What mistakes we made on Product Hunt and how to avoid them

On August 26, 2015, we (Rubrain.com - the catalog of the best Russian freelancers. The new project of the former top managers on Fl.ru) was published on Product Hunt . And although we scored a sufficient number of votes to enter the TOP-10, we took the 15th place. In this article, I want to talk about what rake we stepped on, how to get the maximum effect from the site and what to expect from Product Hunt in general.



Product Hunt is a community of people interested in new products and technologies. According to the legend, entering the TOP-10 (even better in the TOP-3 days or TOP-10 weeks) at the end of the voting day allows you to get into the e-mail newsletter of the next day and get press attention, investment proposals and world-wide fame. Voting takes place after 0:00 and before 23:59 Pacific time (US West Coast: San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, etc .; -11 hours difference with Moscow). To participate and vote, you need a Twitter account.
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Before you begin work on preparing your project for publication on Product Hunt, analyze which services receive the maximum number of votes and attention. You may find that every kind of aggregator and catalog is a success, as well as really cool products like Tesla, Nebia Shower, HyperLapse, etc. The first place in the list of " 50 Most Upvoted Products " is the Startup Stash project. It is his story promotion on Product Hunt, you will find when searching for success stories. Enter * in the search field on the Product Hunt website and you will see the list of products with the most votes.


What projects are published on Product Hunt:

• Services: Uber, AirBnb and their ilk. You must have a landing page describing this particular service. The company's page with a description of all its products and services will not work.
• Mobile applications: iOS, Android and Windows Phone. The link can lead to both the download page and the landing page.
• Computer programs
• Active campaigns (Pre-Launch) to raise funds: your project on Kickstarter, Indiegogo or Tilt.com
• Games
• Podcasts
• Books: UX-design, entrepreneurship, startups. Since these books have a rather narrow target audience, publishing on PH helps them to gain fame among Central Asia.

What projects are NOT published on Product Hunt:

• T-shirts and other small items
• Non-community links
• Services

How is the vote
The site administration does not disclose the list of criteria. According to our observations, the position in the rating is affected by:

• Number of votes. No comments.
• Who votes. A voice from a regular community member is valued above the novice voice. Moreover, a voice from a newly created Twitter account will lower your rating.
• From where come. In the rules of Product Hunt it is strictly stated that “You cannot vote on a project”. Obviously, it is impossible to track the implementation of this rule in all languages ​​in real time. In this regard, Product Hunt keeps track of whether the voter has come to your project page via a direct link or from the main page of Product Hunt. Voting by direct link will lower your rating.
• Number of comments. In the description of your project, ask community members to ask you questions. Comment on all the answers, without exception, and ask counter-questions. Offer prizes for testing your product.
• Exclusivity. Projects with asterisks attract more attention. Product Hunt Exclusives .
• The dynamics of voting. Controversial moment. Hunter, who published our project, recommended 10 am San Francisco (Pacific time. -11 hours difference with Moscow) as the most successful time for publication. We published at 0:15 (11 am Moscow time) in order to reach users in Russia as much as possible. Most of the projects included in the TOP-10, also published after midnight.

Keep in mind that the site is constantly evolving and the rules are changing. If you read this article a year after its publication, it is probably outdated. Spend a couple of weeks on the site and explore how everything works at the moment.

Our mistakes:
1. Rubrain.com, in the form in which it was published, is not very suitable for Product Hunt. "More of a service and not a product" - Eric Willis (moderator of Product Hunt). It was clear in advance that we definitely would not get into the TOP-3.
2. We did not know that you can not publish anywhere a direct link to the page of our project on Product Hunt. Not a single article had a word about it. Rather, the authors urged to publish direct links and not to force users to look for the service themselves in the list on the main page. The same is said in the official rules: “You can’t ask for upvotes. We strongly recommend not to do this.
3. We did not devote a sufficient amount of time to preparing for publication and did not participate in the life of start-up communities.

And now about what to do.

