What I found out by launching without any preparation
So a few weeks ago, I created a side project on the weekend (https://www.snippetshot.com). It was mainly to fill my own need (code screenshots with gradients and made easily from GitHub gists), and also to get to work with React again (I'm working professionally with Angular at the moment).
After an MVP was launched I decided I wanted to release it for other people. I put it on a domain... and then (almost) nothing happened. Of course, because even if it might be useful to people, if they don't hear about it they won't know it's even there.
I decided to launch on Product Hunt. But I didn't want to spend more time on marketing than on making it. I just don't like doing that – this is just my side project. So I just posted on Product Hunt and that got the ball rolling. I've gotten some great feedback and the visits to the site started coming in. I never made the top 10 but without any promotion, I still got 85 upvotes.
Slowly, I saw some tweets about it (one from an account with 70k+ followers!), got featured on at least one newsletter, and apparently made it to a Korean version of Hacker News (never heard of it, but it drove a lot of traffic)!
So just by tweeting (I don't have many followers) and launching on PH, that seems to have given it some attention. Overall, numbers are still quite low but they're higher than I was expecting. I'm over 1k visitors now in 10 days, with at least 177 coming from PH and 131 coming from news.hada.io (the Korean Hacker News).
I'm really happy about that. It's not like it's a revolutionary tool I was building. It's similar to an existing tool (carbon.now.sh), just a bit simpler and slightly different looking. To me, it's surprising that with so little marketing effort, I got some decent stats. Still, if this was a commercial endeavor, I would have done some things differently:
- ask some experts to check it out before launch, potentially ask them to tweet about it / get a quote on the website (social proof)
- get my tech friends on standby to tweet about this and upvote it on PH
- prepared marketing materials: better screenshots, gifs/videos of using the app, better marketing copy
- submit to all sorts of newsletters
So, say you wanted to launch Snippet Shot the best way possible (without any budget), what would you have done differently?
You did great. I also launched without much preparation and got 3 upvotes on Product Hunt.
Thanks! Oh wow, I got luckier than I thought! I guess it helps me that it's a simple (free) tool that feels similar to an established tool.
Are you talking about your Practicing Google? Maybe it's the category on PH.
Yes, it's my Practicing Google newsletter. I [shared my experience with launching the newsletter on Product Hunt(https://blog.paoloamoroso.com/2020/02/the-experience-of-launching-newsletter.html).
The issue is not so much the category but, as I wrote, it takes an audience to build an audience.
Got it! Interesting read. Love your openness on the 'dud' newsletter. It's not my area but by looking at it you'd say you should definitely have had more signups.
I'm surprised the Twitter following didn't even factor in. I'm way lower, like less than 400 followers and I was expecting some more interaction on >1k but I guess that might only happen at >10k?
Anyway, thanks for commenting, appreciate it! Just keep launching ;)
I expected the launch to be a dud, and it didn't disappoint 😀
I think it takes at least 5-10K followers to get some action on Twitter. And I always got little engagement anyway from my 2.8K followers. Twitter's analytics show the platform gives me minimal reach, I'm no Joe Influencer.
A couple of things may have contributed to the limited results of the Product Hunt launch.
The first is Product Hunt is relatively little known outside of the creators and makers space. So some may have been supportive but didn't understandably bother to create an account just to upvote the occasional product.
Also, newsletters are a relatively little known medium to many of my friends, contacts, and followers. Again, someone may have appreciated my work but this didn't translate into Product Hunt upvotes or social engagement.
Incidentally, this is exactly why I want a newsletter. It's the most direct and effective communication channel with those who do understand and like what I do.
The bottom line is I've just started the marathon and I don't view this as a setback.
I have a similar story, I launch on PH my first app done with React Native (and my first launch to PH) without much expectation, and surprise! was featured (#5 of the day). https://www.producthunt.com/posts/24hdone
On other occasions, I have launched more complex products to which I have devoted much more effort, and I have failed miserably.
Cool app! Yeah, it seems to me like complex products are much harder to explain to a new audience.