Das ultimative Playbook, um Ihren Product Hunt Launch aus dem Wasser zu hauen

WTF is Product Hunt? 😳

If you’ve never heard of Product Hunt, I’m gonna guess you’ve been exploring Mars in search of alternative fuels. In that case: could you slip me Elon’s number real quick? 🙃 Don’t worry about the Product Hunt thing, I got you covered 👐.

Product Hunt is the little baby of Ryan Hoover. Ryan is one of those guys that just friggin’ loves everything that’s new and cool. Not just for fun. For Ryan, new products are an opportunity to learn and, most of all, a way of connecting with like-minded people.

Back in 2013, Ryan was looking for a one-stop-shop to discover the hottest new tech products. As he didn’t find anything, he did the entrepreneurial thing and started it himself. In its cute early days as an MVP, Product Hunt was a mailing list, build on this one question:

Welche coolen Produkte verwenden Sie?

It’s a question we all ask and it turned out to be one hell of a community builder. Within two weeks, Ryan’s little mailing list had 170 subscribers devouring discoveries from 30 hand-picked contributors, consisting of startup founders, VCs, and prominent bloggers. Ryan was on to something.

Today, Product Hunt is Silicon Valley’s favourite little playground on the web. A tightly-knit community of like-minded geeks who bond over anything hot 🔥 and the new ✨. Not just tech, but also books, podcasts and games — you name it. The site kind of works like reddit, with users posting products and the community making or breaking them with comments and upvotes.

More upvotes will get your product higher on Product Hunt’s frontpage, getting you some solid street cred with a community packed with early adopters, curious investors and avid entrepreneurs. It is the ultimate startup launchpad 🚀.

TL;DR

• Product Hunt wurde von Ryan Hoover gegründet
• als eine zentrale Anlaufstelle, um die coolsten neuen Produkte zu entdecken
• it’s a tightly-knit community of early adopters, investors and entrepreneurs
• Das macht es zum ultimativen Startplatz für Unternehmen

OK… And why should I care again? 🙄

Haben Sie schon einmal von der Produktakzeptanzkurve gehört?

It’s one of those gazillion frameworks they show you in marketing class you then instantly forget about. I did anyway.

Der Grund, warum Sie sich dafür interessieren sollten, ist, dass Sie wollen, dass die Leute Ihr Produkt benutzen. Sie wollen das, weil, nun ja, jeder, der ein Produkt baut, das will.

Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen, müssen Sie verstehen, wie ein neues Produkt seinen Weg auf den Markt und zu neuen Nutzern findet.

The Product Adoption Curve is something all new kids on the block have to go through. Facebook, Slack, Uber and DVDs (still ring a bell?) — heck, even underwear at some point must have gone through it (hope those do ring a bell?). Some go faster, some go slower. Others just die along the way because they fail to understand how it works.

Die Leute, die Sie zuerst ins Boot holen müssen, sind Innovatoren.

Why? Because these are the ones willing to take your product for a spin when it’s still a baby. They‘re okay with it still shitting the bed from time to time 💩. They look beyond the bugs and spartan features to see if your product deserves to exist. They’ll share their findings with the world and, if they like what they see, may even end up promoting your product.

Innovators will get you across the chasm, which is the big wide gap sitting between you and your target masses. Or push you in. Whatever happens, you’ll be smarter than you were yesterday. It’s make or break. Sink or swim.

So wurden Facebook, Uber und Slack zu großen Jungs. Denken Sie darüber nach. Alle drei begannen damit, eine kleine Gruppe von Nutzern anzusprechen und wurden schließlich zu Marktführern. Facebook entstand aus dem populären Harvard, Uber aus dem aufgeschlossenen San Francisco und Slack aus technikbegeisterten Unternehmen, die einen Betatest durchführen wollten.

Innovators are like the first pin on a bowling alley. Knock it down and the other pins will fall along. Strike! 🎳

Now for the good part ☝

👉 Product Hunt is one big club of innovators and early adopters.

It’s a rocketship waiting to take your product to the stars ✨. If you want to launch a tech product or service, launch it on Product Hunt. All aboard! 👨‍🚀

Oh, did I mention Product Hunt was acquired by AngelList back in december 2016? You know, the world’s biggest network of angel investors 👼. Doesn’t hurt to get into their attention space.

TL;DR

• Product Hunt ist voll von Innovatoren und Early Adopters
• das sind die Leute, die sich Ihr Produkt ansehen sollen
• they’ll give you invaluable feedback
• und werden Ihr Produkt wahrscheinlich nutzen und bewerben, wenn es ihnen gefällt
• oh, PH is also owned by the world’s largest network of angel investors

YOLO 🤞 You Only Launch Once

Ihr Produkt kann einmal eingestellt werden. Einmal. Sie haben nur einen Versuch, es richtig zu machen. Machen Sie es richtig.

