Is PH a right place to start?
Domas Sakavickas
23 replies
I read many articles in the past few days about successful product launches. Most of them mention Product Hunt as a must-have thing. But what I found interesting is that the majority of those articles do not recommend making PH your first public showcase. You must have some user base beforehand, to help your PH launch be successful.
So my question is how do you guys start to build your subscriber and follower base? Do you use paid channels or try to keep everything free before you start making profits?
My ideas:
- Reddit post (I have struggled with that as most subreddits don't allow any kind of advertising)
- Facebook groups (also, you should be careful what you post)
- Meta ads (to grow your subscriber list)
- Related forums
Replies
Nachiket Patel@patelnachiket
Spell Inspector
Product Hunt is one of the most effective ways to get early users for a product. Companies like Notion, Loom, Zapier, Robinhood, and Front all found their first set of users this way.
Share
I am building a list of supporters on Twitter, by engaging with people. Hopefully that will help!
WeCooked
I think it depends. Product hunt has a thriving community in different areas but I think where it actually strives is in software. Could be any tbf but software over hardware. You need to engage as with any community building techniques but first off think about where your community is.
Product Hunt
Yes, it is!!
Hunted Space
Hi Domas! I do agree with the point that it is good to have some user base before launching on PH, if you are targeting for a bigger results and success.
I also love your ideas about the platforms where you can start promoting your product and grow the user base. Personally, I would also recommend to include Twitter and LinkedIn engagements to grow your community and increase your product awareness.
That is how we did it for Klu.so and now we have the loveliest community of the most amazing people who love and support the product!
And truth be told, once you join the ph community, you will love it and vibe with it!
@sandradjajic thanks for your insights! Twitter is not so popular in my region, I always forget about it 😄 need to fix that!
Also, just had a look at Klu. Really nice idea, will definitely try that out!
Hunted Space
@sandradjajic definately! I'm working on some small saas atm, hopefully, it will see daylight in the next 3 months :)
I'd added Twitter here, as it's the best
place to engage people and find/share exciting ideas, as well as havea lot of fun. Building a user base there is a good step!
On the other hand, Reddit is casual and strongly disapproves promotions, so it's more for communicating and storytelling. I'm still exploring it.
Right. Many successful launches have a strong community behind them.
Sure it is. I do agree what u‘ve mentioned, I think it is pretty cool to collect followers before head. I truly recommend ad+ discord. Timing is vital.
Launching soon!
Dude! Instead of continuing your current approach, consider hiring micro-influencers without an upfront fee. Arrange a contract with them to post at least three videos over a month or every two weeks. The deal should be based on commissions. This strategy is one of the most effective ways to grow your business.
Hire a intern or an full time employee to find -> shortlist -> deal with those influencers
@thestarkster Okay that's something new, thanks! In general the word "influencer" scares me because of the price I need to pay 😄 but I don't have experience with micro-influencers, especially without an upfront fee.
But for example, if we talk about the pre-launch stage. At this point, I need just an email address. So do you agree on a fixed price for 1 email address that came from their channels?
Launching soon!
@sakozzy hmm i can't say about pre-launch because its a stage where convincing an influencer will be a little challenging + you're paying them right away an email comes in, never really know if the customer is a potential one or not.
But it would be awesome if you can fix a price per email address coming from their channel, but think more! you can make it work much cheaper, at i did for my previous startup i hired 23 influencers without paying them a dime for 2-3 months, and each youtube video was drawing around 90 users (they were nano-infleuncers much easier to convince)
@thestarkster yeah, that makes sense. Big thanks for sharing that.
The biggest challenge for me is to collect emails before the launch, to build that supporter base. That's why I'm thinking about some paid, but not so expensive ideas.
Launching soon!
@sakozzy yea for emails, you know just go rogue! find any lead generation platform like for example in india we have this company called justdial, indiamart etc. to give us leads in bulk we just cold email or cold call, or go to linkedin for example for me i can create a bot which bulk emails (intelligently tailor made using AI, as its cheaper now) to all potential leads.
Why im saying go rogue because i've seen founders go demotivated, starting to lose trust in their own product/service, finding the most potential customers can be really hard and time taking, so just go rogue! 🔥
Retexts
Yes PH is the best for new product launch!
Yes it is great to start on
Absolutely! though bias platform to have a discussion on !
I think it really depends on your initial purpose of use as well. It might be challenging to launch a product with a user base at your back, however it is anyway a great platform to promote yourself and your skills as an expert :)
