What is Product Hunt And Why Should You Care?
After helping 100+ startups launch on Product Hunt, we know the drill when it comes to winning launches. In this post you’ll learn why Product Hunt is such a powerful platform for launching your product, and how to launch yourself.
We’ll cover a mountain of information to help you launch, but it’s still only scratching the surface. We work with clients for in advance to create perfect launch campaigns, and we know it’s stressful.If you’re serious about your launch and want to work with the experts, schedule a call with us today and let’s get you some results.
Here’s what we’ll cover this post.
- First Products Hunted
- The Social Snowball Effect
- Using A Big Hunter
- How to Post on Product Hunt
- Writing A Winning Title & Description
- Product Hunt Promotion Methods
- How to Market and Promote Your Product Hunt Launch
- How to Share Effectively on Social Media
- The Ultimate Promotion Tool
- Mistakes to Avoid When Launching on Product Hunt
- What Can You Expect from Launch Day?
Every day, users vote and select a new best product on Product Hunt. It’s Groundhog Day for the world’s best product ideas and concepts. Founded by Ryan Hoover in 2013, then later acquired by AngelList, Product Hunt allows anyone to share and discover the latest and greatest products around.
Product Hunt started with backing by Y Combinator, and compares to Y Combinator Hacker News, which also celebrates new product fanatics. Every day on Product Hunt, new products are curated, voted on (hunted), and selected as the best.
Products include mobile apps, websites, technology products, cryptocurrency projects, startups, and so much more. Founders, enthusiasts and early adopters flock to Product Hunt to find and vote on the best new products.
Fans of new products can share and enjoy the many new ideas posted every day and stay ahead of the technology curve. Since starting, Product Hunt has exploded in popularity and is now one of the best places to launch a new project.
What Are the Possibilities with Product Hunt?
When launching on product hunt, you have the chance to scrape up thousands of views, subscribers, and customers. This can help you launch your project and get it off the ground.
If your product doesn’t do well on Product Hunt, then you’ll learn flaws about the product and idea and learn more about the launching process.
Product Hunt is a place where your new product can fail and disappear, or turn into an enormous success, garnering tons of new customers and a responsive customer base of new fans.
The potential for Product Hunt is huge, and if done correctly as we’ll outline in this post, your launch can be a winner. If you need help with a launch, reach out to us and we’ll lay out a plan that helps your product succeed
“Product Hunt has a whooping 4.5M active monthly users per month, and estimated newsletter subscriber count of 750K.”
How Popular Is Product Hunt?
While still new to most people, Product Hunt has a whopping 100K downloads per week. The app gets over 4.5 million monthly visitors and has an estimated newsletter subscriber count of 750K.
Product Hunt is more than hot products. The discussions sections are buzzing with interesting topics that get voted on, commented on, and shared by users.
The “Deals” part of the website offers discounts and credits for tools and websites that help your business grow. There is a “Jobs” section where you can find employees by posting jobs or get hired by looking through the positions.
As a business owner, the opportunity lies in launching your new products on Product Hunt to grow a large user base quickly and kickstart your products growth. In order to understand how this works, we’ll break down the Product Hunt process, so you know what to expect.
The ‘Hunting’ Process
When you head to the Product Hunt homepage, you’ll see a long list of today’s top products. If you keep scrolling down, you’ll find product ideas from weeks ago all organized into the day they launched.
The product list is organized into “Popular” and “Newest”, and you can select which you’d like to sort by. Sorting by “Most Popular” sorts the products with the most upvotes that day and sorting by ‘Newest’ organizes the most recent to the top.
If you follow the steps we’ll outline below, then your chances of getting featured on the homepage will skyrocket. Even if you get everything right, you may still struggle to get featured, and in that case, we recommend reaching out to us so we can help you launch your product.
We recommend using Product Hunt to kickstart a beta launch of your product idea. It should be an MVP (Minimal Viable Product), and it doesn’t have to be perfect before launching. The Product Hunt community knows that these are new projects, and they are forgiving when they aren’t perfect.
When you post on Product Hunt, it’s called ‘Hunting’. You have two options for launching your product, either hunt it yourself, or find a hunter with lots of followers who can help you.
Hunting Your Own Product
Hunting your own product is the preferred way to launch. It saves you time, gives you full control over the launch process, and outweighs the benefits of using a hunter.
Using a Hunter
When Product Hunt started, it used to be beneficial to find a hunter with lots of followers since they emailed the launch to all their followers. Now PH stopped doing that, so it might not be worth the extra time to find a big hunter (unless you have a connection already). Instead, it’s better to hunt the product yourself, and focus your outreach on finding influencers or a small audience of people who are interested in your idea that can upvote you when you launch.
How to Prepare for Your Product Hunt Launch in Advance?
Now let’s look at how to prepare for your launch on Product Hunt. We always refer back to Product Hunt’s own article on this subject, How to Launch on Product Hunt ?, so if you haven’t seen that one yet, we recommend it.
