Product Hunt is a popular site that curates new products from all over the globe. It started on Listserv and transformed into a multi-million dollar company. It has big name investors, such as Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian. These investors believe the site can compete with TechCrunch one day.
Gary Gasper is a savvy Product Hunt veteran and a young entrepreneur from Belgium. He is also the CEO of Marker, a SaaS company that helps businesses annotate screenshots on Trello, Slack, Github, and other places. Gary experienced highs and lows on Product Hunt. During his first rendezvous, he had 60 visitors from Product Hunt. His second attempt netted him 1600 free trial signups.
Gary agreed to share 12 tips for success in an exclusive interview.
1. Don’t Incentivize People to Upvote
Product Hunt is built on upvotes. The more upvotes you get, the more success you have. Gary adds:
"The whole idea of Product Hunt is to have the community give you credit for your product. If the community likes it, your product will bubble up to the top. If they don’t, you don’t deserve to be on the front page."
However, don’t keep your launch to yourself. You should tell your friends, family, and customers about your launch on Product Hunt. It’s true that Product Hunt bans users who pressure or incentivize people to vote. Still, there’s nothing wrong with letting people know about your launch, and asking them to upvote if they like your product. Gary says:
"I don’t think it has to be an all black or white decision. You can ask a few friends or family, or even your own customers to give you an upvote, if they think you deserve it. I don’t think you should sit on your [butt] and wait for upvotes to come. You can help by getting the ball rolling a little bit. 10% should be absolute maximum of votes coming from [personal requests]."
2. Expected the Unexpected
Product Hunt has a special system. You can launch your own product, or someone else can submit your product for you. If they do, you need to be ready. Gary wasn’t, and his first launch was unsuccessful. Gary wistfully recalls,
"We did two launches. The first one wasn’t done by us and it was a big failure. We only got 20 upvotes and 60 unique visitors coming from Product Hunt.”
Basically, someone launched Marker before Gary was ready, and it was a disaster. This wasn’t malicious, it was just a fan who wanted to share Marker with the world. Yet, it didn’t do Gary any favors. Products on Product Hunt have 24 hours to strike it big. Gary wasn’t ready, and it appeared he lost his chance. You’re not allowed to submit the same product twice.
3. You Can Relaunch on Product Hunt
Gary believed he didn’t get what he could have out of Product Hunt. That’s why he decided to pursue a second launch — Marker 2.0. He also saw a silver lining. This time, he would have full control over the timing of the launch.
"You’re not allowed to submit [products] twice. We knew we had 100% of control for our [second] launch."
Hopefully, you won’t have to launch twice. Yet, it’s always a possibility someone will submit you to Product Hunt early. If you can revamp your product, it’s worth considering a second launch.
4. Relaunching Isn’t For Everyone
When Gary relaunched on Product, Ben Tossell, the community manager, was skeptical. He asked Gary about the big updates. Gary was unfazed. He had a list ready.
- A complete redesign of the tool as well as the UX
- A new onboarding flow
- New integrations with Jira
- A new screenshot editor
- Emoji!
As you can see, there were major updates. Relaunching products is a system ripe for abuse. That’s why Product Hunt makes sure every relaunch has substantial improvements over the original. Relaunching is a major investment. In a perfect world, you want to get it right the first time.
5. Product Hunt Users Convert Differently Than Regular Users
After the free trials expired, Gary found that customers from Product Hunt didn’t convert as well as typical customers. They were interested, yet they didn’t fit his buyer persona. Gary explains more:
"Maybe you will discover that [only a few Product Hunt Sign-ups] will really stick. Then you have to figure out why this subset of users is successful. Agency owners are the best customers we have and most users from PH weren’t agency owners."
All exposure is not created equal. Gary got over 6,000 signups, but his success rate with non-agency customers was poor. After he analyzed this data, he was able to better serve his target market.
6. The Product Hunt Algorithm Prioritizes Speed
This quote from Medium explains the ever-changing tide of Product Hunt.
"At the stroke of midnight (PST), the Product Hunt day begins again, the product slate is wiped clean, and new products begin to be hunted."
That’s why speed is essential.
"You want to get as many upvotes as you can in a 24 hour window. If you were going to get 500 upvotes, you would rather get the vast majority of them during the first day,” says Gary.
Exposure on Product Hunt is time sensitive. In that sense, it’s closer to Facebook then email. Once something disappears from the Facebook feed, it’s gone. Out of sight, out of mind. The same is true of Product Hunt, but unlike Facebook, you can’t post again.
7. Effective Taglines are Useful
Coming up with a catchy tagline is far from trival. It’s a task that takes a lot of work. Gary spent an entire week with his team to craft a tagline. Here’s an Excel sheet of some of the ideas.
Continue reading %12 Things to Know Before You Launch on Product Hunt%
by Zachary Moore via SitePoint
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