Look. If you had one shot. One opportunity.
To seize everything you ever wanted. In one moment.
Would you capture it? Or just let it slip?
(Eminem — Lose Yourself)

I’m your man on the inside. I’ve been to the Product Hunt. I’ve seen things. I survived and I thrived. And now I’m here to help you do the same and better.

Do you remember when Luke Skywalker and his rebels had one shot at destroying the Death Star? This is exactly like that. With the difference that Product Hunt doesn’t do sequels like Star Wars does. You don’t get to destroy the Death Star twice like Luke did.

Macht mich das zu deinem Meister Yoda? Ja, das ist genau das, was es bedeutet.

Now, Product Hunt doesn’t do sequels. But it does do spin-offs. You can in fact launch a new feature of your product if it’s cool enough to be marketed on its own and provides real value to the early adopters. In the end, it all comes down to how you sell it (as always).

A full-blown launch of your product is more complicated. You can’t launch your product twice unless its essence is so new and/or improved that it can be considered a new product. Think of it as a reboot of a franchise.

Eine zweite Chance, den Todesstern zu zerstören, bekommst du vielleicht doch noch, junger Jedi.

TL;DR

• Sie haben nur einen Versuch, auf Product Hunt zu starten (sozusagen)
• do or do not — there is no try
• Ich bin Yoda

1. Get in the tribe. Act as if you belong 😏

Kennen Sie Ihr Publikum. Bevor Sie überhaupt daran denken, auf Product Hunt zu starten, sollten Sie erst einmal aus erster Hand erfahren, worum es dabei geht. Wie ticken diese Early Adopters?

Melden Sie sich an, tauchen Sie ein und spielen Sie mit. Tauchen Sie kopfüber ein. Lernen Sie die Besonderheiten der Gemeinschaft kennen, indem Sie ein Teil von ihr werden.

Let’s cover some basics first 📋

• Die tägliche Jagd 👀
  Product Hunt’s frontpage showcases products according to the number of upvotes they got (and more — there’s ein geheimer Algorithmus). Das Produkt, das am Ende des Tages an der Spitze steht, ist das Gewinner. Um 12 Uhr PST wird die Seite aktualisiert und die Jagd beginnt von vorne.
• Hochstufungen 👍
  Upvotes are Product Hunt’s equivalent of Facebook’s likes. If you like a product, you can vote it up and push it up the page. The more votes, the higher on the page it will end up at the end of the day.
• Hunters 🕵
  Hunters sind Mitglieder mit besonderen Rechten für jagen Produkte und stellen sie auf Product Hunt ein. Ihre besonderen Fähigkeiten wurden ihnen von anderen Jägern verliehen, was sie zu den Auserwählte der Gemeinschaft.
• Macher 👨‍🔬
  Dies sind die Mitglieder, die das Produkt erstellt haben.

Once you got the basics figured out, have your curiosity take the lead. Lurk around, check out similar products to yours and learn about their launch strategies. Spy on titles, taglines, logos, screenshots, comments and general wording. Steal with your eyes 👀.

TL;DR

• immerse yourself in the PH — community
• Lernen Sie die Grundlagen kennen: Upvotes, Jäger und Maker
• Schleichen Sie herum und stehlen Sie mit Ihren Augen

2. Hunt down your Hunter 🏹

Kein Hunter = kein Product Hunt Launch. Das haben Sie schon.

There’s hunters and there’s hunters. What you want is one of the uberhunters. Das sind die Besten der Besten. Die crème de la crème. Die Auserwählte unter den die Auserwählten.

Dinge, die zu berücksichtigen sind, um den Frodo zu finden, der Ihr One Product To Rule Them All den ganzen Weg auf den Product Hunt Berg bringt:

• Anzahl der Follower 👥
  Wenn ein Hunter ein Produkt einreicht, werden alle seine Follower benachrichtigt. Je mehr Follower, desto größer ist die Sichtbarkeit und desto wahrscheinlicher ist es, dass Sie an die Spitze der Seite geschossen werden.
• Geschichte der erfolgreichen Stellen🏅
  Sie wissen also, dass er es drauf hat.
• Affinität zu Ihrer Art von Produkt 🤓
  Sie wissen also, er bekommt warum Ihr Produkt ist großartig.
  (we’re going to assume yours is, in fact, awesome)

Having a good hunter on your side is like being in pole position on the starting grid of a Formula 1 race. Your chances of finishing first are significantly higher 🏁.

Nail your pitch 🔨

You choosing a hunter doesn’t mean the hunter chooses you. You may be madly in love with your product, your hunter probably isn’t (yet). It’s up to you to make him/her fall for it.

