Product Hunt: A Winning Strategy That No One Asked For (2024)
Table of Contents Show
Dear SaaS founders,
The typical framework for an article like this is a breakdown of what Product Hunt is, how to go about launching, case studies, and a bunch of jargon and filler content that forces you to read, all the way to the bottom of the page.
This is not me. I’m all about “that action”, and we’re going to start with the TLDR. Yes, there will be case studies and links to sources, but we’ll put that at the bottom. This way you get the juice first, and the squeeze after (if you desire).
Save This Reddit Post As Your Product Hunt Launch Guide
The information in this article will be as relevant as any article that you’ll find on the internet. It includes sources from top launches, and top contributors, and is packed full of launch resources and opinions to help you successfully launch on Product Hunt, as well, as teach you how to consistently drive traffic to your SaaS brand website. Don’t let a Reddit article like this go to waste. Bookmark this, and share it with others!
You’ve gotta be fucking kitten me
How To Win On Product Hunt:
Choose your fighter Hunter — A “hunter” is [the] Product Hunt user who submits your product to the platform. Their reputation and reach will impact your launch’s visibility and success. For example, if I post on Reddit with 100,000+ Karma, and someone else posts with only 50,000, or 10,000 karma, the reach is much more likely to be far less. Not just because of Karma, but because I have a history of publishing credible material. Work with someone credible during your launch!
Don’t launch on PH, until you have a product worth pitching to a hunter!
Build a launch team — Just like Reddit, your launch team will help you with producing early engagement and upvotes. Your launch is [more likely] to fail if you cannot get traction in the early minutes of your launch. Here’s how I would do it if I were to launch a new product in 2024:
Set up a simple landing page as a “hub” for anyone who expresses interest in your idea.
Set up a newsletter to capture names, numbers, and emails. If you really want to have a killer launch SMS campaigns have a super high engagement rate!
Reach out to friends, family, and colleagues who you’ve built a rapport with. Tell them in (X) months you expect to launch your product, and that “you would really appreciate it if they were part of your launch ceremony”. It really works to drive home the idea that it would mean a lot to you if they participated in some good old emotional tug!
If you have partners, kindly request that they do the same. Squeeze every last drop out of your inner circle, who knows this could be worth a solid group of 50–100 loyal fans clamoring for success on launch day!
Provide regularly scheduled updates. If you’re 6–8 months out, 1x per month is fine. As you get 2 months out, increase that frequency to 2x in the month, and 3–4 times as weeks turn into days!
Work to squeeze your personal network dry. Even if it’s only 10 people, that’s more than zero. Follow up with each lead, until you have confirmed sign-up. It only gets more exciting from here, so take the early win!
How to Create Hype For Your Product Hunt Launch
It’s time to start creating FOMO! If you don’t have your product launched yet, start prioritizing your launch strategy. This is your opportunity to create a serious launch team. Your landing page should be a place people can go to get updates through content, roadmap updates, and waitlist numbers. Here’s a website I found that helps you create waitlists that also launched on Product Hunt. Even adding a chat feature like a WhatsApp group, Discord, or Slack Channel could help get people excited.
Here are some ideas to keep people you invited engaged:
Write weekly posts about progress. These moments can be about success or setbacks. Being human helps people relate, and root for you even more.
Take photos, or short videos of you working, or with your team. Maybe some of you “touching grass” ;).
Give updates on waitlist growth. “Today, we reached (10, 100, 1000) members on our waitlist”! People want to be early adopters, and they want to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
Show a list of milestones related to features implemented, versus what needs to be completed by the launch date.
Again, even if you only have a few people, set up the process to have this done at the end of every month. Don’t skip out on it, no matter how boring it can be. If you can outsource this to a partner, have them do it, but you have to let people know that you’re still alive!
How to Scale Your Launch Team
Let’s assume you have a small network, or a large network of people you don’t actually know (cough, Linkedin). This aspect of your launch will prove to be the most important aspect of your launch. In reality, most people assume that you need to be building up traction for your launch while building your product, but in reality, these activities do not need to be concurrent. I’ll work on an entire section about this later.
Here are [the] activities that you and others need to be doing within your Product Hunt account.
How can I gain followers on Product Hunt?
“Work to gain followers on Product Hunt by participating in discussions and trying to make valuable replies, upvote products, and comments on them. You can also ask and answer questions and start discussions yourself. Engaging regularly in relevant conversations, and stories and giving support to startups will eventually increase your profile presence. The main key point is to be active on the product hunt and engage as much as possible.” — Ghulam Abbas
How can I earn points on Product Hunt?
“You can earn points by actively contributing across Product Hunt. Contributing includes: posting products, creating discussions, and engaging in conversations. You’ll gain points when other community members upvote, cheer, or in any way appreciate your contribution.” — Jake Crump
Join the best literature-driven community platforms.
