Let's say that you've just finished your MVP. You've listened to the "if you're not embarrassed the first version of your product, then you launched too late." So, you're truly embarrassed how minimal your product is.
Would you post your MVP on Product Hunt? Or would you do a soft-launch elsewhere, get some feedback, improve it until it's a bit more impressive, and then launch it on Product Hunt?
I've never used ProductHunt (didn't know it existed till a few weeks ago), and I'm wondering what state your product needs to be in to grab people's attention over there. And, what else is needed to get traction (e.g., do you need a community of fans to "upvote" your post)?
I'd build at least a bit of a userbase before you launch on ProductHunt. Mainly because it will help you increase the odds of being featured on the homepage. I did a launch last week on ProductHunt and as long as you're not 'featured' but on the 'newest' page, you won't see as much traffic coming from it.
I seriously recommend reading the piece @harrydry wrote about what he learned from his launch for Marketing Examples -> https://marketingexamples.com/conversion/product-hunt. Here's an important outtake from that article:
I would wait until you have a product with
PH if done well can drive 10,000+ visitors and if they're your target market then that can be a huge. PH top products also get blogged about, added to website lists etc.
Seconding everything Volkan says here.
Have you got a landing page sorted out? Think of every product hunt redirect as a potential customer/user and make sure there's a funnel for them to enter.
Sort out a clean and simple Wix/Wordpress etc website and add in a mailchimp mailing list so that there's something actionable on there.
You want to make sure that everything they click on works and is on message. Don't want any waste on unnecessary technical mistakes.
Thanks. That makes sense.
Is there a site for products in an earlier stage? Apart from here, of course.
betalist, betapage they drive a little traffic.
Ideally you want to find a community such as facebook group, forums etc that you can become part of and ask for feedback from them.
Driving traffic to a site that isn't optimised seems a waste.
Would recommend also doing cold emails to potential customers.
I would reconsider submitting to betapage. I submitted mine, and had 0 traffic from betapage no rupvotes.
I drop you this list where you can submit it.
feel free to fork it
https://github.com/michael-andreuzza/awesome-visibility
Thanks for the list.
You welcome mate.
Thanks everyone.
The common theme is:
I won't, users of producthunt are not my target market.
I think you should do a soft launch and get that feedback primarily because those people who liked your product and engaged with you will become your brand advocates when you do launch on PH. The only reason to rush to PH is if you plan to use the platform as your first source of users. Are your most likely users likely to be on PH?