#AMA# Launched 3 apps on Product Hunt last year, what I learned to get a better result.
Morgan Kung
18 replies
Hello there! My name is Morgan. I founded Gemoo last year and launched it on Product Hunt a few times. It earned a few badges thanks to the help of my teammates, which is very flattering.
After all of this, I realized that Product Hunt is more than just a launch platform; you can think of it as an opera stage where you and your product can perform for a variety of audiences.
Before performing on that stage, you have to prepare a fancy costume, a group of attractive lines, and so on. After the show, you must interact with your audience and answer their questions in order for them to fully comprehend your products and ideas.
It would be extremely frustrating if your product is excellent but is not seen and used more frequently on Product Hunt due to poor preparation, right?
We are a group of artists to some extent, so I’d like to share what I’ve learned with you and connect with you to discuss how to launch successfully on Product Hunt, or anything about how to be a better product maker.
Based on my experience, here are some Dos and Don’ts:
Dos
😄 Set your goal at the very first start
Generate more traffic to your website? More feedback to polish products? Earn badges to help your brand gain social proof. Simply want to interact with more startups and founders?
Set a specific goal before you begin. If you want to get more feedback or traffic, launch on weekdays, especially Wednesday or Thursday; if you need more badges, try weekends when it’s less competitive.
A well-defined goal will direct your efforts in the right direction.
😄 Prepare at least two weeks earlier
Launching on Product Hunt is definitely a marathon, long but inspiring.
Before the race starts, you need to make product videos or prepare pictures to exhibit how awesome your products are. Gifs, by the way, are much more lively and evocative, with a much lower time cost.
You must write a description and tagline, as well as possibly the makers’ comments. You may need to email or DM hunters to schedule a launch day. So many things must be prepared; simply begin as soon as possible.
😄 Categorize products into specific tags
You may not know who your ideal customers are at the first start, but you do know what your product is. It will be helpful to get a badge if you categorize it well and add some specific tags to it.
I would not recommend some hit tags, such as productivity, technology, or something similar, based on my experience. Hit tags are more competitive and general, making it difficult for specific people to determine the worth of your products.
😄 Collect resources as much as possible
Maker resources: connect with more makers in advance through Twitter, Product Hunt, Indie Hackers, and so on. Inviting them to try your product and offer feedback is a good way to get attention.
Social media groups: join FaceBook groups, Slack teams, Discord chat rooms, and subreddits that are related to your products. Ask for feedback and support from these group members. They can be very proactive and suggestive.
Hunters in your fields: If you want to invite hunters to your field, you can find their contact information in the Product Hunt hunters leaderboard. It’s a leaderboard that ranks the best hunters in various categories. (I’ve successfully invited some top hunters; if you want to learn more, please connect with me in twitter to get more tips and tricks.
😄 Prepare some Q&As that may appear
I’ve created a document outlining what my Product Hunt users might ask me and how I should respond, which saved me from a mountain of work on launch day.
You’ll be on the Product Hunt page for nearly a day, so it’s a good idea to practice interacting with the audience beforehand.
Don’ts
🙁 Don’t buy upvotes or ask for upvotes
Product Hunt is very strict about these rules, so don’t try to challenge them or your product will be severely penalized.
Some people may offer to buy upvotes; however, I recommend that you ignore this because it is completely unfair, and once your competitors notice it, it will be exposed, and Product Hunt will punish your products more harshly.
Products will be successful if they are good enough.
🙁 Expect too much on Product Hunt
Product Hunt is more popular than ever, so competition will be fierce.
Aside from that, there are numerous options available, such as AngelList, BetaList, and so on. If you’re interested, I’ll write another post about the platforms we launched and were successful with.
🙁 Only have Plan A
Plan B or Plan C are required before launch day.
What if none of the hunters are interested in hunting your product? What if the hunter you connected with didn’t show up on time? What if the gallery image isn’t working out?
I’ve been through it all, so I wish you could have more contingency plans in place. Oh, and for the pre-hunt, you could preview your launch here to see if it looks good on the page.
🙁 Invite everyone to support you
Some posts may believe that I should solicit support from everyone, including my teammates or colleagues. It could, however, be incorrect.
If one of your teammates is new to Product Hunt, their profile may have a red balloon. If they decide to support you, the quality of your audience may suffer, and Product Hunt may downvote your product.
You can invite them to try and provide feedback via email or direct message; after all, all ideas are welcome at this stage.
All of the above ideas are based on my personal experience; they may be inspirational or exhaustive; if you want to discuss or correct them, please connect and chat with me at any time. BTW, all screenshots in my article are created with Gemoo Snap.
Looking forward to chatting with more founders.
By the way here is my blog site https://gemoo.com/author/morgan/, feel free to ask me anything related here or contact me via my blog.
Replies
LisaKim@lisakim
Maimovie
Hey Morgan! Thanks for the info. How can I get to the Hunter Leaderboard? Can't seem to find it anywhere on the site.
Share
FocuSee
@mycelebs_elle I just made a image guide for this, if you are interested, please check it out at https://app.gemoo.com/share/home...
Hope it helps!
FocuSee
Hi @mycelebs_elle, It's a good question. I believe many new users on Product Hunt are interested in knowing this. You can search for hunter by using the search bar in the top right corner of the Product Hunt website.
Here are the actionable steps:
1. Click on the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner of the page.
2. Type 'Hunter' into the search bar and hit enter.
3. You will see three tabs above the search results then. Select the 'People' tab.
4. This will show you all users whose description of their profile includes the word 'hunter'. They are usually people who are happy to help others launch their new products.
5. Then follow them and find their contact information on their profile pages. Reach out to them and ask for their help in launching your side project.
@inc_gemoo Oh, I see. Thank you for the visual guide. Helped a lot!
FocuSee
@mycelebs_elle You're welcome!
FocuSee
@elly_cho Hi Elly, to be honest, compared to Product Hunt, the impact of releasing products on BetaList and AngelList is relatively poor.
Therefore, whether to publish on these two platforms depends on the stage of your product. My product was still in the MVP stage, and we wanted to get as much user feedback as possible to improve it. So for us, having released our products on BetaList and AngelList is definitely worth doing.
@inc_gemoo That's great, we're in the MVP phase of our product right now, so it's really helpful to hear you talk about it specifically. Thank you so much!!
CafeSocial.io Mixer
Thanks for sharing!
Edworking
Quite informative! Thanks for this!
FocuSee
@edworking You're welcome David. It's my pleasure.
What is the procedure for accessing the Hunter Top 10 list?
Very enlightening! That's really helpful, so thank you!
FocuSee
@simonvecoli Thanks for your kind words. I'm glad it's helpful to you.
Conversa - Videos That Talk back
Super helpful, thanks for taking the time to provide these insights Morgan!