#business
# [[Epistemic status]]
#shower-thought #to-digest
# Related
- [[Business/Entrepreneurship/Producthunt to revive the flame]]
- [[Business/Entrepreneurship/Launching]]
- [[Business/Entrepreneurship/Time optimisation]]
- [[Business/Entrepreneurship/Founder cheatsheet]]
- [[Business/Entrepreneurship/Hiring/If you work hard on an interesting problem, people will come]]
# TODO
> [!TODO] TODO
# How to be number one on ProductHunt
**You should have measurable goals that you can work towards and evaluate your launch against.** To ensure the best chance of success with your ProductHunt launch, it is important to have measurable goals that you can use to evaluate your launch and to track your progress.
**Schedule your launch for 12:01am Pacific Standard Time (PST).** Posting at 12:01am PST gives people a full 24 hours to view your product. Keep in mind, you can schedule your post up to 1 month ahead.
**Update your profile.** Make sure your profile is updated and includes a product hunt badge on your landing page.
**Encourage people to create accounts beforehand.** This will ensure that your launch has a better chance of success as there is a bot detection system in place for last minute account creations.
**Join Slack groups for product hunt launch.** Join Slack groups that focus on product launch to help spread the word about your product.
**Spam the world during the launch hour.** Use all the available channels to spread the word about your launch.
**Show gratitude after the launch.** Show your appreciation for the people who helped you launch by thanking them.
## Resources from people, THANKS
Successful Product Hunt launch checklist from George Levin, [Hints](https://hints.so)
In March, we released Hints on Product Hunt. The launch day is symbolic, beginning a new chapter where the product meets real users beyond your community. During the 24 hours of the launch, you have a chance to get many new users and tons of feedback and become the product of the day.
Here are some stats from our launch:
- 1249 upvotes
- 37 review
- 968 new users
- 109 comments
Also, we became the product of the day and the second product of the week.
Preparing for the launch, I made three checklists that helped us succeed. Now, I want to share them with you. Here is our Product Hunt page https://www.producthunt.com/products/hints/#hints
# Decide before the launch.
1. The day of the launch. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday are the least competitive. Your chances of becoming #1 get higher, but you get less traffic. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday get you more traffic and new users but fewer chances to become the product of the day. If you want to be the product of the week, you may need more days, so it's better to launch on Tuesday or Wednesday. Launching at the beginning of the month is better if you want to become the product of the month. We launched on Wednesday, March 16th.
2. The time. Most startups launch at 00:00 P.T. to spend 24 hours on the main page. It maximizes the chances of winning, but you need to be awake for all 24 hours of the launch day to maximize the number of upvotes from your community and clients.
3. The hunter. Look for a hunter who will submit your product. One of the founders can do it, but a good hunter gives you the advantage of his network. You can reach out to our hunter Tristan Pollock. If you have a legit product, he will help you.
# Prepare your launch page.
You have to send all elements of your page to your hunter in advance. He will submit your product, set the launch date and time, and send you a private link. You will have plenty of time to check everything and correct it if needed. Here is our product page
1. URL - ideally, your website, but it can be a store link.
2. Title - the name of your startup.
3. Thumbnail - your logo that people will see on the Product Hunt main page. It should be square form under 3MB. I recommend using GIFs as we did cause it will attract more users.
4. Tagline - a short, catchy description of the product 
5. Description - 260 characters description of the product
6. Tags that define your product the best.
7. Gallery - 2+ images 1270x760 describing your product. It's like a mini deck.
8. Video - a short teaser video that you can add as the first slide o the gallery. It will launch when users open your page.
9. First comment - this will be the first comment posted by one of the founders to explain in more detail what you do.
10. Makers. Ask all your team members to create a P.H. account if they don't have one and add them as makers.
Pro tips:
1. You can post a longer tutorial video as part of your welcome post. It will help users to understand how your product works.
2. Links you think are helpful to add to the welcome post. We've added the FAQ and the link to our Slack Community.
3. Check P.H. tutorial for all sizes and dimensions of creative https://help.producthunt.com/en/articles/5473056-how-to-post-main-info
4. Define the deadline when the hunter submits your page for your review. Ideally, you need 2-3 days to check everything.
5. Use HTML to make formatting and linka. I didn’t know that as you can see :)
# One day before the launch.
1. Check that your page looks good. Send your private link to some friends and colleagues to double-check.
2. Prepare a shortlist of friends. Reach out to them in advance and ask for their upvote during the launch day. They must upvote your product as close to 00:00 P.T. as possible. Every day there are about 100 products launched. The top-5 products get most of the upvotes. So these friends will help you to become top-5 at the very beginning. Ideally, it would help if you had friends with 100+ points on Product Hunt. You can find your points in the profile.
Here is the trick I didn't know and wished I knew. You may have more upvotes than everyone but still be not in the top 5 because the product ranking is defined by the total number of points of all voters, not by the number of upvotes. Just check this screen. Product #3 has more upvotes than product #2. Don't look at product #4 as it has the tag "promoted." Promoted products don't participate in the ranking. It's a native ad. Long story short, to become the product of the day, you need people with many points. Bringing five friends with 100+ points is better than 50 new users with 1 point.
3. Create a more extensive list of everyone you can ask for an upvote during the day. Prioritize people with more followers on social media to ask them to post your Product Hunt link. The following 24 hours will be so busy that you may forget someone.
4. Prepare a list of upvoters with many points who upvoted similar products in your category.
5. Prepare engaging and funny posts for your social networks (Twitter, LinkedIn, F.B., I.G., etc.) Prepare some short videos for Instagram. It's better to do it in advance rather than in a rush on the launch day.
6. Prepare the list of groups, forums, and communities you can contact to ask for help.
7. Prepare a newsletter for your users. I just set an automatic email to be launched at 9:00 AM for all our users.
8. Get good sleep cause you need to wake up at 11:50 PM PT to start posting and asking everyone for help.
# The launch day.
1. Remind your friends from the shortlist that they need to upvote. Europeans have an advantage here cause they have a bunch of awakened friends at 00:00 P.T. We have an even more significant advantage cause I live in NYC and have three communities of friends in NYC, the West Coast, and Europe, so we were getting constant support throughout the day.
2. Start asking everyone from your more extensive list to upvote.
3. Post all your prepared text and videos when most of your friends are awake, depending on your geo
4. Open your social media and messengers and ask everyone to upvote your product directly.
5. Reach out to all groups, forums, and communities. Ask the admins first whether it's ok to post. Otherwise, it isn't nice.
6. If you are in the top 5 by the middle of the day and you fight for the product of the day, I recommend the second circle of 1-5. Reach out to everyone who didn't reply and tell them that you are fighting for #1. Ask them to upvote and share your message in their work and friends' chats. This was the most important in our case. We've been #2 all day. When I reached out to all my friends for the second time and explained that every upvote counted and we actually might become the product of the day with their help, we got a huge push and, within one hour, became #1.
7. Enjoy a ton of support from your friends, community, and some fantastic people you didn't know. Enjoy this moment with your team.
8. Go to all your contacts one by one end ask them to support your product. Explain you fight for #1, so every vote counts.
P.S. I want to thank all my friends who helped us before and during the launch. I hope these checklists will help the community to launch successfully on Product Hunt.
# To be continued
Here will be my experience of the second launch, which was made spontaneously. We made the final decision just free days before the launch.
Here is the intro…
