How we got our product propelled by Product Hunt
Earlier this month Sarah Marga launched Happenstance with a simple promise: we will connect people to another Human Being from anywhere in the world by email, once a month.
Idea validation
After getting a website up and running, we posted it on some niche subreddits such as /r/penpals. Within 2 days we got more than 300 subscribers. The comments were very positive and people loved the concept. The idea was validated so we decided to turn to Product Hunt. I’ve been following them since the beginning and love the concept. It is now pretty clear that being successful on Product Hunt can lead to many, many, new subscribers/downloads/visits, etc.
The Product Hunt Launch Preparation
After thinking about putting Happenstance on Product Hunt, we decided to set up a strategy because, well, you’ve got to have a strategy if you want to be successful. By strategy, I do not mean planning everything ahead of time since it never works, what I mean is knowing where you’re going (roughly), what you can expect, and what kind of obstacles you can face on the road.
When it comes to plan and strategize something you’ve never done before, who’s your best friend? Google of course! Typing “launching on Product Hunt” will give you many results and a pretty good overview of what you should do, what you should not, what works, what doesn’t, etc. It’s kind of overwhelming to read these articles (I’m realizing that by writing this article I’m participating to the overwhelmingness 😁). If you read them all, you’ll think that there’s a magic sauce that will make your product successful on Product Hunt. The truth, I believe, is that there’s no such thing. If what you made is appealing to the Product Hunt audience, then you’ll be successful, otherwise you won’t.
We nevertheless made a small plan before publishing on Product Hunt. Our goal was to have at least 50 upvotes:
- Publish on a Monday evening. Apparently people are more active on Tuesdays and more likely to check Product Hunt. Plus it gives you more time to get more upvotes.
- The day you’re featured, make sure to be free because you’ll have a million things to do! Reply to comments, tweet, reply to tweets, tell the entire world you’re on Product Hunt, tweak some stuff on your website, on your subscription confirmation email, etc. It’s a hell of a ride!
- The most important: have an appealing product!
The Launch Day
On Monday the 8th of February, we hunted Happenstance on Product Hunt at 7 pm (CET). I thought that after that we would get tens of signups right away. Not at all! To boost Happenstance on Product Hunt we sent a newsletter to our 400 first users so they could upvote us. We got 17 upvotes 😞. Once again nothing to brag about. Getting votes from your current user base is not that easy if you don’t give anything in return, and probably not the best strategy (we’ll get to this later).
On Tuesday the 9th of February, when I woke up we had like 5 new users. Once again, nothing to brag about. Then around 10 am (CET), I received a notification on my iPhone saying that Happenstance was live on Product Hunt! So that’s why… I said to myself. We were in their database, but not featured on their website. Maybe next time I should read the FAQ before asking myself so many questions. At 10:46, a friend sent me this:
Happenstance was ahead of the Withings Thermo (small note: I currently work for Withings and I can tell you that Thermo is an amazing product). I checked the www.producthunt.com and saw this:
And believe me, when you see for the first time, something you made, on the Home page of a website you admire, where hundreds of other products you admire have been featured, you start to freak out!
So there we were! On the Home page of Product Hunt with 32 upvotes. The US were still asleep so we had to keep people upvoting for Happenstance. The first thing we did was to push people to know that we were on Product Hunt and to remind them to upvote us if they like our product. So we used GetSiteControl to display a sticky bar on our landing page:
In the meantime, of course, we told our entire friends/colleagues/acquaintances list that we were on Product Hunt so they could upvote us. Once again, not the best option because most people outside your good friends/family circles don’t give a #$*% about what you’re doing. I might be wrong, maybe people didn’t give a #$*% about what I was doing. Anyway, this got us probably 20/30 upvotes. On top of not being very effective, the Product Hunt algorithm can detect if you’re asking people to upvote your product. So don’t try to do that or even worse DO NOT TRY TO BUY UPVOTES on Fiverr! Yes, you can do that! Crazy!
First of all, it will kill your self-esteem (would you buy votes if you were a politician?). Second, it’s not fair for the other makers. Third, as I said, it’ll be detected by the Product Hunt algorithm as cheating. So don’t do that and rely on the quality of your product/idea instead.
At this point, things started to get crazy (at our humble scale). Tens of new subscriptions every minute, my Apple Watch kept reminding me this every 20 seconds.
My upvotes goal went from 50 to 100 (100 would be a success for us). In order to get even more upvotes (because some other products were getting ahead of us), I decided to do two things:
- Add in the confirmation email the following phrase: we’re on Product Hunt, if you like the concept, check us out here!
- Change the Product Hunt image from a still one to a GIF so it would attract people’s eyes.
In the evening Product Hunt tweeted this:
So by 4:45 pm we had reached our goal!
Then Product Hunt tweeted this:
Of course the number of subscriptions skyrocketed again!
The Key Results
Product Hunt is a wonderful tool for early acquisition. It’s also a great way to validate your idea and your concept. The comments section is a gold mine! You’ll be challenged by smart people and you’ll learn a lot about the strength and weaknesses of your product.
Here are some key data/graphs to show you the power of Product Hunt:
Number of sessions
We went from about 5 sessions/hour before Product Hunt to around 100 sessions per hour when we were featured on Product Hunt.
Number of sign ups
Product Hunt brought us more than 1,200 signups within 24 hours. The conversion rate was around 50%.
Press Coverage
Yes, there’s a life outside Product Hunt! Thanks to the incredible popularity of Product Hunt, many blogs and websites check it every single day to find their next article. Thanks to this snowball effect, we’ve been featured on other websites such as the followings:
Not the WSJ, Wired, or Techcrunch, but once again, from our point of view, it was huge (plus it didn’t require any PR!). These brought us around 1,000 subscribers.
Conclusion
What a ride on the Product Hunt rollercoaster! Stress, happiness, sadness (for not being in the top 5 of the day), and happiness again to reach the top 10. Not bad for the first product we made.
I believe that Product Hunt is one of the best tools for early acquisition after having briefly validated your first idea. A successful launch can drive thousands of users to your service for free! It is then your turn to keep growing by wisely engaging this bigger user base.
And for Happenstance? Well, that was a huge success!
