How do you use Product Hunt to make people aware of your product? (Less-known approach)
Most people use Product Hunt primarily for launching their product, which is completely understandable and a basic thing. That's what the platform is best known for.
BUT I think Product Hunt offers far more opportunities than just launch day. If you approach it strategically, it can become an ongoing marketing channel rather than a one-day event.
This is roughly how I use it:
Talk about the product before launch through discussions, comments, and threads to build awareness naturally.
Meet people through discussions and invite interested members (or potential users) to test the product, share feedback, and build relationships with them. (Many of them became part of my LinkedIn community too.)
Improve the product based on that feedback so you have some momentum before launching.
Launch on a weekday to maximise your chances of ranking well and potentially being featured in the Product Hunt newsletter, which reaches more than 140,000 subscribers.
Search Product Hunt discussions for people describing the exact problem your product solves. Help them first, and only mention your product when it's relevant (not as hard promotion).
Leverage your Product Hunt badge. If your product ranks well, the badge becomes great social proof that you can showcase on your website and social media.
Experiment with Product Hunt ads if they fit your budget and goals. But those almost 5M monthly visits of this website are worth it.
How do you use Product Hunt to get your product noticed (besides launching)?
Replies
the framing of PH as an ongoing channel instead of a single event is the real unlock most people miss. The 'help first, mention only when relevant' rule is what makes every other tactic on this list actually work rather than just being tolerated, without it, the pre-launch threads and post-launch searches read as promotion with extra steps instead of genuine participation. I'd add one more layer to this: the relationships built pre-launch (the ones you mentioned turning into LinkedIn connections) end up mattering more than the launch-day ranking itself, since a badge fades from relevance in weeks but a person who actually tested your product and trusts you sticks around for every future launch too.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@terranicgerald Just stay consistent, build credibility and your product will be more visible too ;)
the badge-fades-in-weeks line is the part I'd underline. I've had way more mileage from three people who actually poked at the product pre-launch than from the launch day number itself, they're the ones who remember you exist next time you ship something new.
Two weeks of doing exactly this, with the numbers, since the thread is mostly agreement so far.
What worked: commenting in other people's launches and threads. Every real conversation came from that. Five or six makers, one moved to email, and two people now reply to me across different threads rather than following a product.
What did not work: my own threads. Two of them, p/general and p/vibecoding, 2 views each. Same account, same week, one a write-up and one a question. The third went into a product forum whose maker already knew me and got 9 views and two comments in the first 37 minutes. So it was not thread quality, it was whether the room was already subscribed to somebody.
The bit I would add to your list is ordering. Comment for weeks first, then post. A thread from an account nobody follows is close to writing in a private diary.
Did your early threads land differently, or did they only start working once people knew you?
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@jernej_jan_kocica To be honest, some of my threads brought me traction but I have been building a personal brand for over 3 years.
Launching twice taught me less than commenting once, and I have the numbers to show it.
Both my launches got followers and some upvotes, but almost no conversation. What actually produced conversation was leaving real comments inside other people's threads.
From my own account, which has no audience at all:
Standalone post on X with the link: 3 views. My own PH forum thread: 2 views. A comment left inside someone else's active thread: 12 to 35 views each, plus replies from real people, and on PH an upvote and a direct reply from the thread author.
Same effort. Ten times the reach, sometimes more.
The reason is boring but it changed how I use this place. A post starts from zero and has to earn every single reader. A comment inherits the audience the thread already has. If you have no following, you have no distribution of your own, so the only move available is borrowing someone else's.
One more thing nobody told me. The person whose thread you comment in often replies. That is a real conversation with someone already interested in the topic, and it is worth more than fifty passive views on your own post.
So my version of your point: stop treating PH as a launchpad and treat it as a place to be useful in public. The launch is one day. The forums are every day.
@bharatlearner Your numbers match mine almost exactly, which is mildly depressing given we clearly got there separately. My own thread in this forum sat at basically nothing for days while comments in other people's threads did real traffic.
One thing that makes the asymmetry worse than you've laid out. On PH, leaving a comment makes you follow that thread's author and their product, not the reverse. So the tactic with ten times the reach is also the one quietly building somebody else's list instead of yours.
Which leaves a real chicken and egg. Comments buy reach but no list. Threads build a list but don't work until people already know your name.
Where I'd push back slightly on the last line: I'm mid-launch today, and the launch has moved followers in a few hours in a way that weeks of commenting hadn't. Different currencies. Reach every day, list once.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@bharatlearner Do you apply the same approach not only on PH, but also for social media? :) That's a neat move to be honest :)
@busmark_w_nika Yeah, I am. I'm posting my product on Reddit, X, and Product Hunt. I think that's enough for now. What do you think?
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@bharatlearner What is your product about? :) You need to be sure there is your target audience :)
@busmark_w_nika Honestly, that question is my whole problem this week.
The short version: you paste in an AI launch and get one verdict on whether it is real or mostly hype, with the evidence and every source named. Free.