Top hunters get pitched multiple times a day. Don’t waste their time. Make sure yours is on point. Pitching is an art: it takes time to perfect.

Good thing you’ve been doing it ever since you got started with your idea, right?

Still, I guess it doesn’t hurt to refresh your memory with these 6 golden pointers from top hunter Bram Kanstein ✌:

• Zuallererst: Zeigen Sie Enthusiasmus und machen Sie Ihr Angebot persönlich!
• Tell about the problem you’re solving 🎯
• Sei voilà 👉 zeigen Sie Ihre Lösung
• Show early results if you have them 📈
• Why are you the man/woman/team that’s going to take this to the moon? 🌝
• How can the person you pitch to help you? Asking for specific feedback is also good. It’s difficult to help when your question is simply: “what do you think?”

These are from Bram’s killer article 5 ways not to pitch your product — a must-read if you’re looking to get your pitch right.

Bram is not just any hunter, he is the hunter who launched the #1 most upvoted product of all time on Product Hunt. This product, Startup Stash — a carefully curated directory of startup tools and resources — also happened to be his own product.

Bram war #1 auf meiner Liste, um Salesflare zu jagen, und das Lesen seiner Artikel war Teil meiner Strategie, um zu ihm durchzudringen.

Rules like this don’t mean you can’t get creative with your pitch. My idea to hook him was to pitch Salesflare in the exact ways Bram tells you not to in his article. Something like this:

Hallo Bram,

You’ll be amazed by this. We built the Uber of Sales! It’s a unique CRM that is going to change the way sales is being done. We’ve been working our asses off for more than 2 years but now our baby has finally been born. Everyone we showed it to loved it! It’s going to be yuge!

Das war nur, um seine Aufmerksamkeit zu erregen. Ich glaube daran, aufzufallen. Ich neige auch dazu, das Gegenteil von dem zu tun, was man mir sagt. Ich hätte Salesflare danach auf die richtige Art und Weise angepriesen.

Die Sache ist die, dass ich das nie brauchte. Bram hatte das nämlich gerade auf seiner Twitter-Pinnwand gepinnt:

Ich schätze, er hatte genug von E-Mails wie der, die ich ihm schicken wollte. Tweets sind etwas anderes. Wir beschlossen, ihm einfach unser Video zu schicken.

He went for it! 🙌

Remember to show your solution and be voilà? 👆

Well, nothing is more voilà than a video.

We had a video in the making for about 2 months and it was one of the crucial factors in deciding when to go full-in on our Product Hunt Launch. Not only does it help you pitch to hunters — it’s also kind of a must for your Product Hunt page once you actually get hunted.

TL;DR

• Sie sind ein Spitzenjäger
• sie/er gibt Ihnen einen Vorsprung in Ihrem Rennen an die Spitze
• suchen Sie nach (1) Anzahl der Follower (2) Geschichte erfolgreicher Beiträge (3) Affinität zu Ihrem Produkt
• nail your pitch
• Geben Sie Ihrem Produkt ein Video

3. Cook up your Product Hunt Starter Pack 👨‍🍳

Now that you’ve found yourself an experienced general, it’s time to gear up for battle.

Das Wichtigste zur Vorbereitung:

• Name des Produkts 💁
  Ziemlich einfach. Aber Sie können hier noch etwas bewirken. Wir haben es geschafft Salesflare CRM um sicherzustellen, dass man uns bei der anschließenden Suche nach einem CRM auf Product Hunt leicht findet.
• Korrekte Website-URL (+App/Play Store-URLs) 🔗
  Throw them all in there. If you don’t have a website yet, you can just create a landing page with general information on your product and a download link if possible.
• Tagline ☝
  Einprägsam und klar. Wir gingen für Intelligentes Vertriebs-CRM für Startups, die von Technologie leben. Vertriebs-CRM um unsere Position im CRM-Bereich klar zu definieren, intelligent als unser Hauptunterscheidungsmerkmal und Start-ups, die von der Technologie leben to indicate who we built it for. Resist the urge to be overly creative here, you don’t want to confuse people.
• Logo 👁‍🗨
  Sure, you can just put your logo. But this won’t exactly get you points with the Product Hunt cool kids. Make it move. Like Jagger. We had a Salesflare Product Hunt cat pop up in our logo and combined this with some conceptual animations. It doesn’t have to the next Star Wars movie, just make it move. People are attracted by moving things. Especially when they’re quickly scanning a front page filled with all kinds of stuff.

