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Yesterday we finally launched our Product on Product Hunt and ended up placing 4th.
We did a lot of things well, but also many things went wrong - so I thought why not make a post about it for anyone that wants to launch on the platform.
A little background story you can skip if you'd like:
June last year I had an idea and analyzed if it would comply with CENTS, and it did - for the most part that is. It was time for action and I decided to test and validate it as soon as possible. But since I had 0 coding experience I had to learn fast and apply it immediately! After validating the idea in August, which could have been way faster. It was time to make the real product. I teamed up with my accountability partner, who is great in coding and we made the App. Fast forward, after a lot of struggles both in the code as well as on the legal aspects we finally launched the App yesterday.
So... How did we get to 4th place on a very competitive Tuesday?
I started engaging in the community 4 months ago to make my name visible. I supported every launch I could and talked to probably 1000+ makers and built some kind of relationship with them.
After getting to know more and more people from the community, I started creating community discussions and sharing some value bombs to gain some more authority and followers. In the meantime, the product was still being built, but we started to get a bit of a name and people were excited about the concept.
Once people get excited about the concept, they're more open to sharing your product with others once you launch.
Build a product they love so much that they would get rep from their friends if they share it with them!
By now your product should be pretty much finished and shouldn't have any big changes coming up.
Create a teaser page for your product and start sharing it rigorously with the community you've built.
I can't stress the following enough:
Since our product is targeted toward startup founders, I used Sales Navigator to connect to 100 founders every week who were in Product Hunt groups on LinkedIn.
GIVE FIRST, ASK LATER!!!
Once you connect with them, be a human and ask about their things first. Show genuine interest and help where you can! Afterward, you can kindly ask them if they are willing to sign up to your teaser page, and most of them will.
Try to grow the signups to your teaser page to at least 150 notified users, these will all get an email on your launch day.
1 to 2 weeks before the launch...
The product should be finished for real right now. Don't change anything if it works...
Start messaging and notifying people about your upcoming launch and let them know to save the date! The community is very willing to put in some effort if you put some effort into them.
Again... Be a human and talk to them like you would to your friends!
Start posting on social media, and on all platforms to make people aware of your upcoming launch.
Make some community posts sharing value and dropping your teaser page link with an added comment about your launch date.
And lastly, mentally prepare for a 16+ hour shift on launch day...
Launch day...
It starts at 12:01 PST, that's also the standard launch time you'll see once you submit a product. This is to make sure your product will get the full 24 hours of exposure!
Be ready, because this is gonna be a long day. I started working at 8:00 am CEST and stopped working at 2:00 AM CEST the next day.
Message all the connections you have personally that you have finally launched and that you need their support. Do this immediately once your product launches, as the first 4 hours of PH are extremely important.
The most supported products will be shown in the featured category on the home page and this will be visible after 4 hours. If you're not on this list, your launch will end up failing. After 4 hours the page refreshes and will show the top 10 - 15 or so products. From this point on most votes will all be organic, and it's super important to actively engage on the comments you're getting.
You'll get a lot of positive feedback as PH is rarely negative, but this is due to people expecting your support in return. Don't be disappointed by the low conversion rates as a lot of supporters, just support to make their names visible as well.
If the votes are starting to stagnate, send a new message telling your current standing and that their support would make an impact. And of course, you're very willing to return the favor!
Important note: While the community is very positive, handling feedback and comments is VERY exhausting to keep up with. Lastly - clarity is everything!
The result after the first day...
New connections: ~100
Website traffic: ~200
App downloads: 102
Revenue made: $0 (we already anticipated this as the value will become clear after 2 weeks)
Big opportunities: 5
TL;DR
Achieving 4th place on a competitive launch day involved months of community engagement, creating discussions, and building relationships with key influencers. Good strategies included making numerous connections, creating a product teaser page, and personal outreach on platforms like LinkedIn. Challenges faced included inconsistent engagement, premature teaser page creation, and postponing the launch due to app approval delays. On launch day, personal outreach and leveraging connections helped secure early votes and feature on the home page, although there were issues with the Android version of the product. The launch resulted in new connections, website traffic, and app downloads but no immediate revenue. It made it clear it's a long term play for complex products.
