I recently discovered that you can earn the title of “Product of the Day” on Product Hunt with almost any product. I was able to achieve the #4 spot on Product Hunt’s list of products of the day with a Trello board. In this article, I would like to share some tips on how to succeed on Product Hunt and explain the reasoning behind my success. Overall, it was a fun and rewarding experience, and I recommend giving it a try if you have developed ANYTHING that could be useful to others.

This article includes the following sections:

• Product Hunt 101: My PH launch guide and tips

• Launching a Trello board on Product Hunt

  
  

I suggest reading both sections carefully because they contain a lot of my personal experiences and are interconnected.

Product Hunt 101

First, let’s introduce Product Hunt and provide some tips on how to launch a product on the platform.

Product Hunt is a website where makers and early adopters can discover and share new products daily. It features a variety of products, such as websites, apps, hardware, books, and more.

Launching a product on Product Hunt can be a great way to receive valuable feedback, generate buzz, and attract new users. In order to launch a product on Product Hunt, makers must create an account and submit their product for a specific date (note*: you must be a member of the platform for at least 7 days before you can submit a product*). On the day of the launch, the product will be featured on the Product Hunt homepage and be visible to the community.

While it is not difficult to earn the title of “Product of the Day” on Product Hunt, there are certain guidelines you can follow to increase your chances of success.

1. Engage with the community at least a week before your launch

This will help you gain followers and also give you an understanding of how Product Hunt works. I started engaging with the community one week before my launch. If you engage and write insightful comments on different product launches, particularly successful ones, people will begin to follow you. I gained an average of 5–8 followers in one day, which is an average of 35–50 followers per week. This is significant because these followers may be the first to upvote your product, helping to push it to the top.

2. Add your product to the “Coming soon” and “Building in progress” sections

This is important because it allows you to stay visible to the community before your actual launch. People can subscribe to see your progress and receive notifications. This will help you gain more followers who may upvote your product during the launch. Here is an example of the “Building in Progress” section. As you can see, you can follow products that interest you.

The coming soon section is similar, it allows you to follow and receive notifications of the products that are coming soon.

It does not cost anything to add your product to these sections, but it can contribute to your product earning the title of “Product of the Day.” I recommend adding your product to the “Building in Progress” section while you are developing it, and planning your launch well in advance so that you can be featured in the “Coming Soon” section.

How to add your product to Product Hunt “Building in progress” section?

To add your product to the “Building in Progress” section of Product Hunt, follow this link and use the Ship guide (though I do not have access to Ship on my account).

How to add your product to Product Hunt “Coming soon” section?

To add your product to the “Coming Soon” section, simply follow the regular submission process and select a publication date. Your product should be featured in the “Coming Soon” section before your launch. Please note that it will be subject to moderation by Product Hunt before it appears in the section.

3. Post early, and get as many upvotes as possible early.

Product Hunt’s new day begins at 12:00 AM Pacific Standard Time (PST). It is important to try to get as many upvotes as possible during the first few minutes of the launch. Many successful products are launched at exactly 12:00 AM PST.

There are several reasons why it is important to launch early. Firstly, the earlier a product is posted, the more time it has to accumulate upvotes. Upvotes are a crucial metric on Product Hunt as they help determine a product’s ranking on the site. The higher a product ranks, the more visibility it will have, which can lead to more traffic and potentially more users for the product. Furthermore, launching early can help establish a product as a “top pick” for the day, increasing its visibility on the site even further.

4. Contact people and ask them to follow your product before the launch.

This is a trick that not many people utilize. A few days after I became active on Product Hunt, I received the following message on LinkedIn:

The person asked me to follow their “Coming Soon” page. Currently, they have over 100 people subscribed to their notifications. This means that all of these people will receive notifications and may upvote the product at launch. This can be a powerful tool.

I recommend using LinkedIn for cold outreach, as it is easy to find active Product Hunt users there. However, you can also use email outreach.

5. When you launch, post a link to your launch on social media

This may seem obvious, but some people think that they need a large number of followers on social media accounts to reach a significant audience. This is not true! Here is a list of a FEW websites where you can post:

• Reddit

• Hackernews

• Indiehackers

• Medium

• Hackernoon :))

• Twitter

• Linkedin

  
  

Here is an example of a Reddit post I made that was seen by 40,000 people, even though I don’t have a huge following!

Explaining strategies for all of these social networks would require additional articles (if you would like to see a post on this topic, please let me know in the comments!). However, the main tip here is that you should be familiar with each platform in order to understand how to effectively post on them. I have used each of the platforms listed above for a sufficient amount of time to understand their nuances and how to use them effectively. This allows me to easily let a large number of people know about my work with minimal effort.

6. Before you launch your main product, try launching something small first.

This is my personal tip, and I have not seen it mentioned anywhere else. I did exactly this to get a better understanding of the platform and to minimize the chances of errors. It is important to have a successful launch on Product Hunt because it is a great place to get your first users. Therefore, it is advisable to launch something simple but useful first, such as a Trello board, a small proof-of-concept app, or a useful GitHub page. All of these can be successful on Product Hunt with the right marketing.