• Maker Product Hunt Profil-URLs 👨‍🔬
  Stellen Sie sicher, dass alle Teammitglieder, die als Macher des Produkts gelten, vor der Markteinführung bei Product Hunt angemeldet sind, damit Ihr Hunter alle als Macher auflisten kann. Dies dient nicht nur dazu, Sie gut aussehen zu lassen. Wenn Sie als Maker aufgelistet sind, erhalten Sie das Recht, Kommentare abzugeben, was für die Konversation mit der Community entscheidend ist.
• Video/Screenshots 🖼
  Ihre Chance zu sein voilà. Don’t just stop at the video (yes, it autoplays) — your screenshots should be equally engaging. We put up animated GIFs showcasing different Salesflare features. You don’t have to put GIFs. I’ve seen great Product Hunt pages with static screenshots. Thing is GIFs just provide more value because… well, because they move and people love stuff that moves.

• Bereiten Sie Ihren einleitenden Kommentar vor 💬
  It’s up to you to kick off the conversation on your product once it’s live. You don’t want to be putting something together in a rush at the very last minute, so make sure you write something beforehand you can just copy-paste when the time is right. Start off with why you built the product and lay out some of its core functionalities. Specify what kind of feedback you’re looking for. Mention the special promotion you have in store for the community (more on that later) and don’t forget to give your hunter a shootout for hunting you. Here’s ours:

• Tags 🔖
  Machen Sie Ihr Produkt leicht auffindbar, indem Sie relevante Tags hinzufügen. Einige Beispiele für Tags, die wir für Salesflare gewählt haben, sind Technik, Vertrieb, Kundenkommunikation, Chrome-Erweiterung und Web. Don’t worry if you don’t get them right from the start, you can make changes afterwards. Product Hunt does closely watch these tags and may remove them they don’t agree. Feel free to chat with them if you think they made a mistake. We had a few tags removed and then put back again after we explained why we thought they were relevant for Salesflare.
• Datum des Beginns der Jagd 📅
  As a rule of thumb, Product Hunt’s busiest days of the week range from Tuesday until Thursday (I guess early adopters in California party from Friday till Sunday and then die on Monday — fair enough). Busy means more competition, but busy also means more people to upvote, try your product and leave you with valuable feedback. Ending up on top may be very exciting, the quantity of users getting in touch with you is probably more valuable for your business on the long-term. Tuesday is arguably better than Wednesday because you’ll have 24 hours more to be upvoted and make it into Product Hunt’s weekly digest. With all this in mind, we chose Tuesday and took about one and a half week to prepare our launch as soon as we got the green light from our hunter. You could easily do with less, but gathering support pre-launch while continuing to attend to every-day business stuff is no walk in the park. You don’t want to skip any of your shuteye time prior to your launch either— it’ll get kind of crazy once you’re live.
• Startzeit der Jagd 🕒
  A new hunt is launched every day at 12am PST. People typically say to post immediately after midnight, but this is probably not the best way to go. Product Hunt’s secret algorithm is said to penalize age in ranking products, so you’re probably better off waiting a few hours as the US’ awakening comes closer. This is if you’re confident your own network can help you get initial traction in the first hours, so you’ll be pretty high as soon as first New York and then San Francisco crawls out of bed. For Salesflare we initially proposed to be posted around midnight to our hunter but he said he found posting around 3–4am PST (12–1pm local time here in Antwerp) to be the most effective. This gives you enough time to push yourself up in the first hour and be right where you should be as Product Hunt’s core members start checking their smartphones hanging over their morning coffees.

Once you’re done, send everything over to your hunter in a nice email, well in time before D-Day. Use a Google Drive folder to share your screenshots and other media so you can still make last-minute changes if needed. We sent a Google Calendar Invite to set date and time to avoid any confusion for everyone involved.

TL;DR

• Vorbereitung der wichtigsten Elemente für Ihren Start
• name — clear & easy searchable
• tagline — catch & clear
• logo — make it move
• video — just have a video
• screenshots — make them stand out (by making them move)
• prepare your intro comment — why, what, thank hunter, promotion
• set a day — (1) somewhere between Tuesday and Thursday (2) take your time to prepare
• set a time —(1) after midnight PST (2) before the US wakes up
• dem Jäger alles auf dem Silbertablett servieren

4. Gather your fans 🤗

Die Geheimformel für einen erfolgreichen Product Hunt-Start besteht aus zwei Dingen:

• ein großartiges Produkt (duh)
• Anfangstraktion

Both things you can control. If your product is not great, stop reading now and come back once it is. Don’t worry too much about some features not being entirely on point yet. Remember, these are early adopters — they’re okay with your product still being an infant and will happily help you find and kill early bugs as long as they see some real value.

Getting initial traction on Product Hunt is a little bit like getting your startup its first 100 customers. You may have the greatest product the world has ever seen— if people don’t have it in front of them, they won’t upvote it. Don’t make yourself any illusions: even early adopters won’t scroll endlessly to find your product. It has to be right there as soon as the site or app loads. Slap ‘m in the face with it.

