DEV Community

Cover image for 🐱Product Hunt has become pay-to-win 💰, but you should still use it to launch your product 🚀

🐱Product Hunt has become pay-to-win 💰, but you should still use it to launch your product 🚀

Matija Sosic on February 07, 2024

Many of us have been launching on Product Hunt for a while, and more and more folks have started questioning whether the audience there is genuine ...
Collapse
 
nikl profile image
Nik L. • Edited

shit, this is happening now on PH. I have always felt that in recently, PH has become more of a nonsense launch site, which doesn't have actual B2B buyers. It's just a gimmick that markets PH itself and not the actual products.
B2C is difference because the product to value timeframe is very less, and anyone can use it. Now will they also pay, that might be the question. But for B2B, it's just of not very high value anymore.
Niche launch sites are better, as it may contain niche TG, so your product would be visible there in a better manner.

Collapse
 
fmerian profile image
flo merian

I think the point of this story isn’t if you should launch Product Hunt, it’s how.

to quote @matijasos:

we look at Product Hunt as simply a part of the overall launch process.

launch on Product Hunt, keep it simple, and on niche launch sites, too!

Collapse
 
matijasos profile image
Matija Sosic

Exactly. I've talked to quite a few teams that keep postponing their PH launch because they are not "ready" yet, and treat is a singular opportunity that absolutely has to succeed 100%. While in reality, they could've already launched two or three times while waiting.

Thread Thread
 
nikl profile image
Nik L.

Sounds true, what other good platforms are there for launches, or you want to share in another article where you launched your saas, with effectiveness of each channel.

Thread Thread
 
matijasos profile image
Matija Sosic

Happy to share! It's actually in the article already - Reddit and HackerNews are, in my experience only platforms with such a high-reach potential. They are less predictable than PH, but also harder to "game". I would recommend launching on all three continuously, especially Reddit which has so many different subreddits. It is only important to learn and respect the rules of each subreddit not to be marked as spam by the mods.

Linkedin and Twitter are also interesting and can have that "snowball" effect, but that's not something we've had a lot of experience with.

Collapse
 
karadza profile image
Juraj • Edited

The "LinkedIn influencers" that want to boost your PH launch for $$ can be annoying sometimes.
We also had a launch recently, and one of the influencers followed our every post and every post that mentioned us and commented "appreciated the share" like he was one of the makers 😆

Congratz on the successful launch!🥳

Collapse
 
martinovicdev profile image
Boris Martinovic

Great article, extremely useful for anyone that is considering launching their product on ProductHunt.

Collapse
 
vincanger profile image
vincanger

great summary. definitely a good reminder to push your product on all fronts when marketing it

Collapse
 
kiselitza profile image
aldin

Nice read! :)

I'm curious as to, in your experience, how does the traffic look like a couple of days after the launch, compared to pre-launch regular weeks?

I've had a couple of these behind me, usually the hype of the moment gives all the results, and then it's kinda business as usual later on looking at WoW outside the launch periods.

Collapse
 
infomiho profile image
Mihovil Ilakovac • Edited

Nice stuff Matija, it was a fun read. Even though I was more on the dev side of this PH launch, I felt the good vibes from all the upvotes 💯

Collapse
 
fernandezbaptiste profile image
Bap

IMO, Wasp has been, in recent times, leading the way with its product launches. A lot of very cool learnings there. Keep it up Wasp! 👏

Collapse
 
jacksbridger profile image
Jack Bridger

nice one!!

Collapse
 
alina_kostenko profile image
Alina

Thanks for sharing your experience! It was super insightful!

Collapse
 
debadyuti profile image
Deb

I have heard this from several sources. Once the platform become a traffic source it get's like this.

Collapse
 
nathan_tarbert profile image
Nathan Tarbert

Amazing article and insights @matijasos about the state of your most recent Product Hunt launch.
Congrats by the way, onwards and upwards!

Collapse
 
klimd1389 profile image
Dmytro Klimenko

There's a lot of useful information here. I'll bookmark your article to come back to it in the future.

Collapse
 
michalbrzoza111 profile image
Michał Brzoza

Interesting read, thanks for the insights