Can someone explain to me how product hunting works?

Kalesh Kaladharan
10 replies
I've tried googling it, but I am still confused and would like a real conversation on the topic with someone experienced. Most of the products I have seen are hunted by the makers itself. 1. What benefit does a product get, if it is hunted by someone other than the maker? 2. How can I hunt a product? 3. One of the article I read says, it doesn't make any real difference if the product is hunted by the maker itself or someone else. Is that so? If it doesn't, then what is the purpose of having a hunter for a product? This is all the questions I can think of now, with absolutely no idea of what hunting actually is. Please enlighten me🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Replies

Joonas Hämäläinen
How I see & understand things: 1. If it is hunted by hunter who has a lot followers (hundreds, hopefully thousands), those followers get notified when hunter hunts new product. So it immediately gets wider audience. 2. You can hunt product via "Post" button, on top right corner of page. Just fill info in there, and you're done. 3. Only benefit that product gets is that wider exposure. As you have chance to appear in top list only in that day when your product is hunted, it is important to have wide audience checking it out & upvoting and so on those first hours after hunting. Even as upvotes accumulate even after that, your product doesn't pop up to top list later on. So it is simply matter of exposure. And experienced hunters can help with descriptions, screenshots and other stuff relating to release in PH, further helping release to get attention.
Kalesh Kaladharan
@kerberos Thank you for the response. Post button is taking me to a page to submit products. What if I want to hunt someone else's product? How can I do that?
Joonas Hämäläinen
@kalesh13 You use that very same form. Just don't add yourself as maker. Of course, if it is some indie developers product, it would be nice to have a chat with them about it beforehand, as they could be planning their own release in PH. And you can't release same product multiple times, so you could be tampering with their plans. But I've seen that people post products from big companies who have done their own launches already, and I'm fairly sure that is more safe way to go.
Kalesh Kaladharan
@kerberos Thank you for the info. So basically, Post button is for hunting products. I thought it was for submitting products as a maker and users are given a Hunt button on the product page. Stupid me!! 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ ProductHunt should pin a post on Discussions page helping newbies to understand the platform @aaronoleary 😁🤷🏼‍♀️
Keith Gill
Can more than one hunter hunt the same product at the same time on producthunt? Would that even work and would it even be optimal to do so?
Kyle Frost
@digitalkeith No, that won't work. You can hunt a "2.0" version of a product at a later date (usually not within six months, and it needs to be a significant change, not just a feature release).
Keith Gill
@kylefrost Not sure that is exactly what I was asking... but maybe it answered it anyway. So there can only ever be 1 product hunter at the same time for the same product? If someone was going to use a hunter for a new product launch they can only use 1 hunter at a given time, correct?
Kyle Frost
@digitalkeith If I understand what you're asking, that's correct. You can only ever have one hunter per product. If I hunt "Acme Corp" today, you can't also hunt "Acme Corp" tomorrow. However, you could hunt "Acme Corp 2.0" in six months because it's a new thing.
Elizabeth Obee
Thanks for this thread @kerberos - super helpful