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✍️ How first time founders reached #2 Product of the Day on Product Hunt - Part 2: Preparation
- Authors
- Name
- MyFocusSpace
- @MyFocusSpace1
After connecting with other people who have launched on Product Hunt as well and you made a plan on launching your own product, it's time for the preparation.
Prepare submission
Make a checklist with all the information you need for the submission.
Source: Ali's tempalte on notionstartup.com
The product submission itself looks like this
Source: MyFocusSpace post on Product Hunt
Link
Links to your product landing page & App download pages - https://www.myfocusspace.com/
Name of the product
Simply the name of the product (max. 40 characters) - Example: MyFocusSpace
Tagline
Your product's short description (max. 60 characters) - Example: Accountability on-demand for remote workers.
Topics
Thumbnail
Recommended size: 240x240 JPG, PNG, GIF. Max size: 2MB - We used the below GIF
Images
Prepare 2-5 images to showcase your product. The resolution of your images should be 1270 x 760.
Youtube Video
Showcase your product with a video (Optional) it must be uploaded on YouTube. - https://youtu.be/7J_rveFcdnY
Description
Your product description (max 260 characters) - Example: MyFocusSpace, a virtual co-working space changes the way we work remotely. You can find an accountability buddy to work with at any time, anywhere, on-demand.
Promo code for PH community
The Product Hunt community loves being appreciated for being early adopters, so a 20% discount throughout the day on the paid version can bring a lot of traffic. - We gave a 1 month free.
Social Media
You can now add your company’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Medium, and AngelList profiles to your post! They’ll show up right on the sidebar, and if you have any open job listings on AngelList add those as well. 😉🚀 - We used the following Medium Articles
Our Twitter account - https://twitter.com/MyFocusSpace1
Maker's Comment
Find a hunter
If you just "hunt"/post a product to product hunt yourself from your own account, it goes into a moderation queue. At this point, a product hunt moderator needs to approve the post in order for it to appear on the homepage. Sometimes this happens within minutes, sometimes in 24 hours and sometimes never at all.
A "power user" of product hunt can post products and have them instantly go live on the homepage.
Here is the link to top hunters that are out there:
https://yvoschaap.com/producthunt/
Advantages of launching with a hunter
- additional trust
- the product is featured directly on the front-page**
Disadvantages of launching with a hunter
- the initial boost is not as it used to be*
- time-consuming to find the right one
- some of the big hunters also have a fee
- In the past, all the hunter's followers received an email notification that a new product was being launched, but not anymore.
** "Since a lot of products are published throughout the day, each product starts in the "NEWEST" section, which is reached from the home page, but of course, is much less visited than the home page itself. So you have to manage to get enough relevance to be listed on the home page and the limited spots." Michael Sieb explained in his article.
Our hunter was Robleh Jama.
Tip: Whenever you contact your hunter, make a presentation video where you present your product. We found this approach the best one. See our example here.
Ship
Alternatively, many people just submit their own products themselves nowadays and my current understanding is that if you pay (or utilize the free trial) of Product Hunt's Ship offering, which allows you to schedule a time to post.
Then, I believe that using this method lets you skip the moderation queue and have your post go instantly live on the homepage, so just using PH Ship may be the simplest solution. You would likely want to make your post soon after midnight PST, as this is the time at which the PH daily leaderboard resets. Product Hunt also made their scheduling functionality free for all users - so it may not be necessary to pay for the Ship product.
Bonus Tip:
You can use this tool to plan out engaging comments and how your screenshots etc will look: https://previewhunt.com - the activity in the comments is also one of the factors that affect Product Hunt's ranking.
Be active on Product Hunt
*Source: MyFocusSpace Analytics*
Make a research of what communities you can engage with and be active on them before your launch
- Slack Groups
- Discord Groups
- Facebook GroupsProduct Hunt Exchange Community
Product Hunt Romania; Romanian Startups - for Romanian teams
Product Hunt upvote buy or sell
Product Hunt 🚀 Upvote Promotion 🔥 Exchange Club
🚀 Product Hunt 🔥 Upvote & Promotion
- Indie Groups
https://www.indiehackers.com/group/product-hunt
- Reddit groups
https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/
https://www.reddit.com/r/startup/
https://www.reddit.com/r/indiehackers/
https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProductHunters/
Tip: DM members of these groups who you engaged with and ask for support and feedback. Never ask for upvotes.
If you have any questions or suggestions, I'd be happy to talk to you about Product Hunt, your launch, or anything else I've mentioned here. Just feel free to send me an email: vio@myfocusspace.com
Check the Part 3 of the article which is about the Launch Day ➡️
End Note
Other articles related to MyFocusSpace Product Hunt Launch
✍️ How first-time founders reached #2 Product of the Day on Product Hunt - Part 1: Planning
✍️ How first-time founders reached #2 Product of the Day on Product Hunt - Part 3: Day of Launch
Read good articles - Resources
- Article by Michael Sieb - https://typestudio.co/blog/product-hunt-learnings/
- Article by Gene Maryushenko - https://www.indiehackers.com/post/6-116-from-my-product-launch-no-audience-here-is-how-full-breakdown-8a00ba7992
- Ali Rashidy - https://www.notionstartup.com/
- Alex Circei - https://hackernoon.com/how-to-get-in-top-5-products-on-product-hunt-and-get-in-their-newsletter-2a2ac20e471f
- Product Hunt - https://blog.producthunt.com/how-to-launch-on-product-hunt-7c1843e06399