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How can we help with your Product Hunt launch?

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Hi makers! Many of you are launching products, or getting ready to. I'd love to know what the hardest things about launching are, or hear what your concerns are. I'm here to answer any questions and share some honest advice. I've been on the community team since 2017 and have seen over 1,000 launches since then!
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Hi Abadesi, first of all, its awesome that you would like to help makers here! Yes, there are a lot of difficult parts with launching products. The hardest things are to receive first subscribers on prelaunch products, for example for our product, we received 10 subscribers in 2 days, but it was really hard, second thing is to find a hunter or mentor, who will help with success launch on product hunt.
Agree with you Nazar. The hardest thing is getting traction in the prelaunch phase. Educating makers in some form, through connection with hunters or mentors, is a good idea.
Thanks for sharing! Pre launch is so tough because it requires doing a ton of things that don't scale and starting really really early before your launch. Most successful launches can leverage a community that is already months - maybe even a year in the making. What would be the most helpful way to share learnings/advice about building an audience pre launch?
For mentorship on successful launches there's a lot of blog posts out there about launching on PH although sadly many contain inaccurate information. From what I have seen the majority of launches that end up in the Top 10 are those where the maker hunted it themself. That said, typically the maker has a large combined audience across Product Hunt and social media and they can ask all those folks to check out their launch which certainly helps.
I just launched my first project today 😆 Hardest part is submitting; I think the key is to accept that not everything is going to be perfect and go with the flow.
what difficulties have you had ?
For us at Munchron, getting the right legal terms for submitting our Apps and making the Artwork for our products. FDA approval is super tough, esp., since Munchron is basically put back by these regulations and therefore things like Cavity, our tooth detection tool or skin detection, is merely impossible to submit and get accepted, even with warnings!
that sounds tough! how do you find legal advice or the right support to get you through it?
Sadly no support, but lots of research to find the best lawyers and lobbyists to provide a guide on how the FDA works and how to get our product approved.
Great news, we finally got one of our AI/ML App's in the store: . We're making progress!
Congrats!!
thanks for asking and proposing help to the community! It will be great to understand if the project is suitable for Product Hunt. For example, we often do open-source projects and it's not clear if they are good fir to share here or not. Not actually "a product" but very useful. The same comes to the researches. For example, some researches like Remote Work Report was a pretty good fit for Product Hunt. While we did research on How Design Companies Build Communities () and it's not clear if it's a good fit for launching on Product Hunt or not.
I like to check the homepage daily and see what types of products the community connect with. There's often a lot of variety.
thanks for answering :)
Hi, The hardest thing is all the hard work of developing plus launching then trying to find the right ways to people to get people to take a look at your product.
this makes sense - I imagine it's pretty hard to start building an audience and community while also building the actual product! Do you share the story of building the product as you go to help find followers?
thanks for your reply! Yes, I write about the process on Medium at least once each week. I'm learning more as I go about engagement and rallying my community. Today I launched my second product and each time I learn so much.
You could help makes to connect more. To find business partners for their ideas.
have you tried writing a goal in Makers about it... or using discussions?
Kind off, I'm exploring the possibilities :D but I mean, a way to connect people and ideas would be great, I know we have workarounds nowadays, but sometimes I miss a proper space to do this kind of networking
cool! what might a networking feature look like? cc
No idea, to be honest. I guess we still need to understand better if this is really a problem or if it is something out of head. But I would like to see other people ideas/projects and what they need to see if I can help in anyway, or something like this.
I think a lot of us feel that finding hunters is difficult and very crucial at the same time.
Hi Dhruv - I am curious to hear more from you about what makes it crucial given the majority of top voted products are hunted by the maker.
Interesting insight. Thought it was crucial because it would increase visibility (popular hunter = lots of followers on PH and Twitter + more credibility). The thing I'm most worried about is not reaching enough people.
that's why it is very important to build an audience long before you launch. Either through social media posting, an email newsletter, whatever works best for you. That will be way more effective than getting a famous hunter.
Successful launches happen when target audience + good product align.
Makes sense. Nothing beats an engaged active target audience :)
I just launched today. I think the hardest part is getting the first upvotes to even get it noticed. I've contacted everyone building it with me to ask them to upvote, and I hope it will get easier through the day, as it's currently quite early in the morning for the US.
don't ask for upvotes, ask for reviews, comments and engagements. People should have a choice on whether or not they vote for it, and you will likely have a better outcome if you just encourage folks to check it out and tell you what they think. Good luck!
I was just asking the people who worked on it with me to, as they obviously already like it
Hello, I registered on product hunt a week ago, but i don't see any activities on my site. How do I get subscribers and followers before I actually launch my product? Thank you
Community building is certainly a long game and benefits from activities that don't scale. Look at how your target audience behave online and build a strategy that plays into that.
Hi Abadesi, thanks for support. Actually I looking for a good ux/ui or designer hunter for our upcoming product. I contact severeal people but, still without answer.
have you thought about hunting it yourself?
What does it mean "hunt it myself" ? Thank you.
I meant - you could share your product directly instead of asking someone to hunt it for you
sure, I stay without response so I hunt my product by myself :)
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