This means you’ll need a fair amount of upvotes as soon as Product Hunt rush hour kicks in.

Mit einem Spitzenjäger an Ihrer Seite kommen Sie schon sehr weit, aber denken Sie daran, dass Schlachten von Soldaten gewonnen werden, nicht von Generälen.

Now, you cannot just ask all of your friends and family to upvote you. Product Hunt was built to make it easy to discover the world’s greatest new products, not to force-feed your own stuff to whoever. It is precisely this that makes Product Hunt so great at showcasing the best things out there. Not only should you respect that, Product Hunt’s algorithm will also increasingly push down your product if too many votes from brand new accounts come rolling in. So, what can you do? Here’s a few ideas:

1) Finden Sie Ihre Freunde auf Product Hunt 👫

Wahrscheinlich haben Sie bereits einige Freunde auf Product Hunt. Product Hunt synchronisiert die Personen, denen Sie auf Twitter folgen. Daher sollten Sie als Erstes prüfen, wer von diesen Personen bereit sein könnte, Sie zu unterstützen und sie über Ihre bevorstehende Markteinführung zu informieren.

2) Frag trotzdem deine anderen Freunde 🙈

You’d be surprised how many people know about Product Hunt without having an account. Maybe they’ve been peeking from time to time without really getting into upvoting. Or maybe they know about it but didn’t take the time to take a proper look yet. Your launch may very well be the perfect occasion for these people to sign up.

I know it says friends but what I really mean is network: friends, family, customers, business contacts, your dog,… Anyone you have a direct line with. We went through our contact lists and started asking people we thought of as early adopters if they had a Product Hunt account. If they did, we told them about our launch. If they didn’t, we told them about the community and how awesome it is. If it’s their jam, they’ll make an account and you have them onboard. If it’s not, you’ll leave them be.

Auch wenn Product Hunt kein reiner Marketingkanal ist, den Sie ausnutzen können, können Sie dennoch anderen davon erzählen. Tatsächlich braucht Product Hunt diese Art von Sichtbarkeit, um weiter zu wachsen. Viele meiner Freunde sind aktive Nutzer, seit wir sie in die Community eingeführt haben. Achten Sie nur darauf, dass Sie dies vor dem Start Ihres Unternehmens tun und nicht am Tag selbst.

3) Erstellen Sie ein Google Sheet und verfolgen Sie es. 📈

Now you’ll have tens or even hundreds of people lined up to support your launch and it’s your responsibility to make sure they come through. Keep track of the people you contacted so you can effectively follow up on the big day. Include name, channel (Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter,…) and status (did they vote already?).

4) Auf dem Radar von Personen erscheinen, die ähnliche Produkte hochgestuft haben 💡

Suchen Sie nach Personen, die ähnliche Produkte wie Ihre hochgeladen haben, und stellen Sie sicher, dass sie Sie kennen.

You can actually scrape upvoters of products posted on PH by using this little tool. Just put in the URL of the product and your Developer Token (head over to API Dashboard under your Product Hunt profile to get this) and you’ll get the Twitter handles of all the upvoters for that given products.

There’s tons of things you can do with this. For starters, you can follow them on both Product Hunt and Twitter. You can also tweet them or even target them with emails or Facebook Ads (you’ll need to do some data enriching first though).

5) Suchen Sie nach sozialen Gatekeepern 🌪

Schenken Sie Personen mit vielen Followern besondere Aufmerksamkeit und versuchen Sie, sie dazu zu bringen, Ihren Product Hunt-Start mit ihrem Netzwerk zu teilen.

6) Chat is king 💬

The magical word at this stage is chatting. Remember you need these people to commit twice: you need them to sign up beforehand and you need them to upvote you on the big day. This is why a channel like email will be far less effective here: it doesn’t allow for an engaging dialogue. Sure, you can send an email a week beforehand and another one on launch day but you’ll have zero control over people really making accounts and being active on Product Hunt prior to your launch. This may negatively affect your page ranking. We chose not to take that chance.

You can think of Product Hunt’s frontpage as a Google Search Results page — only the top gets clicked and visibility goes downhill fast as you go down the page. It’s like a snowball effect — make sure you have a big ball already once the heavy snow starts falling down. If your product really is great, the community will take over and make sure you stay on top.

BONUS: Thunderclap — it⚡👏

Don’t know what Thunderclap is?

Thunderclap is a platform you can use to create social media campaigns built on the strength of your network. You’ll basically have your friends and followers support a purpose of your choosing by means of Facebook or Twitter posts. Write up a message, set a date and invite your friends.

As soon as the campaign starts (once you’re live on PH) — tweets or Facebook status updates will go out from all the people who joined your campaign. At the same time. Needless to say, this will seriously amplify your reach.

