launches on PH but even that didn't help me stay on top but brought me upvotes which are not real users.
Share your PH coming soon page everywhere, engage with everyone in advance and on the launch day.
I've so far had a good experience and responses from their website chat :) Getting a response every 24hr or so. I can understand where PH comes from, it seems they are pivoting to get larger customers.
Agreed! I think it's best to focus efforts on SEO/larger strategy. PH launches are about 1-2% (max) of my traffic strategy for any product I work on.
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I understand your frustration, hope next launch goes better! :)
For me reddit works much better, more real users, more stable traffic, less spam. That hq backlink from PH is the best thing.
Cool project.
Does PH mention anywhere what kind of products or services are not allowed to be listed?
We're building a service to list products on various directories and plan to launch on Product Hunt soon.
Will it be banned as well!!!!
There is no rules, maybe or maybe not. I've seen 2-3 products doing the same listing service but they didn't get removed from featured.
Yeah, my last launch was not featured either. It seems the chance of not being featured getting a lot bigger recently.
Did you launch another product recently referring to the same domain? I'm guessing that might be one of the reasons (for my case).
No, different domain, different product, no reason to be removed unless it is because I am solo maker. Some people said it is removed because it's directory of tools but the 3rd product that day was literally directory for AI tools...
Sorry to hear, but it's still a good news that your product got some attention.
Minimal one but good enough.
PH has been doing this a lot lately, one of my friends went through the same problem. It's fantastic that your launch still garnered attention🚀
Yeah a lot of people complain about it.
That's frustrating, but kudos on the successful launch despite the visibility challenge. Your community support and sign-ups are a win. Sometimes platform algorithms act mysteriously. Keep the momentum and success will speak louder.
Just gets stressful at the moments, but I will continue building!
Amazing story, Gonzo! It must have taken dedication and hard work to craft your product, so it's commendable to still be persistent despite the less-than-ideal launch result. I'm sure your story can inspire many others who face similar challenges!
Thanks, there is a lot of people facing this issue but we are not much visible because we are Indies and nobody will actually supports you because everyone need product hunt for their launches so they don't want to get involved.
Well done
Thank you!