Product Hunt (obviously)
Reddit
Quora
X (Twitter)
Linkedin
Facebook Communities
Slack Communities
Tumblr
Contribute to these platforms daily.
If there is a set of tasks that work more than anything online, is contributing. Provide links and resources to your statements, and help others solve problems. This should help you drive a consistent 10,000–20,000 visitors to your SaaS landing page every single month. Then you can work on optimizing your landing page to convert well. Here are some more examples.
If you have a top 2, or 3 platforms (I do), then focus on them. However, you want to treat your waitlist landing page as an actual product. What better way to learn how to optimize your SaaS sales funnel in the future than by practicing on a single landing page that gives you analytics on visitors, bounce rate, and much more? I wrote about different ways to optimize your SaaS sales funnel in a recent publication.
The Biggest Myth About Launching On Product Hunt
At least 90% of founders that I have met fall into the trap of needing to launch on Product Hunt the moment they have launched their product. This isn’t a concurrent exercise by default. If you have the time, team, and resources to do this, then yes, use all of the information above to launch with your team, and I ensure you’ll have a fantastic success.
If you’re like me, just an average Joe Jay with the skills to design or build their own products, chances you aren’t a marketer. Everything I learned about marketing was by force-feeding important information, and many months of trial and error. I learned a lot, and I love sharing how to market organically with other founders, but in reality, most people will not even dedicate the time to marketing, because it is such a foreign task to us.
So here are your options, ranked in order of accessibility (IMHO):
Build Hype > Build SaaS > Launch on Product Hunt
Build SaaS > Build Hype > Launch on Product Hunt
Build SaaS + Build Hype > Launch on Product Hunt
(1) I place building hype before building your SaaS because it’s more accessible if you aren’t a technical founder, but still want to get in the SaaS space. If you have a waitlist of 10,000 potential users, and you’ve built an active community around your idea, it makes the sale much easier for any agency that can build your app. It makes the sale easier for a technical co-founder, or if you’re raising an angel round for your idea with friends and family.
(2) I place building SaaS before building hype in slot #2 for technical founders who have the skills to start building now. Although, the entirety of the SaaS community will not all be technical founders. If you are a technical SaaS founder, you have won the lottery, you just may not realize it. Now, you need to switch your priorities to building hype. All of the same rules apply, but in this scenario, you don’t have to launch on Product Hunt immediately. You could delay your launch for another 6 months and build a lot of excitement around your Alpha or Beta launch. You could even have users actively using your app before you launch on Product Hunt, which I am sure if done correctly, can get a lot of your fans over to Product Hunt to upvote, comment, and leave reviews for your product!
(3) Building your SaaS App while building hype is reserved for those who are luminary (convincing), or possess the financial resources (also convincing) to bring on a team. There are very bright and influential entrepreneurs in this community. Those who have the capability to persuade on just ideas alone. That doesn’t always mean that this person comes with the capability to execute and deliver upon these ideas. The other scenario is funding, perhaps you can hire the resources to help you market, while you build, and vice-versa. Perhaps this person isn’t technical at all and completely outsources the work. This exists as well. If this isn’t you, don’t worry, this is not a ranking list, just a list of possibilities.
How to Post on Product Hunt
For a full breakdown of the requirements, you can also view them directly on the Product Hunt Resources guide. Originally authored by Jake Crump, I decided to include a few pieces here for readers who don’t want to exit out of the browser.
The guide:
To post a product on Product Hunt, you’ll need a personal account. Newly created accounts will need to complete the onboarding process before gaining access to post. This is a great time to familiarize yourself with Product Hunt and prepare for your launch!
Feel free to post your own product! It’s not necessary to have someone else post it for you. In fact, posting it yourself gives you full control over the launch.
After logging in, click the “Post” button in the top right and submit the product’s URL to begin. Throughout the posting process, you will be able to see a preview of what the various aspects of the post will look like. Each post should include the:
URL — Direct link to the product page (avoid links to press or blogs) as the primary link and then app store links. You can add social links separately after submitting the post.
Name of the product — Only the product’s name, no description or emojis (unless it is a part of the name) in this part.
Tagline — Very short description of the product (make it catchy!)
Topics — It’s best to include only a few that most strongly relate to the product.
Download link — If the product has additional links such as to the App Store, Google Play, etc. you can add them here.
Thumbnail — It is best to use an image with square dimensions. We recommend 240x240. You can use a GIF for your thumbnail, but it will need to be under 3MB and not too ‘flashy’. GIFs will only animate while hovering over a post. GIFs with strobing effects, quick cuts, unreadable text, etc. are not recommended and may be edited by the Product Hunt team.