I’m going to be straight with you guys here: we didn’t do Thunderclap.
Why not? We forgot. We just forgot.

TL;DR

• Großartiges Produkt + anfängliche Anziehungskraft = großer Erfolg auf PH
• Freunde auf PH finden
• ask your other friends if they’re on PH — if they’re not, tell them about it ask if they want to be
• ein Google Sheet zur Nachbereitung erstellen
• Scrap upvoters von ähnlichen Produkten auf PH => Ziel
• Suchen Sie sich ein paar Einflussnehmer
• Chatten Sie mit allen, die Sie kennen, um ihnen von Ihrer PH-Einführung zu erzählen
• eine Thunderclap-Kampagne einrichten
• !! don’t forget to set up a Thunderclap campaign (like we did)

5. Butter up the community 💆

Geben Sie dem Produkt Hunters ein besonderes Gefühl.

Warum?

We’ve been over this.

Because they’re innovators and because you need their help to cross the chasm. Besides, as you are in the early stages of your product, their feedback will be invaluable. The more, the merrier.

It’s common courtesy to offer Product Hunt members special deals. If done right, Product Hunt will be a gift that keeps on giving. It’s only right you give something back. For Salesflare, we gave the club a very steep discount (very steep… of the likes we don’t give out anymore, but, hey, it was early days!).

TL;DR

• Das Produkt Hunters soll sich besonders und geliebt fühlen
• indem sie ihnen eine Superkalifragilisten Deal

6. Become a cat person 😼

In case you haven’t noticed: Product Hunt loves cats.

Eines Tages bot Product Hunt-Fan Jesse Thomas an, ein T-Shirt zu entwerfen. Das Glasshole Kitty war eine der Ideen, die er einsandte. Dem Product Hunt-Team gefiel es so gut, dass sie eine Reihe von T-Shirts und Aufklebern bestellten und sie an die ersten Mitglieder der Gemeinschaft schickten. Diese wiederum teilten ihre Kitty-Geschenke in den sozialen Medien, wodurch die Idee des Kitty-Maskottchens entstand.

While Product Hunt never really changed their logo, the kitty is everywhere. It’s big in social media posts and has been adapted to launch several Product Hunt projects like books, podcasts and their Snapchat account.

So if you’re looking to get that meowntain of upvotes from the community, you’ll better put turn into a crazy cat lady for the day.

TL;DR

• Produkt Hunt mag Katzen
• aus irgendeinem Grund

7. Dress up your website for the big day💄

Your Product Hunt launch is a day of celebration so it’s only right your website looks all nice and pretty for the occasion, don’t you think?

It’s also a great chance to once again highlight that special Product Hunt deal you prepared for your fans. Shine bright like a diamond! 💎

Sie können verwenden IntroBar (yes, it’s free) to put up a nice-looking welcome bar on top of your website when people click through via your PH-link (this will end in /?ref=product hunt). Here’s what Salesflare’s website looked like on her big day.

TL;DR

• Machen Sie Ihre Website fit für ihren großen Tag

8. Set the internet on fire 🔥

GUT.

You’re live on Product Hunt. Showtime! 💥👊

Verbreiten Sie die Nachricht. Holen Sie die großen Geschütze auf. Lasst den Kraken frei!

The goal is simple: to make sure the whole world knows you’re on Product Hunt. Now remember: Product Hunt frowns upon asking for upvotes. So don’t. Instead, say things like ‘come say hi’ or ‘join the conversation’. Just let people know you’re on Product Hunt but spare no effort.

There’s this rumour that Product Hunt’s algorithm penalizes you if you send people directly to your PH — page. To this day, I have not found compelling evidence of this being true. We were careful about it though, sending people to the search results page for the the query ‘Salesflare’.

Es folgt eine Liste von PH-Guerilla-Taktiken, auf die selbst Rambo neidisch wäre.

Let’s hustle ✌

1) Go through your list 📄

Follow up on the people you know have a Product Hunt account following your pre-launch efforts and give them a quick reminder. Make sure you miss no one and be thorough. Just because people say they will take a look, doesn’t mean they will. Check if their vote is already there and follow up again if needed. They may have just forgotten — it’s your big day, not theirs. Be careful not to spam though. We called it quits after two reminders.

2) Benachrichtigen Sie Ihre Kunden per E-Mail und/oder Livechat 🗣

Ihre Kunden haben Ihr Produkt bereits gekauft/abonniert, also muss es ihnen irgendwie gefallen. Verfolgen Sie diejenigen, die bereits auf Ihrer Liste stehen, nach Ihrer Pre-Launch-Strategie weiter. Den Rest können Sie mit E-Mail und Live-Chat auf Ihrer Website ansprechen (sofern Sie eine solche haben). Wir haben eine Intercom-Meldung erscheinen lassen, die die Nutzer über unsere Kampagne informiert, sobald sie sich bei Salesflare angemeldet haben. Auch hier ist der Chat gegenüber der E-Mail im Vorteil, wenn es darum geht, den Empfänger darüber aufzuklären, was Product Hunt ist und was er tun sollte, wenn er Ihnen helfen möchte.