Based on our experience helping clients launch on Product Hunt, there are many tips that Product Hunt doesn’t cover that we’ll talk about in this post.
First, what happens when you fail to prepare for your launch?
When You Don’t Prepare
When you don’t prepare for your launch in advance, then like any other lackluster attempt at a new venture, it’s likely to fail. The biggest mistake when launching on Product Hunt is not having a follow up in place. When you get thousands of new subscribers, what are you going to be sending them?
If you don’t have an effective follow up, people who sign up lose interest over time. This is why products with thousands of upvotes on Product Hunt can still fail.
Two Essential Preparations
Later in this post we’ll break down more details of what to prepare for your launch, however if you just have these two elements then you’ll almost be ready. The two elements are an eye-catching GIF and a simple attention-grabbing video that explains your product.
Later in this post when we talk about launching your product on Product Hunt, we’ll go into more detail on the GIF and video.
With these two elements you can launch on Product Hunt and get thousands of upvotes and sign ups, but you may not be ready to do anything after that. If you want to be prepared, then follow these four steps.If you don’t have an effective follow up, people who sign up lose interest over time. This is why products with thousands of upvotes on Product Hunt can still fail.
Four Steps to Prepare for Your Product Hunt Launch
Step 1: Become A Product Hunt User
Step 2: Connect with Hunters
Step 3: Build A Following
Step 4: Ship It
What to Do on Launch Day?
Have everything you need prepared before heading into launch day. You’ll need planned messages to send, blog posts to upload, social media posts to share, and any other planned promotion. The more prepared you are for launch day, the more you’ll have time to focus on what’s happening as it goes on.
You’ll want to be ready to respond to commenters, follow up with people, and post all your social media marketing related to the launch. If you’re not ready for it, then you’ll have to create that material and post it all on the same day.
Best Time to Post
On the Product Hunt “How-To-Launch” guide, they say “There is no single best time to post, but there are considerations to keep in mind”. In our experience and based on our extensive research, we found the best time to post is as early as possible.
Product Hunt is based on a 24-hour cycle, with new products landing on the home page at 12:01am PST. Product Hunt recommend launching before 9am PST, but we believe it’s better to be much earlier if possible.
Post early and your product has more time to get attention and upvotes. Product Hunt also allow you to schedule your post in advance, so that’s another strategy you can use to getting your post in at the earliest possible time.
Using A Big Hunter
As mentioned earlier, you may not benefit from using a popular hunter to help launch your product, since Product Hunt don’t automatically share to the hunter’s followers. You’ll have more control posting the product yourself and relying on your pre-launch work and networking to promote it
How to Post on Product Hunt
Posting on Product Hunt is easy, and they keep working to make things even easier. There are three basic steps to follow, and if you’ve done your preparation, they should be easy.
Step 1: Click the Button
Yep, the first step is just clicking the plus button on the home page to create a new post.
Step 2: Enter the link to your project
Simple enough so far, you should have this information ready before you decide to launch.
Step 3: Describe your project and preview how it will look when it’s posted.
Write a simple description or use the one you prepared and add the GIF or preview pictures you prepared too.
When the posting looks how you want it, that’s it, you’re done. Just click post to make it go live, and you can start promoting the page.
The better your project looks from the title, thumbnail and details, the more chances you have that people will upvote it. Product Hunt is built around finding the best product, so even if you do everything right, you may not get to the top if there are other products people love that day.
Make sure your description clearly tells the benefits and value to the world, and you’ll have a good chance to get those upvotes.
Writing A Winning Title & Description
After the link has been added where they can download or use the product, you have to make sure your title and description are optimized. Product Hunt have recommended to only use the product name in the title, so follow the rules and keep it precise.
While many products have a simple title like “Paco” or “Iconoir” which just use the product name, other titles are more descriptive like “WhatsApp Broadcast by NovoChat” or “Screenshot Reader by Docsumo”.
Try to be descriptive in your title, without adding obnoxious extras that make it seem you’re trying to use the title to sell the idea. Keep it 4 words or under and explain the value as quickly as possible.
The Tagline
The tagline allows you 60 characters to describe your product in more detail. This is where you should get really precise and explain the exact promise your product delivers. Talk directly to your target customer and leave out everyone else.
Avoid catchy slogans or excessive descriptions, and instead focus on the raw promise of what you deliver. To see examples of this, look through Product Hunt and read the titles and taglines of the top hunted products.
One of the earlier pieces of advice we gave is to spend some time on Product Hunt getting used to the platform. If you’ve done this for a while, then you’ll know how the title and tagline should look for your launch.
Optimize the Thumbnail
The thumbnail can be a GIF or still image, which can explain the product quickly. We recommend looking through Jack Dweck’s “Pitch with A GIF” collection to get some creative ideas. Use a 240×240 size for your GIF or static image.
