Review of Our Launch on Product Hunt (myths and reality)

We are making an AI-driven personal career assistant and have collected 144 upvotes on Product Hunt.

So what does work and what doesn’t

1. They told us that a good start on PH costs about $10,000

Bullshit! It’s completely free. If a hunter asks you to pay him, he is a scammer.

It makes no sense to pay all kinds of influencers to warm up the audience and download your product before or on the launch day.

Because the PH algorithm counts only the upvotes of those PH members, who have already been registered for at least a couple of days, they should have acted as community members — they have already upvoted or commented on something. A crowd of friends who have just registered will not solve anything but can also harm. If a product has many such upvotes, it will be artificially lowered in the search results, or it may even be sent to a ban.

2. Launch yourself or with a top hunter?

There are no rules here. If you have an excellent product in which you are confident, post it yourself. For example, WeLoveNoCode, without any hunter, quickly gained 1400 likes and stayed the product of the day for a week.

If you want to use a hunter, you can find someone who has already hunted projects on your topic. Therefore, your product should really interest him.

We wrote a simple letter to two top hunters, who agreed to hunt us. Written without any prettiness and so on. Hi Kevin, we are doing X, for Y, we want to ask you (if you might be open to launching us) to launch us. DO NOT offer money, Amazon gift cards, etc. In the same way, run if you are offered to be hunted for money. A top hunter at the entrance increases your outreach, but your takeoff is no guarantee.

3. The best time to launch is 12:01 PST Tuesday through Friday, excluding US public and general holidays (like New Year and Christmas).

It’s simple — the offset for likes on the products of the day is set at the end of the day. So can’t you waste a minute in them.

4. How to prepare materials?

You need a video for your product. Make not a story about the product but a screencast of the product itself on fast forward. Forty seconds, no more.

Next, you need a thumbnail — the product icon. Previously, everyone liked to make animated ones, now, even the hunter asked to do it either without animation or minimal animation — otherwise, ripples in the eyes.

Screenshots of the product itself — make them simple stupid. Instead, they should reflect the CJM, preferably with signatures of what exactly happens at each step.

Technical requirements for the icon and screenshots can be found in the Submit section on PH.

Each hunter has his form where he asks to fill in materials for placement. Respect his time, and read his requests. For example, Kevin asked me to put everything in Dropbox and send it with separate links.

5. If you’re launching for the US, your product needs Twitter first

Start it in advance, fill it with content, live in it, and subscribe to relevant influencers. This is the leading social network in the US ever.

6. So launch!

Send the first likes. Your task is to provide not only likes but also comments. If there are a lot of upvotes and no comments, the algorithm will pessimize you in the search results. Therefore, it is essential to respond to all comments and develop the discussion.

7. Support interest in the product

If you are in the USA, your primary source is Twitter, tweet on it every 2 hours, something like “we’re live on PH.” Then, make a couple of posts on LinkedIn, then up to you — FB, Quora, Reddit.

The rule of thumb is to ask for feedback and comments, not upvotes. If people like the product, they will upvote it anyway.

8. Get ready for a flood of negativity

As elsewhere, inadequate is enough for PH. They will write to you that there is nothing new in the product, that you brazenly copied it (often from the head of the author of the post), and in general, they are already going to court. Breathe, it’s okay.

9. Audience

We thought that most of PH’s audience was in the USA. However, as we can see from the site metrics, this is not the case. The distribution is approximately 50% States, the rest — China, India, Thailand, and Bangladesh. I mean, most likely the developers. Therefore, the theory that geeks mainly use PH is not unfounded.

So what?

Enough creating something significant for years. It’s time to launch! Get free hypothesis validation and possible investor interest.