The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

[Help Requested] I Launched On Product Hunt & Need Your Help!!

Marketing, social media, advertising

johnp

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
157%
Aug 29, 2011
1,707
2,675
Philly
@Andy Black suggested that I post here "because it's a great product" (thanks Andy!)

I launched my SaaS tool (Leadforms) on Product Hunt today and it’s at the top of the first page and has already been featured as the #1 Product of the Day! I have a thread on the inside about my progress over the last year. I'll dig up the link- it's kind of funny to watch me spin my wheels in the beginning.

The goal is to finish the day in the top 3 spots, so my product will be featured in the Product Hunt newsletter.

How you can help:

I’m looking for people to leave some comments and feedback on Product Hunt. Here’s how to leave feedback..
Upvotes would be nice too :)

1. Go to ProductHunt.com
2. Search for Leadforms
3. Then you’ll see exactly where to leave a comment and upvote it.

Or you can do it through a widget on my site: Leadforms - Product Hunt - just tap the product hunt icon

Some background:

About a year ago, I launched my SaaS tool (Leadforms) to the public. It has been tough... But to date, Leadforms has been installed on just under 1,500 sites and generates 1,000’s of leads per week.

About two weeks ago someone approached me and said that I should try launching on Product Hunt. So I figured that I’d go for it and think of this as a test.

Within two weeks I had to pull together a ton of stuff:

- Video (which isn’t perfect)
- Animated GIF avatar
- Product Screenshots
- Landing Page, and so on

Between getting the help I needed for the launch and paying freelancers for some stuff, I’ve spent about $1,250. This may seem like a lot. But just a few customers allows me to break even.

So, we sat down last night and scheduled the launch and things are going well.

Reporting Results & Sharing Strategy

After this is all wrapped up, I’ll report my results. The good and the bad. I’ll turn this entire thread into a case study that discuss:

- How I got featured at the top of page #1
- How much traffic this actually brought in
- Revenue numbers
- Other benefits (already have two backlink opportunities)
- If this was a success or not a success - And whether or not it was even worth it
- Step by step playbook, including what to do after the launch
- A few Product Hunt things that I learned along the way

Again, if you could please visit Product Hunt and comment or upvote Leadforms, it would be greatly appreciated!

Quick Note:
For those of you wondering why I did not direct link to the Product Hunt page. I've been told never do to this because it could set off Product Hunt's spam system. It's always better to have people organically find your post.


Screen Shot 2020-02-05 at 7.04.26 AM.png

Screen Shot 2020-02-05 at 7.26.24 AM.png
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.
Last edited:

Andy Black

Help people. Get paid. Help more people.
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
370%
May 20, 2014
18,563
68,689
Ireland
I've upvoted and left a testimonial!

Good luck @johnp!!

It's great to see a forum member getting traction. Hoping you smash it.
 

johnp

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
157%
Aug 29, 2011
1,707
2,675
Philly

johnp

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
157%
Aug 29, 2011
1,707
2,675
Philly
Quick Note:
For those of you wondering why I did not direct link to the Product Hunt listing page. I've been told never do to this because it could set off Product Hunt's spam system. It's always better to have people organically find your post.
 

johnp

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
157%
Aug 29, 2011
1,707
2,675
Philly
Quick update:

- Still on page #1:
- Have driven in a little over $5K ARR in sales pipeline leads (not direct sales. These are all leads still).
 

johnp

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
157%
Aug 29, 2011
1,707
2,675
Philly
Still at the top of the product hunt home page Crushing everyone (minus that one promoted post). Thanks to anyone who has upvoted!

Screen Shot 2020-02-05 at 2.50.26 PM.png
 

Andy Black

Help people. Get paid. Help more people.
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
370%
May 20, 2014
18,563
68,689
Ireland
Top of the leaderboard for yesterday @johnp.

What has that resulted in so far?

What’s needed for you to be featured in their newsletter? How often does that newsletter go out, and to how many?

What happens next?

What would you do differently if you were to do this again?

30145
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

johnp

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
157%
Aug 29, 2011
1,707
2,675
Philly
Thanks @Andy Black

Top of the leaderboard for yesterday @johnp.

What has that resulted in so far?

Yes! I finished at the top of page #1 yesterday.

Results were pretty good. Leads are still coming in. I can't even keep up!

It looks like I've built over $10,000 ARR in new lead opportunity. Some leads are great, some not so great. More on this later.

One thing to note is that instead of sending people straight to a trial where they have to input their CC, I offered a no strings attached trial and used my own Leadform to qualify them. I think this ended up being a very smart approach, even though I'm now overwhelmed with leads. More on this whole strategy later.


What’s needed for you to be featured in their newsletter? How often does that newsletter go out, and to how many?

There are two newsletters. One goes out daily and the other weekly. The weekly gets more traffic.

I think I'll be in the daily newsletter since I was the top 3-4. So that should go out today. I probably won't make the weekly one though.

What happens next?

What would you do differently if you were to do this again?

I need to start following-up!

As far as the listing goes, there's not much that I would do differently. Just a few things.

I plan to return back here and provide a complete summary of how everything went plus some tips and how we got to the top.

Here's my analytics from yesterday/this morning. most of this came in from Product Hunt. Screen Shot 2020-02-06 at 6.57.42 AM.png


It's still not done. Day #2 and I'm on the first page, just down in the yesterday section. Plus, I'll be featured in the newsletter. So it should be interesting to see what continues to happen.

Anyway, I'll be back with more updates.
 

johnp

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
157%
Aug 29, 2011
1,707
2,675
Philly
@Andy Black

Quick update. I got featured in the product hunt email (screenshot attached)

What happened next?

Even more traffic. More leads.

Things are finally slowing down but I have a lot of work ahead of me. Plus other customer things to work on. I'll eventually come back to this thread and write up a full summary.

Screen Shot 2020-02-06 at 7.51.58 PM.png
 

johnp

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
157%
Aug 29, 2011
1,707
2,675
Philly
So a lot has happened and I never dropped back in to explain whether or not it was worth it to launch on Product Hunt or not. I was going to post a really in-depth summary but I think I'll keep this short.

As a reminder, I launched my product on product hunt awhile back. Hit #1 product of the day. Was featured in their email, etc..

I invested about $1,500 into the whole thing and a lot of time/energy.

Did that turn into thousands of dollar in new MRR for me? No... in fact, I ended up rebuilding my entire platform and rebranding.

The Good:
- Generated a ton of leads and built a nice looking pipeline
- Couple thousand unique visits (low quality traffic)
- Got a couple of backlinks which was nice
- I still get a handful of visits each week
- Some good product feedback and feature ideas
- Investor opportunities, but I don't want them

The Bad:

- I ended up with a ton of tire kickers, low quality leads
- Didn't really make a lot of revenue from the accounts - only a few converted into paid

Overall, I'd say it wasn't worth it. It was a nice dopamine rush and made me feel good about what I built. I got some great feedback which shaped what the product is today, but if you're just getting started there are much better ways to gain traction. I'd say that at the end of the day this is one of those things that ended up being a waste of time and money for the most part. Even if you get a ton of traffic, it isn't really worth it. Nothing beats consistent, focused action when bootstrapping your product.

The big caveat though is that my self-serve platform wasn't really where it needed to be when I launched. If I re-launched today then maybe things would be different. But I'm not going to even worry about that.

The bottom line

If anyone ever tells you that you should launch on PH, then don't listen to them. Realize that it's probably not going to do much for you unless you go in with a freemium tool, have good onborading to reduce friction, can upsell, and have budget to do remarketing later.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top