Last week, MeetNotes was submitted on ProductHunt by @charlieirish. We were working on our PH launch playbook when we saw incoming traffic from there. Our planned launch was a few weeks ahead, but we decided to roll with it anyway. And within a few hours, our blog had made it to the front page of Hacker News. It seemed luck and timing were in our favor.
We tried to make the most of the traffic we got. Our new sessions increased by 62% and we received Signups from 26 countries & Traffic from 93 countries. Looking back, we could have planned few things better.
Read on to find how you can script your own ProductHunt and HackerNews launch success.
Setup a Google Analytics Alert. You can set it for referral traffic from ProductHunt or Hackernews so that you don’t waste the crucial first few hours like we did. These hours can mean the difference between trending or going unnoticed.
Create Exclusive Offers. Everyone loves offers and the PH and HN community are no exception. You should be able to launch a new one quickly. Since we had setup Google Tag Manager, we were able to launch it quickly without any code changes.
UpVotes. Don’t link directly to the post. Ask your network to go to the homepage and look for the post. Upvotes are important to stay on top, but avoid creating a voting ring. Get the word out on social media. Don’t forget LinkedIn (we did) and emailing all contacts in your gmail address-book (we did).
Engage on PH and HN. Thank the Hunter. Talk about the product. Ask for feedback. When someone provides feedback, thank them and respond. For us, HN drove more conversations than PH did.
Enjoy the attention. The HN and PH community love new products. Positive feedback and attention is guaranteed. Bask in the glory while it lasts and take it for early idea validation. However, this is not an indication of Product Market Fit. You still have to work on improving your product.
Finally, engage those who are interested. 10% of our signups continued to be engaged. Some are even giving us advice and helping with beta testing.
We will be compiling and sharing some metrics and traffic comparisons for PH and HN. If you are interested, subscribe by submitting your email and we will keep you posted once that comes out.
MeetNotes.co was launched to the public on Hacker News and Product Hunt. The launch was successful. This post analyzes the launch strategy and provides some tips to launch on Hacker News and Product Hunt.
