7 Tips to Launching on Product Hunt
The work creating a great product hunt submission starts month before your great day. To start build a product where 50%+ of your beta users say they would be ‘very disappointed’ if your service did not exist on Survey.io. Once you are there, it is time to meet the world. To do this it is important to start at the beginning and lay the infrastructure for a successful launch.
1) Hunt a ‘Hunter’
There is some debate on how the product hunt algorithm works but it seems to be consensus that the influence of the person who “hunts” your product, has a great impact in its chance to make it to the front page (as opposed to the “Upcoming” tab). To accomplish this, we suggest starting a month before your launch by looking at the leader board for people you personally know. Then start reaching out to people to see if they would like to test out your product, in hopes they hunt you when you launch. To find the best ‘hunters’, visit the list of hunters with the most followers. The current leaders (Non PH) are :
2) Craft Your Hunt
So the great impact you have on your hunt is a giving your ‘Hunter’ the following three items:
- Guidelines on When to Submit
Product hunt servers are based in Pacific Time (GMT +8). This means you want to be hunted as early in the day as possible. 3am GMT is a great place to start. So asking you ‘Hunter’ to submit at a specific time is a great way to go. (Maybe they will use Mitro to let you log in on their behalf)
2. A Tested Tag Line
This is hugely important. You tag line is the main difference between a click and someone passing over your submission. Come up with 4 different tag lines and send it out to 10 of your friends who visit Product Hunt with the following questions:
Which best helps you understand our product?
Which would you most likely upvote?
3. A Custom Link / Landing Page
The Product Hunt community loves to feel special. So wether you are submitting a Product Hunt Exclusive Launch, or if you are being hunted by a user, it is great to make a specific page for the community. Here are some great examples… throw in the Glasshole Cat for the win :)
An easy way to do this is to check out IntroBar.
3) Prepare to Announce Your Launch
To start to prepare for your launch you need to know the link you will be using. As of the writing of this article, the urls for product hunt tech products are http://www.producthunt.com/tech/X with “X” replaced by your product name with the dots and spaces replaced with dashes. For games it is http://www.producthunt.com/games/X
Now that you have your link you should start crafting an email to your mailing list. When you do this the first rule is to not ask for upvotes.
Feel free to share products you post (or find) but don’t ask for upvotes. Gaming may result in the product being removed from the site. People should upvote what they think is useful or interesting, not because they’re peer pressured.
That being said, it is okay to notify your users / followers that you have been hunted. There are a couple of ways that this looks like but here are a few examples.
Notice that neither of these emails ask people for up votes. What they do is notify users of the products being on Product Hunt and invite them to “Join the Discussion” / “Share it and get the word out.” So write an email to your users with your link & content.
Then when this is all done, as soon as your ‘Hunter’ hunts your product, send out your email / tweets and get ready to move to phase two.
You’ve Been Hunted
Now what?
4) Respond to comments on Product Hunt
When your product is hunted and gets to the front page, Bram will probably reach out to you on twitter to set you up with an account which will be listed as the maker of your product. Then you will be able to comment and have the green “M” next to your name.
5) Live Stream from Your Page
Use Crowdcast to embed live streaming right into your page. This is a great way to connect with your users as they first see your product. As there will be between 100–200 people on your site at any give time, this is a great way to engage with a large audience.
If you want to be featured in a podcast, Paul Kemp is always looking for great launches to cover. Using Crowdcast, he’s been able to consistently get the products he has covered to the top of the front page.
6) Leverage Your Hunt
Post your Hunt to HackerNews and r/Startups.
Next, start contacting other media outlets with subject lines like “Product X Currently #3 on Product Hunt.” In terms of who to contact, Giovanni Casinelli’s PR Hacks is a great place to start.
7) Rest And Thank Your New Users :)
Then it is time to get back to work :)
