Why your 500+ member community might not help you win on Product Hunt at all?
Yesterday, I had a chat with a founder who’s launching on Product Hunt next week.
He said: “We’ve got a community of 500+ people. Getting Product of the Day should be easy.”
So I asked one question:
“How many of them have an active Product Hunt accounts that are at least 4–6 weeks old?”
His answer: None.
You can’t expect to win Product Hunt with an audience that PH doesn’t recognize yet.
The platform values trust and authenticity and not just volume.
Votes from brand-new or inactive accounts barely count.
Even worse, if a large chunk of your votes come from accounts created a few days before launch, PH’s algorithm flag it as suspicious and don't count them as upvotes.
Here’s what that means in practice
Start early. Encourage your supporters to create accounts weeks in advance.
Get them to comment, explore, and engage with other products.
Focus on activated supporters, not just community size.
Curious to hear from others:
How early do you start preparing your audience for a PH launch?
Have you ever seen votes disappear or rankings drop because of “new-account” upvotes?
Replies
Product Hunt
Hi everyone, Product Hunt CTO here. Launches are ranked by points, but not every upvote is worth the same number of points. A few tips:
Encourage your community members to apply for verification. Verified users’ votes tend to carry more weight.
Contribute meaningfully to the community. Thoughtful comments and engaging discussions make your votes count for more. Low-effort comments and AI slop reduce your impact.
Never buy upvotes. If we have strong evidence that a launch is paying for votes, it will be un-featured.
Theysaid
@mikekerzhner thanks for sharing this breakdown it’s really helpful! We’re also planning to launch again on Product Hunt, so this will definitely help us out.
Agnes AI
It's indeed true. Often saw people blast in groups of hundreds of people but no result. You have to tap on the target audience...
@cruise_chen Well said.
minimalist phone: creating folders
One of the best practices is to make those friends/people in general aware to create an account months before and warm them, help them be active here. First and foremost, the engagement here should be genuine and not fake it :)
@busmark_w_nika It’s really hard But it seems totally worth it.
Truth. Product Hunt rewards engaged users, not just headcount. Warm up your community early , it’s the best “growth hack” no one talks about.
Theysaid
That’s such an important point, Koshima. Many founders underestimate how Product Hunt’s trust system works. I’ve seen launches with big communities drop in rank overnight because most of their supporters were new accounts. Warming up your audience early and engaging genuinely weeks before makes a huge difference. It’s not just about numbers, it’s about credibility and consistent activity.
Cal ID
Totally agree. It’s not about size, it’s about genuine connections and trust.
Active, engaged supporters make all the difference, especially when they’ve been here a while. Warming up your community ahead of launch is the real secret sauce.