The longer version is that someone told me two days ago they could not tell what it does from looking at the page, and they are the fourth person to say that. So the answer I just typed you in one line is one I can apparently write in a comment but not on my own landing page.
On the target audience point you are right, and I had the order wrong. I ran a demand test on a page that had never passed a comprehension test. Two different experiments, and they happen in that order.
So if you have five seconds and are willing: open it, close it, and tell me what you think it does and who it is for. "No idea" would genuinely be the most useful thing you could say.
It is called Reality Filter and it is on my profile. Not pasting the link since this is p/general.
Nice write-up. I never really thought about Product Hunt as an ongoing marketing channel, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Going to keep this in mind for future launches.
Also, we recently launched @brandgen_ai v2, and this really resonates. The conversations and feedback after launch have been just as valuable as launch day itself. Thanks for sharing this.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@brandgen_ai @abhishekpatel How much attention did you get from the launch? :)
The newsletter subscriber number is doing a lot of work in that weekday argument. subscriber count and actual open or click rate on a feature are two very different things, worth separating before it becomes a reason to time a launch.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@hudson_reid Are we talking about the Product Hunt newsletter? Because I think even when not all people from 140k subscribers open the newsletter, there is a solid list of people who read it and are interested in the new products (myself included).
Thank you @busmark_w_nika I'm new to product hunt and I can't tell you how invaluable this advice is as I look to build relationships on this platform! Virtual coffee/tea from me as gratitude. Also, I love the last tip on experimenting with the product hunt ads. I need to learn more about the ads process.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@jacqueline_v_twillie you are welcome! :) I recommend searching more about PH within discussions. I outlined many topics, and you can benefit from them :)
@busmark_w_nika Will do! Thanks so much, hope you're having a great weekend.
Alconost Localization Lab
@jacqueline_v_twillie about ads on Product Hunt: from what I've seen, they start from $5,000... too pricey!
@margarita_s88 honestly I had a bit of sticker shock, and I'm still looking at the cost, wondered if the payoff was worth the cost?
Alconost Localization Lab
@jacqueline_v_twillie I never used it myself as the cost isn't reasonable for me at all. I think it only makes sense for larger brands and products that apply to a wide audience.
@margarita_s88 Do you know what the results are for those who have paid for advertising? Does anyone openly share if the investment is worth it?
Building on Jernej, from the other end, because I did this in the wrong order and have the numbers for that.
I launched first. Single digit upvotes. Then I spent two days doing nothing but commenting on other people's launches and threads, roughly two dozen comments, and six makers have now changed something in their product off the back of one. One of them shipped a feature the same hour and told me the comment was too good to leave as a comment.
So your list is upside down from where I am standing. The launch was the least valuable item on it, not the centrepiece the rest is arranged around.
The distinction I would add is that these are not the same channel. Commenting did not make anyone aware of my product. Not one of those six went and looked at it. What it builds is awareness of a person, which is a different asset with a different clock on it. It compounds, and it cannot be measured in a launch week. That makes it the best thing on your list if you are building something over years, and close to useless if you need users this month. Worth telling people which one they are buying, because the tactics look identical and the payoff does not.
On the mechanic, since that is the practical part: every comment that got a reply did the same thing. Find the thing the maker has not thought about yet and hand it over as a design question rather than a criticism. Congratulations comments got nothing, every single time.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@dalemooney Hey Dale, just to clarify, the list is not supposed to have an order; I just listed items (opportunities), not the chronological sequence.
Glisio
This is a good reminder. I've been treating PH purely as a "launch day" event in my head, but you're right that it's really more of an ongoing channel.
I'm about to launch my first product here (a macOS screen recorder called Glisio), and until reading this I hadn't thought much about what happens after launch day. Do you keep posting updates in your product's forum even months later, or is the attention mostly gone once the initial wave settles?
Curious what's actually worked for you long-term vs. what just felt like effort without payoff.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@emircankaragoz I can surely say that posting on Reddit during launch day was totally counterproductive.
DMs on LinkedIn helped a lot and building a personal brand long-term makes sense because people are more likely to talk to you, remember you :)
Glisio
@busmark_w_nika Thanks for sharing!
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@emircankaragoz You are welcome! :)
Inventory
@busmark_w_nika Still learning how to use to better to market and improve as I just launched my small app called Inventory today.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@xshahneil I supported :)
Inventory
@busmark_w_nika Thank you :)
Dial
the "search discussions for people describing the problem" one is easy to underrate, but the hard part isn't finding the tactic, it's that the problem is almost never in the thread title. it's buried in someone's reply three comments deep where they finally admit what they're actually struggling with. keyword search on titles alone misses most of that. do you actually read full threads top to bottom looking for it, or is there a faster way you've found to surface those buried admissions?
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@galdayan I usually follow particular topics or "subdiscussion" categories and whenever I see that, I try to hlep :)
Dial
@busmark_w_nika that's honestly reassuring, it means it's less about a search technique and more about already being in enough of the right rooms that the buried admissions find you instead of the other way around. makes sense why the LinkedIn-connections point mattered more to you than the launch badge - you can't shortcut "already following the right topics" with a smarter search query.