Getting to the top on Product Hunt: Detailed and Honest Guide after 3 Failures
On March 12, we launched Bluedot on Product Hunt, and won Product of the Day 🥈 and Product of the Week 🥉
This generated us 120+ signups, 3 annual and 6 monthly subscriptions plus there is still traffic coming in.
Here are some numbers:
This our 5th cup of coffee at 8pm and we are still pushing for the win. You can see I’m not very enthusiastic at that point 😂
I think it would be important to know about our past experiences with PH launches.
- We launched first time a small side-project (Twiso) in 2021.
It started at 8AM, and we didn't leave our desks until 3AM. Lots of cold outreach on LI/twitter. Lots of DMs to friends begging for upvotes. All we had was Product #6 for the first half of the day.
We thought - "maybe there is a chance to buy some upvotes?". I started googling and found 2 guys on Fiverr who promised product #1 for $150, and this dude had over 100 reviews. It was a no brainer - and we paid.
And guess what? - We got the 1st Place.
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6 months later we had a product revamp with new features, and it was time for a new launch. Having such a good experience with buying upvotes, we did it again. But this time we got banned, our upvotes got cut by half, and we went from product #2 to product #9. This is when we realised this shit won’t work anymore.
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Fast forward to 2023, we started working on the new product called Bluedot.
It was time for a launch, and this time we did some preparation. Our network became bigger so we felt confident about our first 200-300 upvotes. We thought everything else we will get from the community. But we only got product #5. Organic upvotes where not enough for the win. -
And now it's March 2024, and we are Product of the Week.
We spent 2 months preparing for this launch, and proud of our results. It brought us more traffic than we expected, and still people are signing up.
I have created a complete breakdown of my process in a blog post titled Getting to the top on Product Hunt: Personal Experience after 4 Failures
If you are an early-stage founder, this might be helpful.
Great insights; thanks for sharing. Going to implement lessons learned soon :).
congratulations, impressive launch campaign, pretty sure you drank a lot of coffee this day! Woud you like to be showcased on microlaunch.net too? It could help you sustain your post PH-launch momentum a bit :)
Definetly posting my new project there soon :)
I'll check it out! Thanks for sharing :)
I am planning to launch Apppage on product hunt and I read this guide. I am going to utilise some of the tips from this.
Great if you are founder who are doing social media marketing I think this tool that I build might help you https://app.socialtrendanalysis.com/
The tool will give you the analysis of your competitors social media on daily basis. From the analysis you will have some insight on what is working and what is not working for content marketing. Thus you can adjust your content accordingly
Great post. Question, have you posted about your launch on other sites to get upvotes from there, like reddit?
This was very insightful, Russ. Thank you. Were the products you launched free or paid? Do you think it matters whether you offer a free version in terms of getting more upvotes?
Thank you for the post Russ! This is exactly what I needed, we just launched today, and quite honestly the launch seems like a failure, as we only garnered 3 votes organically.
it's a learning opportunity for you. next time you can prepare better!
I launched a couple weeks ago on PH and just absolutely buried immediately. If you don't have the network to boost your product to the first few early on, chances are you won't even get seen. Pretty disheartening, but just remember PH is not the end-all be-all for your product launch. Nothing wrong with a little old-fashioned marketing.
Reaching the pinnacle on Product Hunt requires persistence and strategy. Learn from three failures with this detailed and candid guide, offering insights into navigating the platform's nuances to successfully showcase your product.
It's too dangerous to buy votes.
yep! don't do it.
Honest question, for the first launch, was buying worth it? Did you get more than what you paid for?
honestly yes. we got very good traffic back then, and even some investor-meetings.
we had zero expectations, and it was our first experience with product hunt.
but now it doesn't work, so better not doing this.
I definitely agree buying doesn't work anymore and getting a lot of upvotes early on is super important.
I'm just going to YOLO with my next launch, though 🤣 I don't have enough of a following or network to make it anywhere near #1 😅
Just do it and see how it goes.
If your product is useful for PH community there is a good change to get into Top 5. What is already quite good.
I made it because it's useful for me, but I doubt it's useful enough to get top 5. Nonetheless, product hunt is a free backlink 😅
Great insights, thanks for sharing!
Glad it's helpful!
Very cool insight. I'm prepping for a PH launch too!
Good luck and let me know if you need any help!
Thank you for sharing this, I am just designing our PH strategy. You mentioned 2 months of preparation, do you think 1 month is enough or should I aim for more time?
depends on your launch day. if there are many other strong launches, it might not be enough.
for example our upvotes would be enough to be product of the day in many other days. but during our launch we had a very fierce competition and only got 2d place.
Thank you for sharing, interesting story and very helpful!âš¡
Glad it's helpful!
This is very insightful. it gave me a few insights I could look at before launch
I do have a few questions
What other tools would be useful before launch?
Do you have any insight on being product of the month?
You are welcome!
Honestly, all the tools are there. Nothing special.
To become product of the month you need at least 1500 upvotes.
I think we could do that if we spend more time preparing for it. not 2 months but maybe 3.
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Hello! Thanks for the detailed guide, very useful!