Launching on Product Hunt: Feedspace’s Journey to #1
- Dec 04, 2023
- 5 Min Read
TechUp Labs, remote since 2016, is a bootstrapped SaaS company with a workforce of 50+. The company has several tech partnerships and initiatives of its own.
Feedspace is one such initiative by TechUp Labs. It is a platform for collecting, managing, and sharing text and video data. Among other use cases, the platform is primarily useful as a feedback and testimonial platform. The Feedspace team at TechUp Labs consists of more than 10 members including developers, designers, SEO experts, writers, etc.
Once Feedspace was ready for users, it was time to grow. The main goals for choosing Product Hunt were:
- Visibility and engagement
- Genuine sign-ups
- Feedback
Thus began the journey of launching on Product Hunt. Here are some of the significant milestones:
- #1Product Of The Day
- #1 Product Of The Week
- 1.3k+ upvotes in 24 hours
- 500+ comments in 24 hours
- 80+ sign-ups in 24 hours (and counting)
- …. And invaluable user feedback!
Today, we want to share this journey with you. This post outlines our experience, lessons, and structure for the Product Hunt launch.
One Month Before: Pre-Launch Checklist
Planning is key
Executing a Product Hunt launch has many facets to it. So, planning and organization is inevitable.
- Break down your strategies into actionable tasks
- Remove ambiguity with proper and clear communication
- Have consistent meetups (as required)
Here is an example of how our to-do lists looked like:
- Be active on PH (support others, create discussions, comment on others' discussions)
- Create your Coming Soon page. Share it on PH, Twitter, and LinkedIn
- Be active on social media. Post about your PH launch
- Connect with people from PH on LinkedIn/Twitter
- Clear out all the tasks as they’re done to avoid confusion
- Check your website, analytics, and the onboarding process
- Engage in real-time
- Make sure you can reach out to people who can support your product throughout the 24-hour launch day
- DM people on your launch day with a reminder
- Join relevant groups and chats. Support people there
- Track your progress with the PH dashboard
- We reach out to Investors, current customers, and influencers, and send them a reminder before and on your launch day
- Prepare social media posts, announcements for communities, and emails.
All these to-dos were assigned to respective team members and each member updated their progress on these tasks periodically. This list only provides an overview of the planning. There were more tasks created for the launch day and post-launch.
This roadmap helps in faster and more systematic execution. It also helps avoid confusion and miscommunication.
Build your community
This is not necessarily limited to Product Hunt. The people active on Product Hunt have many communities outside the platform. Moreover, building and maintaining connections with our target audience is necessary. So, having a presence on various platforms is crucial.
Here are the platforms our marketing team was active on a month before the launch.
- Discord
- Slack
- Online forums
- Facebook groups
- Indie Hackers
Community engagement strategy
Aggressively promoting your product on channels can have negative effects on the launch. So instead, a balanced approach is favorable. Here is the strategy we went ahead with:
- Engage with the community four days a week.
- Remaining three days a CTA for the product into the mix.
Now, here is what to cover while engaging in the communities:
- Try to become a valuable member of the group
- Provide resources
- Share stories
- Start discussions
- Participate in discussions
At this stage, marketing your product is not the goal. The goal is to establish a presence in these communities.
Upgrade your website
Product Hunt launches are a great way to get traffic on your website. So, assuming all goes well, there will be traffic. So, only bringing people to your website will not suffice. They need to find value on the website.
The Product Hunt launch page is just the teaser. Our website will be the main show, and it should live up to that.
- Keep the content short and impactful
- Keep the graphics clear, simple, high-quality
- Optimize the website performance
- Prepare for the best-case scenario. Prepare for high traffic on the website.
Ask your peers to review your website. Get as much feedback as you can on improvements you have to make.
Bug-check your product
In the end, we are expecting sign-ups from the launch. So, make sure there are no loose ends on the product.
- Improve your product so that it can provide value
- Enhance the user experience
Make use of tools
Equip your website and app with various tools to make the most out of this launch. Here are the tools we used:
- Google Analytics: For real-time insights into user behavior and traffic patterns. It helps us understand whether the product is resonating with the community.