We did a lot of things well, but also many things went wrong - so I thought why not make a post about it for anyone that wants to launch on the platform.
A little background story you can skip if you'd like:
June last year I had an idea and analyzed if it would comply with CENTS, and it did - for the most part that is. It was time for action and I decided to test and validate it as soon as possible. But since I had 0 coding experience I had to learn fast and apply it immediately! After validating the idea in August, which could have been way faster. It was time to make the real product. I teamed up with my accountability partner, who is great in coding and we made the App. Fast forward, after a lot of struggles both in the code as well as on the legal aspects we finally launched the App yesterday.
So... How did we get to 4th place on a very competitive Tuesday?
I started engaging in the community 4 months ago to make my name visible. I supported every launch I could and talked to probably 1000+ makers and built some kind of relationship with them.
After getting to know more and more people from the community, I started creating community discussions and sharing some value bombs to gain some more authority and followers. In the meantime, the product was still being built, but we started to get a bit of a name and people were excited about the concept.
Once people get excited about the concept, they're more open to sharing your product with others once you launch.
Build a product they love so much that they would get rep from their friends if they share it with them!
What we did good:
Made lots of connections with people who already had a name in the community, if they support your launch - their following will most likely too.
What we did bad:
We should have engaged more consistently, I had weeks where I engaged a lot and weeks where I just supported some.
Made lots of connections with people who already had a name in the community, if they support your launch - their following will most likely too.
What we did bad:
We should have engaged more consistently, I had weeks where I engaged a lot and weeks where I just supported some.
Fast forward to 1 or 2 months before launching day.By now your product should be pretty much finished and shouldn't have any big changes coming up.
Create a teaser page for your product and start sharing it rigorously with the community you've built.
I can't stress the following enough:
Since our product is targeted toward startup founders, I used Sales Navigator to connect to 100 founders every week who were in Product Hunt groups on LinkedIn.
GIVE FIRST, ASK LATER!!!
Once you connect with them, be a human and ask about their things first. Show genuine interest and help where you can! Afterward, you can kindly ask them if they are willing to sign up to your teaser page, and most of them will.
Try to grow the signups to your teaser page to at least 150 notified users, these will all get an email on your launch day.
What we did good:
We had 180 notified users on Product Hunt and built an email list of 100 people that we would email personally on launch day. Made around 500 new connections on LinkedIn with whom we had built some kind of relationship. It doesn't have to be much, show genuine interest and make your name stick in their head. Be personal.
What we did bad:
We made the teaser page too soon, our product was still under development and this made us rush quite a bit.
We had 180 notified users on Product Hunt and built an email list of 100 people that we would email personally on launch day. Made around 500 new connections on LinkedIn with whom we had built some kind of relationship. It doesn't have to be much, show genuine interest and make your name stick in their head. Be personal.
What we did bad:
We made the teaser page too soon, our product was still under development and this made us rush quite a bit.
1 to 2 weeks before the launch...
The product should be finished for real right now. Don't change anything if it works...
Start messaging and notifying people about your upcoming launch and let them know to save the date! The community is very willing to put in some effort if you put some effort into them.
Again... Be a human and talk to them like you would to your friends!
Start posting on social media, and on all platforms to make people aware of your upcoming launch.
Make some community posts sharing value and dropping your teaser page link with an added comment about your launch date.
And lastly, mentally prepare for a 16+ hour shift on launch day...
What we did good:
Since we made some connections with influential people, they were also willing to promote our launch date and we got quite some traffic from those posts.
What we did bad:
We had to postpone our launch due to the product being rushed. Apple and Google hadn't approved the App yet so we were racing against the clock to get it listed. Don't announce a date if you can't be certain you can launch that day. We had postponed it multiple times and people started losing trust in it actually being launched. This caused people to unfollow the page and unsubscribe from our email list.
Since we made some connections with influential people, they were also willing to promote our launch date and we got quite some traffic from those posts.
What we did bad:
We had to postpone our launch due to the product being rushed. Apple and Google hadn't approved the App yet so we were racing against the clock to get it listed. Don't announce a date if you can't be certain you can launch that day. We had postponed it multiple times and people started losing trust in it actually being launched. This caused people to unfollow the page and unsubscribe from our email list.
