How I got removed from the 3rd place on Product Hunt
… or how one small detail can destroy the success.
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Everything was going to be good. I’ve read a lot of articles about getting the best results from Product Hunt.
The plan was pretty clear
#1. Do not submit by yourself! Reach out to influencers on PH
I visited http://www.producthunt.com/ and found all makers from my industry. I sent tweets to all of them, mentioned them on PH, some of them got my emails. 2 of them replied and became subscribers of the service.
Success
#2. Make a win-win offer, ask to submit your website and mark you as the Maker
In parallel I was looking for reporters, who were writing about Growth Hacking, using https://www.hey.press. I was looking for a reporter and found a PH influencer + bold Growth Hacker 2in1. We found a win-win opportunity for both of us. An influencer was interested to promote his event to my audience. I was interested in submitting to PH. Deal :).
Success
#3. Give a specific offer for PH members
As my service is an invite-only one, it was pretty simple to make a specific offer. I offered an invite for ProductHunters.
Success
#4. Comment quickly. Comments count as much as upvotes.
When I was submitted and marked as the Maker, I started to comment. People were not very much about sharing their feedback but some of them were doing that. I’ve got about 40 comments and noticed, that some services with bigger amount of upvotes were lower in the rating. But at the same time some of them, which had less comments and less upvotes were higher. So I didn’t get the system :) but continued to comment. I reached the #3 in the rating.
Success
#5 Make a win-win offer for your community to upvote the service
Fail
Why? It turned out it is forbidden. Here are their rules: http://www.producthunt.com/faq
The algorithm works automatically and removes participants from the front page. This is how my PH experience ended :). Don’t repeat this mistake.
Positive
Before the service was removed from the top I got 1197 new subscribers for GrowthHackingIdea.com. GrowthHackingIdea.com is an invite-only service for a community of growth-hackers. It delivers one short, curated growth hacking idea every day to your email.
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