3) Twitter überfluten 🌊

Most of Product Hunt’s core audience is on Twitter so it would be great if you get people to talk about your launch on there. Go for both quality and quantity. It’s a good idea to prepare some tweets the day before so you don’t lose time coming up with something funny in the middle of the storm. Tweet as soon as you’re live and keep it up as you reach several milestones (every 100 upvotes for example).

Machen Sie Ihre Tweets mit GIFs und Memes lustig und sympathisch, damit Ihre Follower sie eher teilen. Und dann halten Sie die Unterhaltung in Gang. Die Leute werden anfangen, Sie zu tweeten und zu retweeten. Helfen Sie, bleiben Sie bescheiden, danken Sie, mögen Sie und retweeten Sie. Wiederholen Sie das.

Danken Sie Ihrem Jäger, Ihren Upvotern und Product Hunt selbst. Wir haben uns bei jedem Upvoter mit einem personalisierten Tweet bedankt, in dem wir Product Hunt getaggt haben, um unsere Chancen zu erhöhen, gemocht und retweetet zu werden.

Profi-Tipp – you can automate these tweets by hooking up Zapier to a Google Sheet you fill up with Twitter handles. Beware of the fact that both your DMs and Tweets per day are limited. We sent our tweets out by hand on launch day — this makes it more personal too— and had final automated thank you’s go out the day after.

4) Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest,… 🎈

Neben Twitter können Sie auch jeden anderen Kanal nutzen, den Sie in irgendeiner Form verfolgen, um die Nachricht zu verbreiten.

Facebook is obvious. We posted the same kind of stuff as we did on Twitter — just a little less because it’s somewhat harder to make something go viral there using hashtags and mentions. Also have team members post from personal accounts.

Apply the same strategy to LinkedIn. Although you might want to put up a small blog post there while you’re at it — those get great visibility these days. Be sure to have it prepared though.

Instagram, Snapchat und Pinterest können ebenfalls sehr nützlich sein. Es hängt alles von Ihrer Art von Produkt ab. Lassen Sie überall Luftballons steigen. Denken Sie nur daran, Ihre Botschaft immer entsprechend anzupassen.

5) Facebook Groups and Slack Chats 😏

Where do people on the internet hang out these days? Nowadays, you’re probably best off looking at Facebook Groups and Slack Chats.

A lot of geographical regions have their own dedicated Product Hunt community. Just ask for access to as many as possible prior to your launch and keep track of which ones they allow you to. Examples of Groups we posted in include Product Hunt France, Product Hunt Berlin and Product Hunt London. Make sure to be active before your launch so you’re not a total stranger when you post about your launch.

You can also post in other Groups on stuff like startups, entrepreneurship and growth hacking but it’s not as easy. Increase your chances by being a valuable member and preferably having a good relation with the group admin. You can try to post about your launch with a post that provides actual value to the community. For example, we put together a post on some of our pre-launch marketing tactics — then referring to our launch in the first comment. This worked for some groups, not all of them.

Early Adopters und Unternehmer finden sich heutzutage zunehmend in speziellen Slack-Chat-Communities zusammen. Es gelten dieselben Regeln: Informieren Sie sich vorher und engagieren Sie sich in der Gemeinschaft, bevor Sie etwas von ihr verlangen. Sie können die Suche nach relevanten Slack-Communities hier und hier beginnen.

6) reddit and Hacker News 💣

Reddit and HackerNews can be equally powerful channels to get the word out on your PH launch. But, again, you’ll need to prepare this beforehand. Write a post that brings value and isn’t too spammy. It’s probably also a good idea to build up some karma on your account beforehand as well. Make sure you have some guys/girls ready to upvote your post so people actually get to see it. The share your startup thread over at the /startups subreddit is a great place to start.

7) A yuuuuuuge email campaign 📫

“Stick a fork in email, because it’s D-O-N-E.”

It’s not.

Email is still one of the backbones of the Internet. I’m sure you agree and have a big fat email list all ready to fire the news about Product Hunt launch at. If you don’t, start right now.

Your email doesn’t have to be too fancy. Just put the word out: explain a little about what Product Hunt is all about and include a call-to-action to join the conversation.

8) Make friends. Help out & create value 👬

By now it will probably have hit you that a lot of this stuff has to do with network and preparation. Sure, you can try to pull off some last-minute hustle and hope for the best but it won’t get you very far if no one knows about you.