The Gallery
The first thing people see when landing on your product page is the images. Make sure to have at least 2 images on your page, with a recommended image size of 635×380, a good size for social sharing. If you make promoting your product easier, more people will share it. (Images and GIF’s should be less than 3mb)
These are the main parts of your product listing, but we’ll briefly mention a few more to help with the optimization process.
Topics: Don’t overdo it with the topics, instead choose just 3-4 highly relevant topics.
Makers: If anyone else worked on the project, make sure to add them so they can join in the conversation. Followers of each maker get a notification that they are involved in another project, so add all your teammates to get the most attention.
Related Media: Share articles, posts, reviews, announcements, PR and related media that connect to your project. The more someone can learn about you, the better your chances of getting shared, upvoted and hunted.
Maker Comment: Product Hunt recommend introducing yourself, the team, and the problem you solve. Keep it short and sweet, describing the value proposition, who might benefit from it, and why you’re making it. If you’re relaunching, explain what’s new in the relaunch.
Offers: Product Hunt users love a special offer. Launching always goes well with a special offer, discount, or bonus for joining on launch day. Tell users to comment on your post for the special offer and share promo codes in the comments. This can create a comment buzz, leading more people to your page and further upvotes, shares, and sign ups.
Request Feedback: Get the discussion going by asking for feedback on your page, features, product and anything else they want to share. Products that have active conversations usually get more attention and tend to do better.
Website Badge: Embed a custom badge to your website so any returning visitors know you’ve launched on product hunt.
Now you’ve got the perfect product page, the conversation is buzzing, and upvotes are starting to come in. Let’s take things up a notch by starting to promote your product and boost it with some marketing.
Product Hunt Promotion Methods
Now you’ve posted your product, the promotion can begin. If you have a good product that people love, then promoting it will be easier. Interesting new SaaS products, digital products, services or membership ideas, and many other valuable projects have the chance to hit number one on Product Hunt.
How to Market and Promote Your Product Hunt Launch
Now you’ve posted your product, the promotion can begin. If you have a good product that people love, then promoting it will be easier. Interesting new SaaS products, digital products, services or membership ideas, and many other valuable projects have the chance to hit number one on Product Hunt.
- Related
- subreddits
- Hacker News
- Y Combinator Startup School forum
- Slack channels
- Discord Channels
- Facebook Groups
- WhatsApp Groups
- Membership site
- Email list broadcast
After you’re done with these, head to the social networks where you can share on Facebook, Instagram, twitter, and any other social media you have.
Honesty Is the Best Policy:
Keep your message genuine, something as simple as telling readers that you just launched a product and you’ve worked on it for months, and you’d like to share. People love genuine posts, so they are more likely to click through than if you tried to convince them about the wonder of your product.
Short & Punchy:
Keep your posts brief, only saying what the product does, and use the same image or GIF you used on the Product Hunt page. On Twitter and Facebook, tag @ProductHunt, because Product Hunt are always looking for new products to retweet or share on their accounts.
Link Directly:
Don’t share the Product Hunt main website, only share the direct link to your product page.
Limit Hashtags:
Try not to use hashtags at all because the focus should be on the product link. You’re already linking to @ProductHunt, so if you put hashtags, and a link in there, you’re giving readers too many things to click on, and they’ll end up clicking nothing.
The Ultimate Promotion Tool
The best chance you have of growing your product and rising to the top, is to become sharable. Your story, message and product should make the reader feel something powerful. They should feel like this is going to help them, change their life and make a real difference in the world.
This is how you spark social sharing, which becomes the ultimate promotion tool for your launch. Word of mouth is a powerful form of marketing, and social media is word-of-mouth juiced up on marketing steroids. Create emotion for the reader, and they’ll want to share it.
What Can You Expect from Launch Day?
Product Hunt is all about finding the best product. If yours is truly the best (and you’ve prepared well, networked, and promoted it correctly) then you have a very good chance of being voted the best that day.
If that happens you can get featured in the Product Hunt newsletter and sent to hundreds of thousands of new people.
The best-case scenario, you get thousands of visitors and signs ups in the first day. This may drop significantly the day after so don’t be surprised when that happens.
In order to keep the momentum going you have to follow up with your new audience, deliver the value as promised, and overdeliver to keep them engaged. As mentioned earlier, you have to prepare for new people joining your product and business. If they sign up and they receive 1-2 emails and then radio silence, don’t expect them to stick around or remember you.
If you don’t have a full Product Hunt marketing plan laid out, reach out to us and we’ll see how we can help. We help businesses and owners launch on Product Hunt, by creating the strategy, preparing for the launch and taking care of all the promotions on your launch day against a performance based model.
The Social Snowball Effect
When you post early, you’ll snag some quick upvotes, which creates a snowball effect of social proof. As people log in to the site, they see your product with upvotes, and the social proof kicks in. They upvote it because it already has upvotes, and the social snowball effect is in motion.
If you’re late to the party and post later in the day, you’ll have to start from scratch with upvotes and you miss many of the users who would have voted for you earlier.