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30 Comments

Voted Product of the Week on Product Hunt

Last week I launched Marketing Examples to Product Hunt. The results:

  • 1,500+ upvotes
  • Product of the Week
  • Email list grew from 1,300 to 3,300 in 72 hrs

Here's a quick summary of what I learnt:

  • Don't launch straight away. Having a small following of “fans” on launch day goes a long way. Product Hunt multiplies current momentum.
  • The goal of a Product Hunt launch is not upvotes. 100 upvotes and 100 email sign-ups is more valuable than 1000 upvotes and a site which can’t convert anyone.
  • Schedule launch for 12:01 AM PST. Make gif. Write good first comment.
  • Product Hunt launch is the day your karma comes full circle. The support you get is proportional to the support you've given throughout the year.
  • Don't overshare. Don't ask for upvotes. I can assure, you this stuff does more harm than good.

If anyone's interested I've wrote up a case study showing my step by step process on the day. Any questions / feedback let me know :)

  1. 4

    I loved how you summed it up! Pretty much exactly what I would have wrote, but much better.

    Wish I had focused more on the "funnel" to get emails. Could have had 1000 instead of 300, but 300 is still great :)

    1. 1

      Thanks Volkan!

      300 is still great and more than enough to do the job. The main thing is just getting that first 15-20 or upvotes in early to get you up on the leaderboard (so you don't get forgotten) You should have that fine :)

      1. 1

        100%, them early votes count.

        I was able to share it in a few communities I invested time in and that is what got me the first few upvotes.

        Product Hunt was hiding my listing for some reason at the start. Without them communities I would have ended up with 1 vote.

        1. 1

          Haha! They're known to do this. It's always worth messaging asking, "Just checking I haven't done anything wrong ... "

          1. 1

            Smart, if it happens again I will do.

  2. 2

    Great ideas! How’d you go about getting your fans for launch day? Did you ever worry that someone would hunt you before you were prepared?

    1. 1
      1. That's a whole case study in itself haha! I wrote about 20 case studies about companies. Shared wherever I could. Reddit / IH / Zest / Startup School / Twitter. Email list ticked up.

      Cause i was writing about other companies a few of them shared and that helped. eg. Nomad List, Jason Cohen, Tweet Photo all shared the case study...

      1. Yeah I was worried about this. Ryan Hoover at one point said he was a fan of the site so i was worried that someone would see that and hunt it. As a precaution I hunted it myself 3 weeks before I posted it . And i kept messaging product hunt saying, can we delay, can we delay, can we delay ... and thankfully they said yes each time haha! (officially you're only allowed a one week window to schedule)
      1. 1
        1. That's perfect. I love the idea of providing value to gather a small fan base. Anything you would do differently on the second time around?
        2. Smart. :) Well done. I was unaware of the one week window to schedule so I'm glad you pointed that out.
  3. 2

    Well done, Harry!

    Again, great product :)

    1. 1

      Thank you Robin! I did reply to your twitter message btw haha!

    1. 1

      Thank you. And thanks for the support as well!

  4. 2

    Wow! Thank you for all that valuable information and insight.

    I've been reading up quite a bit in preparation for my release of https://trackmylift.app so this will definitely help out 🙏🔥

    1. 1

      Nice one. Wishing you the best for launch!

  5. 1

    Hi Harry, great insight!
    Learned a lot from your post! My product - Airgram, goes live today too!
    But still, hesitate about the last tip: Don't overshare. I still want to post in IndieHacker to ask the community to upvote for us 😆

  6. 1

    This is awesome, thanks for sharing! It will be useful when I'm ready to launch on PH.

  7. 1

    Great article! Wish I've read this before I submitted Caliverse to Product Hunt 🙈
    Thanks man!

    1. 1

      thank you! appreciate that

  8. 1

    Congrats! What an awesome validation.

    1. 1

      Thanks Anthony. And 100%!

  9. 1

    Congrats, Harry! Well deserved. :)

  10. 1

    Really enjoyed the case study post. I ended up subscribing (of course!) and reading two or three more posts. I liked the post about the Kanye dating site a lot.

    I hope you won't mind one piece of advice that I make with the very best of intentions (and I know I sound like Grandma right now): someone should proofread your posts, or you should use something like Grammarly. I was distracted by how many grammar errors there are in each post. (Sorry!) The information is SO good. No need to undercut it with grammar issues :D

    Again, though, thank you for all the generous sharing of insight. Your advice is seriously helpful to me as I plan down the road for launch!!

    1. 1

      Thank you!

      No. I totally agree. The grammar mistakes aren't a good look. That's very helpful advice. The last few articles were run through Grammarly free.

      At some point soon I'll get Grammarly pro and run everything through that.

  11. 1

    Congrats!!
    Love the newsletter popup, simple, compelling list of value props to encourage sign up (just did). Have to say, "2 minute read" was the converter for me.

    1. 1

      Awesome! Thanks Christine. Great feedback and great to have you onboard!

  12. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 2

      Pleasure. Thanks Leo!

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