Pricing tag — The community needs to be better informed about the price of your product. Broadly, the three options are: free, paid, and paid (with a free trial or plan). Select the option that correctly describes your product’s pricing status.
Status — If the product is still in beta, or not fully released yet, you can select the option to indicate that it is not available yet.
Gallery — The recommended size for images in the gallery is 1270x760. You can upload multiple images to the gallery at once. Once the images have been uploaded, you can also drag and drop to re-order them. The gallery will need 2+ images before it is viewable.
YouTube video — For videos, only YouTube links are supported. We recommend uploading your YouTube video ahead of your launch and confirming that it is not set to private. This ensures it will be added correctly to the gallery. They will also need to be the full URL. Shorted links will not load.
Interactive Story or Demo — ScreenSpace lets you create simple, choose-your-own-adventure “Stories” that help customers understand complex products. Visit ScreenSpace to build one. They work great for demos, case studies, roadmaps, and more. See it in action here. When you’re done, generate your unique Product Hunt link. This link can be added to your gallery (similar to a YouTube link) for free when you’re submitting your product for launch.
Description — This is where you can give more information about what the product is and/or does within 260 characters.
Promo — If you’d like to offer a promo code for the Product Hunt community, you can add it here.
Makers — You can select the option to include yourself as a maker during the posting process. Be sure to add the makers by their Product Hunt username so they can join the conversation!
Product’s Twitter account — If you have a branded/company Twitter account for the product, you can add in a link to that account here.
First comment — Be sure to kick off the conversation with a comment about the product!
Launch/Schedule — If you’re ready for the post to go live right away, you can select the ‘Launch Now’ option. The site operates on PST so your post will go live on the site according to PST. You can find more information about the scheduling option here.
If the product hasn’t been submitted before and meets the community guidelines, you will be highlighted as the hunter for that product.
Please note: The Hunter’s followers do not receive e-mail notifications of the post. They used to, but they have not for several years now. The Maker’s followers will receive an e-mail notification if the post ends up on the homepage.
More Product Hunt Articles That Do A Better Job Than I
Below I have provided a list of resources that inspired me while writing, as well as other articles that I think can contribute to your launch overall.
Promoting On Product Hunt Post Launch
There is a post-launch feature to pay for ad space in Product Hunt, which totally makes sense. If this is the first article that you’ve read from me, then let me make my position clear on paid ads.
They suck. Tons of bot clicks at the onset. You have to wait days for “algorithms to update” and pick the best audience for you. Yes, you can be successful with ad campaigns, but I would rather scale up a team of organic marketers who have learned how to market based on the knowledge provided in my latest e-book “The Growth Checklist”. At least this way I know that each person that I hire is capable of producing 10,000–20,000 visitors to my site each, and additional article creation and SEO targeting will eventually obtain exponentially within 3–6 months. I recommend that you take that approach if you don’t plan on raising money, but if you are planning to raise it, the advertisement option on Product Hunt is a great place to start!
If you are looking for an amazing digital marketing partner, I would reach out to my friend Nate Racina at StratDev. They’re an amazing company based out of Beverly Hills, California that provides digital growth services, generating over $145M in revenue for clients (growing!) over the past year, with budgets of only $4M. Just let them know that “Jay from 24 Hour Designs” sent you!
Nate Racina — StratDev Digital Marketing Agency
Conclusion (For Now)
This is all I have to write at the moment. I’ll be honest this article was inspired by a fellow Redditor for respectfully calling me out for being too surface-level, which I respect. So here you go u/hexadecimalReddit ;)!
If you enjoyed this article please do one of the following actions:
Share this with a fellow SaaS founder, or soon-to-be SaaS founder who’s preparing for a Product Hunt Launch
Save & Bookmark this post. I want it to be a legitimate resource for you!
Start building hype for your launch. You can do this by purchasing a copy of my marketing e-book ($49). It’s backed by a lifetime warranty. I’m overly confident in what I know is working for me, and believe it can work for you! If you don’t have success with it, you get your money back.
About Me
I’m the founder of 24 Hour Designs, a design agency helping entrepreneurs design and build their disruptive ideas. I take great pleasure in helping people succeed! I’ve been a designer for about 11+ years, and I have built many products of my own. I have failed many times because all I knew was design. I was able to pay for development and burn budgets before marketing. It’s for this reason that I took the path I did to learn marketing, so I can ensure success (early on) for founders who come my way. Who knows, maybe I will do it for myself down the line. I experimented with a few ideas via Reddit, it did quite well haha.
Thank you for reading! I’m looking forward to your feedback. If any updates are required, or additional resources should be added, please don’t hesitate to let me know. This is why I love Reddit!
Find us on your favorite platforms
We also wrote this article, along with other similar ones on the following platforms:
Follow us on whichever platform you prefer!
Thank you so much for reading.