Step-by-step instruction

1. Sign up for Twitter if you don't have an account.
2. Sign up for Product Hunt.
3. Participate in the life of the community for several months. After registration, you will only have the opportunity to vote for projects (you cannot comment and publish anything). Therefore, comment on the tweets of hunters, moderators and project creators, thank for the good findings, retweet @ProductHunt and founder of the @rrhoover project, download and test products as often as possible, go to offline meetings , subscribe to LIVE Chat and ask questions, create your collections ( a list of products you like and recommend). One day, your collection can get into the Product Hunt newsletter and you will get recognition among the hunters. In this way, you will attract attention to yourself and to your project of the active participants of Product Hunt, whose voices are valued above the votes of novices. However, remember, someone might have the idea to publish your project without your knowledge. We recommend on the site and in all social services. networks add the inscription "Please don't hunt us yet".
4. At the same time, develop your account and network of dating on Hacker News and Reddit . To publish a project on Reddit ( Example of publication) you need at least a “karma” of 10. It’s impossible to earn on the day of publication on Product Hunt. And if you are not known among Ycombinator startups, the publication on Hacker News will go unnoticed.
5. Prepare a list of themed communities on LinkedIn and Facebook. Participate in the life of 5-10, so that on the day of your publication on Product Hunt, your publication about this event in the community does not look like outright spam. A sample list of groups on Facebook, LinkedIn and Reddit in the Workbook .
6. Register on the Beta List and Startup List . Start collecting e-mail subscribers.
7. Make a separate beautiful landing page for Product Hunt users like yoursite.com/?ref=producthunt . In this way, you will increase community loyalty to your product and track the PH effect.
8. Prepare a description and screenshots
   
   Product name - no more than 25 characters
   Title (Tagline) - no more than 60 characters
   Such restrictions are not accidental. You should be easy to tweet.
   Prepare several options to choose a hunter. He has more experience and can choose the most appropriate title.
   
   In addition, make a lengthy description of the reasons for the creation of this product, the functional, future plans. Include links to social. network. And immediately after the publication of the project, ask @ProductHunt to give you commenting rights. Post a detailed description in the first comment. Our example:
   
   
9. Prepare a unique offer. The chance that you will get Product Hunt Exclusives is very small, but worth a try. Projects with an asterisk get more attention and gain more votes.
   
   
10. Check the speed of response of your site. Make sure it is less than 2 seconds. See how you can increase it.
11. Make a list of friends / relatives who have a Twitter account. Additional support will not hurt you.
    If you, like me, have a large number of friends on Facebook, you can find people with a Twitter account via Yahoo mail:
    
    1. Register a Yahoo Mail Account
    
    2. Import your friends' contact information.
    
    
    3. Connect Yahoo to your Twitter account
    
    
    4. Enter the result into the Workbook .
    
    5. Ask them to register for Product Hunt and vote for other projects for a while. Thus, gain "weight" in the community.
    
12. Find a hunter with a lot of followers. Each follower will receive a notification of a new publication. Until recently, only moderators and a limited circle of people with a lot of “karma” could publish projects. Now any maker can do this (“maker” is the creator of a project published on Product Hunt.). However, the right to publish on the first page of the site must also be earned. All projects published by the makers, with the number of subscribers close to zero, fall into Upcomming instead of Featured.
    
    And they never get out of there. If there are Makers among your friends, do not be tempted and do not ask them to publish your project.
    
    Our project was published by Jack Smith, who is on the list of TOP hunters and has previously published projects of similar subjects.
    
    
13. 2 days before the vote, write to your friends a reminder that soon you will need their help. Product Hunt rules prohibit asking for a vote on a project, so all your messages should not contain a call to vote and a direct link to your project on Product Hunt. This will lower your project in rating or lead to its removal. Therefore, instead of “To everyone who voted for us a beer as a gift!” Send “We were published today on Product Hunt [link to the home page of the site], we would be grateful if you could spread this information and participate in the discussion.” For the most faithful friends, make step-by-step instructions on how they can vote for your project on Product Hunt and do not omit it in the ranking. Example of instructions in the Workbook .
14. Post at 0:10 on San Francisco.
15. On day X, post news about your appearance on Product Hunt on Facebook, LinkedIn, Hacker News and Reddit. Answer all comments.
16. With a frequency of several hours, publish in social networks information about your current place in the rating, calling to test your project, take part in commenting and a link to the main page of the Product Hunt website. And a request to share this post with those who may be interested. So you can bring to vote friends of friends.
    
    Publishing example:
    
    
    If your product will be popular, Product Hunt will help with the dissemination of information about it.
    
    
17. Join Maker Hunt . Slack chat for product makers on Product Hunt
18. Quickly respond to all comments and emails. And also personally thank all who voted for you.

Good luck!

Notes
1. Watch your server work. The PH effect is much stronger than the Habr effect.
2. Make sure that no one asks for you to vote on your behalf (project staff, friends, relatives, ...). Your project can be blocked and deleted from the site.
3. Do not feed the trolls. Be polite, take criticism and try to find value in it.

After publication
The life of your product hunt project does not end after voting day. Ask to add your project to thematic " Collections " and thus increase its visibility among users. Once the “Collection” with your project can get into the Product Hunt mailing list and you will receive a new free (!) Traffic.


When contacting reporters, indicate that your project was published on Product Hunt. In this case, they will give him more attention.

Some useful links (in English):
1. Product Hunt FAQ
2. Product Hunt Exclusives
3. Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré's (The Moderator of Product Hunt).
4. Success stories

If you have questions that I did not answer in this article, feel free to ask them.