Lessons from hunting 51 products on Product Hunt 🚀

Here are my top tips to those who are planning to launch their product on Internet's biggest product discovery platform: Product Hunt

Hey everyone, How’re you all?

I’m feeling ecstatic and also nervous sending this newsletter edition because with this push today, I’m publicly committing to shipping new editions each Tuesday. That’s a huge commitment. But I like public accountability as it raises the stakes so here we go. Why haven’t I been publishing often? I could say I have been busy lately.

But the real vulnerable truth is I’ve been stuck in the default mode as a ‘consumer’ aka ‘lurker’ reading other people’s work, but haven’t been putting in reps as a creator with a deep desire to publish more. You get that. right?

Today, I’ve rekindled that desire .. mainly because I’m tired of not creating (which I love) and helping people (which I also love) by adding value through my content (either curated or created by me!).

First, I have a huge announcement:

I will just publish all of my written work through this newsletter simply called “KP’s Column’. Lenny’s Substack is an inspiration to me (although he is miles ahead of the game :))

My goal is to write these in simple words like I’m talking to a friend and create content here that I wish existed when I was getting started. I will strive to fill up each edition with one core insight, one key learning or one valuable playbook on the themes close to my heart: building in public, no-code, content-led growth, community building etc. I hope you’ll stick around, have fun and learn along with me but I understand if you’d rather unsubscribe to this new experiment. (link is at the bottom of this email)

Let’s get to it. Today’s key learning is about Product Hunt 🚀

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First off, a little background on my Product Hunt experience. I’ve been a long time supporter and fan of PH over several years. My account is listed as a top hunter on Product Hunt with over 3,400+ points, 8,900+ followers on PH and a total of 51 products hunted so far!

• Won the Golden Kitty for Best Community Member of the year 2021! 🏆

• Helped tons of startups reach a top 5 spot, helped 5 clinch Product Of The Day spot, a few reach Product Of The Week and Month and assisted 1 reach Product Of The Year (yes, that’s Softr!)

Over these years, I’ve developed a strong intuition and learned insights on what is likely to work and what doesn’t.

Here are my top 10 tips for a successful Product Hunt launch:

1. Create a PH account for yourself and all your team members at least 1 month ahead (it’s just a good practice if you’re a PH regular)

2. Schedule the launch for 12:01 am PT (Product Hunt refreshes their feed at 12am PT)

3. Hustle to get at least 20-30 upvotes by 5 am PT (ask your friends, email people you trust and will vouch for your product genuinely!)

4. When asking your friends/close circle, aim to get reviews, comments and upvotes (descending order of importance) which anecdotally have a higher value per PH algorithm

   1. Upvote + Comment + Review

   2. Upvote + Comment

   3. Upvote

5. Segment your email audience into 2-3 batches and email them through the day (so they don't all upvote within the same window which might seem spammy)

6. Tweet out a link to your product & get people to upvote

7. Please do things that don't scale and personally DM 5-10 high profile Twitter accounts in your niche to RT or preferably quote RT the main launch tweet

8. Pick a Tuesday/Thursday for the launch (anecdotally works better)

9. Respond to every single comment with 1 line of a meaningful reply (within a short time)

10. Given all things equal, here is how I’d rank the quality of a comment from your audience (least valuable to PH to most valuable)

    1. Compliment

       1. (ex: “Congrats on the launch, you’re awesome.”)

    2. Statement

       1. (ex: “As someone who constantly forgets to buy crypto each month, I’ve enjoyed how easy it is to set up and automate my crypto purchases with your recurring payments feature. ”)

    3. Statement + Thoughtful Question

       1. (ex: “As someone who constantly forgets to buy crypto each month, I’ve enjoyed how easy it is to set up and automate my crypto purchases with your recurring payments feature. What is a new feature on your roadmap you are most excited about in the next 6 months?”)

Here’s a Notion doc that has all of the above plus some additional reading. Check it out and bookmark it if you like.

Now, what is 1 tip you’d like to add? Something that worked for you or you heard work well for someone else? Reply in the comments or share it with me over email.

Note: These are just personal insights and learnings (don’t take it as gospel) distilled from my experience as a top hunter.

Thank you for reading and giving me a piece of your attention!

PS: If you are planning a huge Product Hunt launch for your product and need my help as a hunter, hit reply and let me know. Or reach out to me directly on my DMs on Twitter. I get pitched a lot but I hand-pick 4-5 launches a month where I can genuinely add value and make sure I amplify those across my 40,000+ audience and growth channels.