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What I learned from getting featured on product hunt

Project: https://sbored.co
ProductHunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/sbored

I know some people don't like product hunt, but I had to try it. So, last week, I launched my side project on product hunt and ended day with number 7 on the list. Here is what I learned:

YOUR PRODUCT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT 🌟

If you visit my site, you can see that I only have 43 activities. That is not much for a site that is supposed to give you things to do in your free time. Furthermore, it even had a typo, which is now fixed. The thing is, your users will be very forgiving if your idea has potential. So don't care about making your product perfect. Just put something very basic together, something that people can actually use, and then tell your users what you plan to do with the product in the future (This is important). Also, launching on product hunt serves as validation for your product. If it is good, people will want to use it. So stop thinking about the perfect tech stack and build something with what you already know, you'll figure everything out as time goes on.

ANALYTICS 📈

I can't tell you how important this is. I have worked on many projects in the past year, and they have all failed. So I was about to give up, but then the 40 unique visitors on my analytics dashboard saved the life of my project.

GET USER EMAILS EARLY 📧

Let me start by saying this: Don't spam your users. They entrusted you with their email because they were interested in using your product when it gets finished, so please don't clutter their mailboxes. My project got a lot of traffic from morning brew, which is a newsletter with more than a million subscribers. They included a link to my website (It is kind of hard to find, but it is there), and I got more users than I could have ever imagined. I am planning to launch a community, but I had no forms to collect user emails for when I launched. I quickly implemented the form, but by that time I had lost more than 60% of traffic for morning brew. So implement sign up forms to collect emails early, but don't spam those people.

RESPONSIVE DESIGN 📱

I had no idea that so many people would use my site on a phone, so I hadn't made everything responsive. But then I had to. So just save yourself the regret and do it right from the start.

And that is all. Now go build that dream project (good luck with it btw).

  1. 1

    What percentage of your PH visitors were on mobile devices? I've historically seen largely desktop visitors from Product Hunt.

    1. 1

      34% mobile, 20% laptop, 43% desktop, 3% tablet. That is just for product hunt. It's 47% mobile for morning brew.

  2. 1

    Thanks for the hints. I really want to try that way! :) Do you think I am ready with this extremely simple landing page? https://pagemtr.com

    1. 1

      I think your project is more than an MVP at this point. A couple things I'd like to point out though:

      • I can't set or change my password. I think it is more convenient for users to set their own passwords.
      • The font is kind of hard to read, so I suggest changing it. Also, the font is very small (It might be because of my 1440p screen), so making it bigger would mean better UX.

      Aside from these your project is good. Keep it up and good luck.

      1. 1

        Thank you for the valuable feedback. Indeed this is something more than MVP. Yet still it is one-guy orchestra. I am happy to hear what you said about the mvp :)

        • password - good point! I already have it implemented, will add a link to the confirmation email

        • font - you are not the first pointing it out. Not sure what do to with that as the whole panel is supposed to have good ux on mobile, and on mobile it is quite good.

        If I get the font bigger on desktop then the whole grid will change. I have to think about the solution.

        Once again, thank you, and good luck with your project.

  3. 1

    Congrats on the launch! I liked it haha!

  4. 1

    Thank you for sharing this. Congrats on the launch there. I was curious, at position 7, how much traffic did you get the first week?

    1. 1

      Thank you.~1.7k from product hunt and ~14k in total (mostly from morning brew)

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