By launching something small first, you will be better prepared for your main product launch and will have fewer chances of failure. By the way, my main product will be launching on Product Hunt soon, so stay tuned :)

7. Be active in the comments of your product and other products on your launch day.

Why is this important? When you are active in the comments of your own product, people are more likely to engage in conversation, upvote your product if they have not done so already, and provide feedback. Even if people only respond with comments like “Great product!”, you can still try to reply and find out if your product would be useful to them and add value.

On the other hand, if you engage with other products, people are more likely to visit your page, see your launch, and upvote. Every engagement matters if you want to be the “Product of the Day”! Do not ignore this advice. I have seen many launches where people replied to my comments hours after the comment was posted, which is not too bad, but you will stand out from the competition if you try your best to respond as quickly as possible.

8. Choose your launch date carefully. It matters!

According to one Product Hunt launch guide:

One strategy is to launch on the most competitive days, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, which guarantees more traffic and engagement from users. However, depending on your product, you may want to consider launching on the weekends, when there is less competition but also less traffic.

While I do not have enough data to confirm that this is true (intuitively, it seems to be), I would like to emphasize the importance of considering what other products are launching at the same time as yours in the “Coming Soon” section. If you see a lot of great products launching at the same time as yours, your chances of reaching the top may be lower, so you may want to consider changing your launch date.

To identify such products, you can look for the following:

• a large following or previous successful launches for the product

• a popular Product Hunt account for the person launching the product

• the presence of big corporations such as Loom or Google launching on Product Hunt (I do not recommend launching on the same day as these companies).

  
  

Now that I have covered my main Product Hunt tips and tricks, let’s move on to my own launch!

Launching a Trello board on Product Hunt

Let me give you a brief overview of the product. It is a simple Trello board that lists ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and MidJourney Prompts that people can use (if you are familiar with recent AI buzz, you should know what I am talking about). I spent about 3 hours creating the board on a weekend, and an additional 2 hours on design, marketing, and answering questions in the product discussion for the launch.

I signed up for Product Hunt with the intention of launching a real product but decided to test the waters first with my board because:

• I thought it was something useful that people might like I wanted to understand how to launch a product and what benefits it brings
• I wanted to see how many Twitter followers I could get using this strategy :) I signed up for Product Hunt 7 days before the launch (you can’t launch earlier) and launched my Trello board on January 1, 2023 (Sunday).
• I didn’t have any initial followers, only around 20 subscribers on my PH account that I gained by commenting on other launches. At first, some products outpaced me by generating initial upvotes from their user base. But after 2–3 hours, my board stayed at position number 4 and remained there until the end of the Product Hunt day.

I shared my Product Hunt link on Twitter, Linkedin, and Hackernews. I didn’t post to Reddit because I had already shared my Trello board there before the launch and didn’t want to bother the community again. I received a few likes on Twitter and Linkedin, but was unable to get any traction on Hackernews (I think they may be blocking Product Hunt links, so you may need to be creative and post the link to elsewhere). Here are screenshots of my posts:

Here are some statistics from my PH launch:

• 196 upvotes
• 247 followers on the product page
• ~20 new Twitter Followers
• 26 comments

I didn’t expect much from the launch but ended up in 4th place. Here is why I think it happened:

• Launching exactly at 0 am PST helped. If I had launched 30 minutes later, I may not have made it to the top.

• Posting on social media helped. I believe I received at least 5–10 upvotes from the social media posts I made.

• The day of the launch is important. On January 1st, the competition was not as fierce, so I was able to maintain a top position.

• Most importantly, the product itself was well-received. From the comments I saw, people found the product to be useful. If your product is not helpful, it will not be able to reach the top, even if you follow all of my advice.

• Design matters. Some people have great products but a poorly designed Product Hunt page. This is important. Before launching, I recommend showing your design to friends and colleagues to get feedback. You can also get inspiration from previous Product Hunt launches like I did.

  
  

Why do people launch their products on Product Hunt and what benefits do they receive from being the “Product of the Day”?

First and foremost, launching on Product Hunt allows you to get initial users for your product.

Early adopters can provide valuable feedback and may even pay for your product. Some makers have reported that reaching the top spot as the “Product of the Day” can lead to around 10,000 people visiting your product page or website. This can be a significant increase in traffic.

Additionally, being the “Product of the Day” will get your product featured in Product Hunt’s daily email campaign, which is sent to 500,000 followers. This can lead to even more traffic. You may also have the opportunity to become the “Product of the Week” and receive another traffic boost.

Finally, Product Hunt pages tend to rank well in search engines. If you optimize your Product Hunt page with keywords, you may be able to rank highly in Google searches for a period of time. For example, my page ranked first for searches for “AI Prompts” and “ChatGPT prompts” for a couple of days.

Overall, Product Hunt can provide a lot of value and requires relatively little time to launch, especially if you are already building something. I would encourage you to consider launching your product on Product Hunt.

Thank you for reading this article. I am an ML Engineer who is unfortunate enough to be an entrepreneur. If you would like to see more tech and entrepreneurship content, please consider following me and subscribing to my notifications.

I also post on Twitter. Check it out!