The Losing Story: How We Failed Our Last Product Hunt Launch
It's the end of the year, and I'm reflecting on my goals. We have an upcoming product hunt launch for my product Typogram – my final milestone of 2023.
Many people have amazingly successful product hunt stories: gathering insane numbers of sign-ups, getting No.1 Product, getting investments, and being featured by big newsletters. I want to share the other side: the unlucky losing story – how we failed our previous launch.
On April this year, we launched our public alpha on Product Launch. We took a lot of time to prepare, contacting our community of friends and previous customers in advance to gather support, especially targeting the first few hours of the launch. We connected friends from all different time zones and took time to organize them.
We spent hours creating content and messaging our friends and community. We wanted the top three spots: working on our tool for a long time, and this was the first time we officially publicly launched our alpha - a major milestone!
Unfortunately, we were locked in the Product Hunt landing page jail for the initial vital hours. Typogram only made it onto the homepage many hours later.
Though things turned out differently than we wanted to, we realized: we shouldn't spend all our marketing efforts only on the actual product hunt launch event.
Sure, the launch is important and can generate a ton of marketing buzz, but there should be other steps and calls to action to build hype around our product. So, we are adjusting our strategy for our upcoming launch in December.
I hope sharing this helps some builders here. If you want to see details of our learnings and stats from our two previous launches and our new strategy for our December 12th PH launch, check out the original post.
if you feel like following our Dec. 12 PH Launch, here it is 👇: https://www.producthunt.com/products/typogram
Great reflection and work, Wentin! I'm sure it will be a great success - you still have time to make it happen! Wishing you nothing but the best in the coming year!
Thank you so much! I appreciate it - definitely looking to make this launch a blast : )
Nice, thanks for sharing! I always view marketing as hedging your bets. PH is just one channel, try many! Good luck on the next launch - I'll keep my eye out tomorrow to upvote! 🚀
Really appreciate you sharing this here. Given how many products launch on PH every day, this is certainly more the norm the exception, but we all too rarely hear the stories of when things don’t go as planned.
I'm afraid of this. So I haven't released my design subscription agency to Product Hunt yet.
I'm trying to gain some followers in X, Indie hackers and Reddit before launching to PH.
what happened to our last launch was something out of all our control : )
there is definitely no harm in launching on product hunt!
But will that go on top? #3 or #1?
I was thinking about that.
You don't launch once in fact you're always launching !
exactly!
Amazing journey, it would be wonderful if you can keep going. I was thinking how can I help you so here I helped you with some keywords analysis.
I go tru thousands of keywords for brand design market and come out with these keywords which can be helpful for you when doing blogging and optimizing for seo.
Here is the keyword analysis : TYPOGRAM KEYWORD ANALYSIS
thank you!
Loved reading about your journey, even the tough parts. It's all about the learning curve, right? Curious to see how your new strategy plays out. Fingers crossed for your December launch!
Thanks so much! keeping my fingers crossed too. Yes, I agree, tough parts are part of it. I do hope it gets easier sometimes. I will definitely share how it goes : )
Looking forward to reading your success story.
Fails make us stronger. Thanks for sharing
I agree. Thanks for reading my post!
Yuzu prod key is a unique identifier essential for unlocking the full potential of the Yuzu Nintendo Switch emulator. It enables users to access advanced features and improve the overall gaming experience. Protecting the confidentiality of the prod key is crucial to comply with legal and ethical standards in emulation.
Yes, Well said i was also very excited to launch my AI Product www.helperai.info on product hunt, I prepare a lot before launching my Product but the day my product is launched in not featuring on the featuring section, its show on the newest section and that time I was so sad, I got only 4 upvote and 6 views!!
I'm sorry to hear that! yeah, it's strange, there are many reports of the product being kept off the homepage in the initial hours.
This is very insightful!
I launched this week on product hunt and I was successful but had some failures too! We came #2 Product of the day and I'm proud of what we did.
We'd love for you to explore our CRM & Engagement product : https://zixflow.com/
If you need anything or have any questions, please feel free to reach out.
Thanks for sharing Premsaini!
What's something that really helped you for this launch?
Thanks for sharing!
This caught my attention because I've been recently thinking about scheduling a PH launch 2-3 months ahead mainly for the purpose of forcing myself to do all the PR and marketing. Because as a technical solo-founder its easy for me to slip into engineering and forget about marketing.
But I thought there can be no down side for going all in on the launch since it also the same as marketing in general, so I'm wondering what tasks took you the most time that you think weren't the ROI? Because doing outreach and creating content is already part of my marketing routine.
I know exactly what you mean about forgetting to do marketing, Adbin!
There is def no downside to PH launch. I guess what I'm trying to say is -
instead CTA /focus being all around product hunt itself, you should capture some of the leads to your own channels whether or not it's your product or mailing list during the launch marketing phase. And then, near the launch, you focus 100% on directing traffic/ buzz to Product Hunt itself.
That way, you are getting leads through out, and not relying/betting on one event to drive traffic, sign-ups and sales. Because, unlucky incidents happen!
at least, that's where my head is at with Typogram's next launch.