Does "Upcoming Product" work for you?

Question

Hey!

Me and my friend created an upcoming product page as we are launching soon. We thought it would bring 100 subscribers easily but we only have 18. And it's been up for almost 2 weeks.

I am not sure if it's due to poor promotion of this section on Product Hunt or is it our product's fault. I would say it's the first one.
I thought that we pay for a marketing tool (getting some waiting list signups) and it seems like we payed for a signup form...

Does any of you have similar experience or is it just me?

Victor David · Accepted Answer

@shariq_a @wojtek_krzcinski Ahh.. thanks. I think I get it now. If you don't pay, people only know about it when you share the link. And if you pay PH shows in their list. Good info, I didn't know that's how it works....

Shariq A · Answer

@between_team @wojtek_krzcinski 
Building audience is why we all are here but who is the audience? If everyone is a seller then our audience is going to be made up of all sellers :)

Now product-makers are consumers of other products also but there is only so much we can buy from each other.

Shariq A · Answer

I would say that 18 subscribers is encouraging response. We skipped "Upcoming Product" after creating the page. We couldn't figure it out and then later learned that you can create the page for free but you have to pay if you want to make that page visible to everyone.

Wojtek Krzciński · Answer

@shariq_a @codemongo To be honest I don't really understand the free option. The only think it may give you is a "free landing page" if you're not into making one yourself.

It's not visible to people who go to Upcoming Products section but you can access it through direct link so it is possible to get people to go there.

Victor David · Answer

@shariq_a @wojtek_krzcinski Many thanks. I've been thinking about doing a landing page with Ship, but I'm going to hold off. We've already got a landing page at the site; it's received about 2 dozen pre-signup folks since I first mentioned it about 5 days ago. I'm not so sure a Ship page here on PH would help. Unless I want to pay, but need to think about that some more.

Shariq A · Answer

@wojtek_krzcinski @codemongo

Based on my understanding, creating an “upcoming product” page requires that you sign-up for “Ship” by Product Hunt.

Ship has three levels of membership, the free membership allows you to create an upcoming launch page but you cant publish it, unless you upgrade to “Pro”.

Try their free trial and that perhaps allows people to experience Pro and SuperPro membership benefits for a few days without paying. I think i never tried that. Perhaps because it was not mentioned that I won’t be able to launch my upcoming page with a basic membership. So I thought that basic membership is enough for us at this stage.

Best!

Wojtek Krzciński · Answer

@codemongo @shariq_a Thank you. I've checked SuperPro membership but it doesn't provide any more features that would help us reach more people so it's not for me.

Wojtek Krzciński · Answer

@between_team @shariq_a Exactly, this is the difficult part or a part that few people notice these days. Most of us here want to sell what we're building so we should probably go some other place to find people who'd like to buy.

Wojtek Krzciński · Answer

@between_team 
How would you say it's useful? Do you have any experience with that?
It definitely is best to build an audience. It just takes quite a lot of time and is difficult. We thought that there's a nice shortcut through Upcoming Product but it's not. We need to build an audience the normal way or try other marketing channels.

Wojtek Krzciński · Answer

@between_team Ok, in this way it may help but first you need to get people to sign up for waiting list and PH doesn't help with that.

Shariq A · Answer

@wojtek_krzcinski 
We are new to marketing and it seems like everyone is trying to sell us the formula we need to be successful.
Our strategy is to experiment with the free services first and if we get some response from a particular marketing channel then we would gladly pay for their premium marketing services

Shariq A · Answer

@codemongo @wojtek_krzcinski 
Thanks for sharing that with us.

Victor David · Answer

@shariq_a @wojtek_krzcinski Can you elaborate? I've only explored this part of PH a little bit. But: If you have to pay to make it visible, what's the point of the non-paying option?

David J. Kim · Answer

@wojtek_krzcinski We had an upcoming page and they were notified when we launched on ProductHunt. I wouldn't say the impact was life changing, probably a dozen or so but we re-used materials anyways to make that page.

Victor David · Answer

@between_team @wojtek_krzcinski @shariq_a Yes Shariq, I think you nailed it. Been sort of wondering the same myself......

Does "Upcoming Product" work for you?

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