<aside> ✔️ What you'll need for your launch:
Watch this video on how to successfully launch on Product Hunt by the top 2 Product Hunters.
Product Hunt is where you launch products to an audience actively looking for new and exciting products to try. Understanding how Product Hunt works is important because you only have one shot to post your product. If you're ready to skip to the "how-to", go here.
Makers: People who make products
Hunters: People who post a product on Product Hunt
To "hunt": To post a product on Product Hunt
Understanding how Product Hunt works is important because you only have one shot - you won't be allowed to post the same product again for 6 months, and when you're allowed to repost it's only for total redesigns. No redos.
Product Hunt is a place where you launch products to an audience actively looking for new and exciting products to try.
Early adopters get products off the ground. They’re essential for product validation, customer development, and momentum. Not only are these adopters willing to use your product while you iron out the kinks—they actually enjoy it.
Better yet, early adopters tend to vocally share their opinions of new products with their networks. If they like your product, they become your initial advocates.
<aside> ➕ This is the true value of Product Hunt in the customer acquisition landscape: validation and early traction. Product Hunt isn’t a growth strategy. It’s not something you iterate on and try to make profitable and sustainable. Instead, it's a high quality PR event that can help you grow a base of early adopters that build traction.
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PH has proven itself to be the most effective place to launch and discover startups.
Think of PH as the Reddit for product launches:
<aside> 💡 What we learned in our research is that there is a right way to do it. It's not the gamble that getting on TechCrunch or hitting the front page of Hacker News is.
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Products that make it to the bottom of the front page can expect over 2,000 unique visitors on launch day. Products that hit the #1 spot can gain over 10,000 uniques.
While these numbers aren't exceptional, remember that conversion rates tend to be strong because Product Hunt's audience is innovation fanatics.
To put this into volume of emails, for submissions ranking in the top 5 products of the day, it’s not uncommon to get over 3,000 emails.
That can instantly make a newsletter.
When you hit the top 5, you're featured in the next day's Product Hunt digest email.
To launch successfully on Product Hunt, your product needs to make it to the front page. To get to the front page, your product needs to attract a lot of upvotes and engagement.
Product Hunt is similar to Google search results in that few people look past the first several results. Audience attention is concentrated among the highest-ranking posts.
But this doesn't mean you should fish for upvotes at any cost. Product Hunt doesn’t like it when marketers game the system. Product Hunt’s algorithm actively demotes posts that show clear signs of fishing for upvotes, such as when a product receives a large number of votes from newly created accounts.
So, how do you get upvotes without being spammy?
Read on for the step-by-step:
<aside> 👉 There are startup communities adjacent to PH where you can engage, build your reputation, and carry that social capital over to your PH launch. People in these communities are almost always also on Product Hunt—because innovators gravitate towards PH.
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If you launch in adjacent communities earlier and ask for feedback, people will become attached to your journey and will voluntarily follow you over to PH when you launch there. In short, this is a game of social psychology, not upvote hacking. In practice, this entails joining some of these communities in the weeks before launching. Build up social capital by contributing and helping. Provide feedback on other people's projects.