- Amplitude: To know user activities in detail. This data is helpful to make informed decisions, improvements, and optimizations.
- Sentry: Quick error tracking and fixing.
- Alarms for CPU utilization on AWS to handle the load
What to do on Product Hunt a month before?
For a successful launch on Product Hunt, familiarize your team with the platform. Getting the time to sign up a day before your launch will reduce the impact. Why?
- For one, they will have the new member label on them.
- Second, you will miss out on creating connections on Product Hunt
So, get your entire team to be active on Product Hunt at least a month before the launch. Here’s how you can stay active on Product Hunt:
- Become a part of discussions
- Start discussions
- Upvote and comment on other products
Gather data for the Product Hunt post
There are various requirements like logos, product name, tagline, description, images, videos, etc.
While filling out the launch form, scheduling the post for Product Hunt, etc. you will require these things. So, it is better to know the size limit, character limit, etc. beforehand.
Looking at what other people are posting on Product Hunt. It will give you an idea as to what information you can add.
Things to Decide Before The Launch Day
When to launch?
There are two options for us to choose from.
- Either pick a day with low competition but low traffic
- Or pick a day with high competition but high traffic
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday fall in the latter category. We decided to launch on Tuesday. We wanted high traffic and engagement. However, you can choose to launch on other days if it suits your product.
What time to post?
Product Hunt day starts at 12:01 am PST. That is when new products appear on the home page. So, the best time would be to post within ten minutes of 12:01 am PST. This means you will be able to leverage the whole day. Besides, you can get exposure from a vast geographical area throughout the day.
Launch on your own or find a hunter?
We faced the same dilemma. From our research, we found out that you need a hunter for a successful launch. We did find one. However, on the day we had decided to launch (28th November, Tuesday) that particular hunter was already launching two products.
So, we decided to go ahead with one of our own profiles. We chose the profile with the most points and engagement on Product Hunt.
Besides, an important advantage of choosing a hunter was that Product Hunt would notify their followers. But that doesn’t happen anymore. So, that also made the decision to launch by ourselves easier.
Special discounts: yay or nay?
Who doesn’t like discounts? Special offers on the launch day can do wonders. We also offered a 30% discount on Feedspace.
Key Points to Consider While Filling the Launch Form
- Category Selection Matters: Be strategic with category selection. It's not just about the category itself; it also influences the traffic and engagement you'll receive. Certain categories tend to have more active users on Product Hunt.
- Background Color: If you have a black background and want it to blend perfectly with Product Hunt's background, don't spend too much time achieving the perfect black. Due to some issues, Product Hunt may automatically change the color to create a distinction.
- Gallery Image Limit: Don't be confused about the number of images you can add to the gallery. Product Hunt allows more than 10 images, so feel free to add whatever you can to effectively express your product.
- Teasers Aren't Everything: Contrary to popular belief, you don't necessarily need a teaser to achieve good engagement. While launching with a teaser video is great, our experience shows that it's not the only factor influencing success.
- Logos can be gifs: We noticed that some members had chosen gif format for their logos. And these logos were eye-catching. The moving images stood out in a crowd of stationery. It isn’t mandatory. However, if you have the bandwidth for it, go for the gif.
Product Hunt Launch Day
Here are key points from the launch day strategy.
Planned promotion
Over time, multiple members of your team will be part of the same communities and channels. So, in such situations, everyone might end up promoting in the same place. To avoid this, note down who will promote where.
Second, you want consistent engagement and upvotes. Therefore, it is important to choose where to promote your launch based on the geographical location and time.
Divide the day
Engaging in all communities at once can lead to a one-time spike in upvotes and comments. For consistency, it is important to reach out in batches.
Here is our strategy:
- Break down 24 hours in 4 parts of 6 hours each
- Set a specific upvote milestone to achieve
- Get consistent hourly engagement and upvotes.
Our experience: We were at the top in the first few hours. However, we had predicted that products in the 2nd and 3rd position will get more upvotes as the day goes by due to time zone differences. And as expected, they did start getting more upvotes. However, we were prepared. We were putting in consistent and continuous efforts.