Launch day...
It starts at 12:01 PST, that's also the standard launch time you'll see once you submit a product. This is to make sure your product will get the full 24 hours of exposure!
Be ready, because this is gonna be a long day. I started working at 8:00 am CEST and stopped working at 2:00 AM CEST the next day.
Message all the connections you have personally that you have finally launched and that you need their support. Do this immediately once your product launches, as the first 4 hours of PH are extremely important.
The most supported products will be shown in the featured category on the home page and this will be visible after 4 hours. If you're not on this list, your launch will end up failing. After 4 hours the page refreshes and will show the top 10 - 15 or so products. From this point on most votes will all be organic, and it's super important to actively engage on the comments you're getting.
You'll get a lot of positive feedback as PH is rarely negative, but this is due to people expecting your support in return. Don't be disappointed by the low conversion rates as a lot of supporters, just support to make their names visible as well.
If the votes are starting to stagnate, send a new message telling your current standing and that their support would make an impact. And of course, you're very willing to return the favor!
Important note: While the community is very positive, handling feedback and comments is VERY exhausting to keep up with. Lastly - clarity is everything!
What we did good:
We managed to get featured right away since we had so many votes in the first 4 hours from the people we made a real connection with, we got to the number 1 spot as soon as it opened. We ended up being in 4th amongst 142 other products that had launched that day. We're fully bootstrapped, and had zero $ invested in branding so we reached the top without really having a brand name behind us!
What we did bad:
Due to our product being a bit rushed, we didn't fully test the Android version and based everything off of the Apple version. This meant of course that the Android version had some bugs that could ruin the user experience... So we quickly managed to patch it, but just to emphasize it one more time: Make sure your product is done and tested!
Unfortunately some people buy votes, PH is very strict with this but their detection system isn't always as good. We refrained from using any black hat tricks as it would not be worth it in the long run so we eventually went from first place to fourth place.
We managed to get featured right away since we had so many votes in the first 4 hours from the people we made a real connection with, we got to the number 1 spot as soon as it opened. We ended up being in 4th amongst 142 other products that had launched that day. We're fully bootstrapped, and had zero $ invested in branding so we reached the top without really having a brand name behind us!
What we did bad:
Due to our product being a bit rushed, we didn't fully test the Android version and based everything off of the Apple version. This meant of course that the Android version had some bugs that could ruin the user experience... So we quickly managed to patch it, but just to emphasize it one more time: Make sure your product is done and tested!
Unfortunately some people buy votes, PH is very strict with this but their detection system isn't always as good. We refrained from using any black hat tricks as it would not be worth it in the long run so we eventually went from first place to fourth place.
The result after the first day...
New connections: ~100
Website traffic: ~200
App downloads: 102
Revenue made: $0 (we already anticipated this as the value will become clear after 2 weeks)
Big opportunities: 5
So... the big question!
Is it worth it?
The first day... Yes and no, it depends on what you're trying to achieve and how. Have a simple low-ticket product you can sell with a one-time payment? Then it's probably a good way to get some revenue. If you have more complex products, it's better for long-term play. We'll eventually get a lot of high authority backlinks and improve the overall organic approach for our website. We also have some very big opportunities for possible collaborations, which we will hear more about in the next few weeks.
Is it worth it?
The first day... Yes and no, it depends on what you're trying to achieve and how. Have a simple low-ticket product you can sell with a one-time payment? Then it's probably a good way to get some revenue. If you have more complex products, it's better for long-term play. We'll eventually get a lot of high authority backlinks and improve the overall organic approach for our website. We also have some very big opportunities for possible collaborations, which we will hear more about in the next few weeks.
TL;DR
Achieving 4th place on a competitive launch day involved months of community engagement, creating discussions, and building relationships with key influencers. Good strategies included making numerous connections, creating a product teaser page, and personal outreach on platforms like LinkedIn. Challenges faced included inconsistent engagement, premature teaser page creation, and postponing the launch due to app approval delays. On launch day, personal outreach and leveraging connections helped secure early votes and feature on the home page, although there were issues with the Android version of the product. The launch resulted in new connections, website traffic, and app downloads but no immediate revenue. It made it clear it's a long term play for complex products.
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