My first Product Hunt launch: X sent 1 vote, YouTube did the rest. What worked for you?
I launched NotchMind, a Mac app that turns the MacBook notch into a small hub, as a solo developer with under 500 followers on X. It finished #16 for the day with 76 points, and I'm at about 20 sales so far.
The traffic surprised me:
X, where I post the most: the tracked link brought 1 vote.
YouTube: my demo video has about 4.6K views, and around 73% of them came from YouTube recommending it for free. I only spent about $11 on a promotion.
Reddit, Hacker News and Indie Hackers all stopped me because my accounts were new. One flagged me as spam, one flagged my post, and one wouldn't let me post.
I'm trying to work out where to put my time next, so two specific questions for makers with a small audience:
1) After launch day, which channel actually kept bringing you customers?
2) How would you build account history on communities like Reddit or Hacker News before you need them?
I'll reply to everyone here, and I'm happy to share more detail on the video, the timing or the numbers.
Replies
Funny that YouTube ended up doing the heavy lifting here.
@kyle_bennett6 Ha, it surprised me too! I put most of my effort into X, but my followers there mainly follow me for AI news, so a Mac app didn't land with them. YouTube picked up the demo video on its own and recommended it to strangers. Have you had a launch where a channel you didn't expect ended up working best?
That's a decent number - congrats!!! Not expected from YT lol
Self-promotion is extremely difficult on Reddit. Although some subreddits allow you if you have a good karma score and if you get permission from mods before posting.
The X result makes sense to me. Posting a lot doesn't help much if people only scroll past. A video that someone actually searches for works harder than a tweet.
Fair point! I try to show the work before launch so the conversation has time to grow, otherwise it feels like arriving only to ask. Where did the YouTube viewers get stuck before buying?
Congrats on #16, that's a strong first launch. We launched UTTER IN on 1 October from Kuwait and finished #37 with 51 points. It was featured, but like you we had a small audience. My takeaway is the same as yours: the launch day is one day, and what keeps bringing people is content that ranks and a demo people can watch. Your YouTube result is a good reminder to put more into video.