Make your team Makers
Instead of having one or two Makers, make every member of your team a Maker. This would work best if all of them were active members of Product Hunt beforehand. This helps with increasing engagement.
For example, all of our team was makers. Each member engaged with the comments based on their expertise. This helped us reply to all comments on time and keep up with consistent engagement.
Having the entire team on Product Hunt is useful from the product POV as well. Everyone can find out what the users are looking for, where they can improve, and what more they can add.
Maker’s Comment
Once you have launched your product, it is important to add a comment as the Maker. This can help people checking your product understand you better. You can keep it to the point or add details about your product.
We decided it would be a good place to talk about our product in detail. This increased engagement as people had follow-up questions about the comment.
Addition on website
You can add banners on your website once you have a coming soon page. You can then update it with the launch post link. This way, you can also leverage traffic from your website to do well on Product Hunt.
We had two sites where we could add banners: The Feedspace website and the TechUp Labs website. We were ready with the structure to add the banners beforehand. As soon as we had the links, we had updated these banners.
Product Hunt also allows embedding the upvote count on the website. You can add that as well.
Extra measures
A majority of the people can follow the basic template to do well on Product Hunt. However, there are certain things people can do to their benefit. Everyone can have different advantages they can leverage.
For example, we had a physical office in a building full of offices. So, some of our team members actually went door-to-door connecting with different companies. That added a chunk of upvotes.
Moreover, we had a list of 9000 email IDs of CEOs, investors, developers, designers, managers, etc. We sent emails to all of them in batches.
So, being open to new strategies and out-of-the-box thinking doesn’t go to waste. These measures may not be the same for everyone. But, you can keep an eye out for something that can work for you.
Product Hunt: Post-Launch Activities
Even if the launch day is over, your tasks aren’t.
Announcements
Whatever your experience is on Product Hunt, you can share it on social media and let your users know via email.
Find collections
There are collections of similar products. You can find ones that are similar to you and ask the owner if they would add you as well. This will help visitors on Product Hunt find you easily even after your launch day.
Heads’ Up, This happened to us!
Our journey wasn’t all upward. There were quite a few roadblocks in our way as well. Now, everyone doesn’t need to encounter these issues. But, just in case they do…
Profile disabled
Right before we were going to launch the coming soon from our founder’s profile was disabled. That was the profile we were going to launch the product and the coming soon page. We spent about 14 hours trying to connect with Product Hunt’s customer support.
We had no idea why the profile was disabled. However, since we were on a time crunch, we went ahead with another profile. We chose the profile with the most points on Product Hunt.
Website down
At around 6 am IST on 29th November, our website went down due to high traffic and keep-alive requests. However, since our team was working around the clock for the Product Hunt day, the issue was resolved in 15 minutes.
There was a spike around 9 am as well. However, this time the server was back to normal by itself. For future launches on different platforms, we will be better prepared with the website.
The background
The background for our teaser content was black. However, the black of the cover page did not blend with Product Hunt’s default background. Our team spent way too much time trying to match these two colors. However, in the end, we found out that Product Hunt automatically altered the color to a slightly meta black.
So, for anyone with a black background, save yourself some valuable hours.
Final words
The launch was exciting, nerve-wracking, and educating. The launch has not only prepared us for future launches but also brought fresh energy to our daily work. Here is a recollection of our lessons from the journey.
Lessons from the Product Hunt launch: Quick Recap
- Engaging in the community before launching is crucial.
- Product Hunt has a lot to offer, but only if we have planned and strategized well for the platform. ‘Winging it’ will not reap the best results.
- It is important to have the entire team on the same page for the launch, not just the marketing team.
- Reach out and become part of as many communities and message groups as you can.
- Have clear to-do lists to stay on top of all the progress.
- Make use of as many provisions by Product Hunt as you can to create the best page and platform for your product.
- Only upvotes are not important. Engaging and connecting with people will help in the long run.
- Fill out the form carefully. Ensure you have the right format for your logo, etc. before time to avoid delay.
- Continuous and consistent efforts are important.
Stay in the Know
Get ahead with TechUp Labs' productivity tips & latest tech trend resources
