When NOT to launch on ProductHunt 🚀?
So I am planning on launching http://looqsie.com on Product Hunt the first week of April. I have read tons of articles giving tips and tricks for a great launch on PH. I was wondering if anyone knows days to avoid because a big name brand is launching a product the same day?
Been #1 on PH a couple of times. Weekdays drive more traffic than weekends, but the competition is stiffer. And I agree with the advice to avoid April 1st.
More importantly, there are significant diminishing returns to trying to optimize your PH launch. If at all possible, invest your time into figuring out how to get repeated traffic wins in the future.
That may require a lot of experimentation. In fact, for many businesses it is the central challenge, especially if your product isn't built from the ground up to consistently drive traffic/customers from an effective channel (search engine results, specific community sites, social media, app stores and marketplaces, etc). I think if you get this repeat traffic figured out, then you can succeed even if your launch is a dud, and if you don't get it figured out, then it doesn't matter if your launch is amazing.
I agree. My thought on posting my idea on PH is that all I will do is tip off competitors instead of finding what will consistently drive traffic. But from some of my readings if you are going to pick a time I've heard early mornings EST time are usually the best. A user on IH wrote this and I found it pretty helpful. https://medium.com/startup-grind/how-i-launched-the-2-most-upvoted-product-of-all-time-on-product-hunt-f3772fb20ad8
I would guess avoid April 1st as there will be a lot of jokey submissions around then - plus if your site could be construed as jokey (which I don't think this will be), it might get overlooked.
A couple suggestions...
One, build up a subscriber list that you can email on launch day. That will help you get upvotes early on and once you're at the top of the list it's a lot easier to stay there!
Two, if you use PH Ship then you can use Upcoming Pages and Schedule Your Launch in a strategic way.
I would wait if you can get someone from PH to submit your product. Based on my experience, I think there is a different algorithm for a PH submitted post that allows it to stay in the top spots longer.
hmm i would avoid this. product hunt have said it can actually harm your rankings, and they recommend hunting your own product: https://blog.producthunt.com/how-to-launch-on-product-hunt-7c1843e06399
Thanks for the link, very interesting. From my experience though, if you post your project, it will immediately be posted to the 'new' section and people will have to go there to see and upvote it. But if someone (staff) at PH posts it, it will automatically appear in the 'popular' section first which will give a an advantage to be upvoted.
@dannyflorian I need to give an update to my answer. So I posted my project (ValuesFit) on PH yesterday right after midnight. The post was in the "new" section of the day and was never popular enough to get to the "popular" section.
By midday, I could not find my submission via search or in the made section of my profile. I emailed PH and turns out, they thought my project had a chance of being quite popular if it was featured. So they hid my submission and decided to feature me the next day (today). So I guess if you're confident that either the people or someone at PH will like your product, just go for it.