The single best piece of advice I can give you is to make friends online. This is not too different from making friends in real life. Just start talking, ask about projects, help out where you can, show support, throw in a joke or two… You know how to be a human being, right?

This will all take quite some time, but if you’re real about it, it won’t feel like work. Before you know it you’ll have a whole army ready to die for you and your Product Hunt glory. Time to light sh!t up!

TL;DR

• make sure the whole world knows you’re on PH using guerrilla tactics
• Bearbeiten Sie Ihre Liste
• Weiter im Gespräch
• Sorgen Sie dafür, dass jeder Tweet auf Twitter von Ihrer PH-Einführung handelt
• repeat for other channels — consider blog post on LinkedIn
• Nettmachen in Facebook-Gruppen und Slack-Chats
• auf reddit und HackerNews ernsthaftes Karma sammeln
• eine riesige E-Mail-Kampagne
• make friends — be a human being

9. Fly high on comments and caffeine ✈

Wenn Sie diesen Artikel bis hierher lesen, werden Sie vielleicht glauben, dass es bei Product Hunt nur um Upvotes geht. It’s not.

Upvotes are easy. A lot of people on Product Hunt will give you one just because you have a nice logo or because your screenshot moves. Maybe it’s because you look pretty in your profile picture ☺ who knows.

It’s all about sparking a conversation about your product and upvotes will make it easier to get that going. These are early adopters — product enthusiasts who will show a genuine interest in why and how you built your product. They have tons of value to give you, make it easy for them to do that. It’s up to you to take the lead, help people out and demonstrate your appreciation for constructive criticism.

If handled well, your PH page will become a treasure of ideas and connections. From the second you’re live, gear up to quickly answer any question that pops up. Always stay positive, even if people are grilling you for no reason. Thank people for their feedback. Lead by example.

Sorgen Sie dafür, dass Ihre PH-Seite rund um die Uhr besetzt ist. Halten Sie immer einen Ansprechpartner für technische Fragen bereit. Auch diese werden auf Sie zukommen.

Your Product Hunt launch is going to be one of those SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK kind of days. And after it’s going to be one of those SLEEP FOR A WEEK kind of weeks. Which of course you won’t be able to do since your traffic, signups and requests will be going through the roof and you won’t know where to look first.

We’re loving it. I’m sure you will too.

TL;DR

• Abstimmungen sind überbewertet
• it’s about getting people to talk about your product
• Ihre Chance zu glänzen
• lead the conversation — always stay positive
• Sorgen Sie dafür, dass die Mitarbeiter des Teams rund um die Uhr wach sind
• Vorbereitung auf Schlafentzug

10. The Aftermath 💥

Wenn es richtig gemacht wird, ist Product Hunt ein Geschenk, das immer wieder neue Möglichkeiten bietet.

Richtig gemacht means finishing in the top 5 of the day. This will have you highlighted in PH’s newsletter the next day, which will be sent out to (hundreds of) thousands of people. You will also be picked up and featured on sites like http://thetopfives.net/ und http://thenews.im/ sowie von verschiedenen Twitter-Konten. Zwei Tage nach unserem Start kamen immer noch viele neue Bewertungen herein.

Eine Woche später waren wir immer noch damit beschäftigt, die Auswirkungen unserer Product Hunt-Kampagne zu verfolgen.

• 878 Hochstufungen
• Das am zweithäufigsten hochgestufte Produkt des Tages
• #1 CRM auf Produktjagd
• 250+ neue Salesflare-Versuche
• 150+ Twitter-Erwähnungen
• 500+ neue Twitter-Follower
• 4000+ Besucher der Website
• Chatten auf Intercom ist ein Vollzeitjob geworden

Effects weren’t just short-term.

Abgesehen von der täglichen Begeisterung gewinnt Product Hunt schnell an Popularität als Quelle für großartige Apps. Die Seite betreibt erfolgreich Crowdsourcing in einem Bereich, der traditionell von kostenpflichtigen Verzeichnissen wie Capterra und GetApp dominiert wird.

It’s more than just a launch vehicle for some early-morning traction — it’s also a directory of great products people trust more than alternatives.

In fact, several startups (including ourselves) have seen their Product Hunt feature generating high quality leads long after they were featured: more than 3 years after we still get about 10 signups per month from it. This is why becoming the most upvoted CRM was such a big deal for us. Salesflare is right there when people search for CRM on Product Hunt. Another strategy we’ve worked on is to target resourceful PH collections we feel are close to our space and customers and try to get included.

This comes to show there’s more to Product Hunt than just a day of madness. It’s a one-time opportunity that, if seized well, will bear fruits far beyond early traction and feedback.

TL;DR

• PH is a gift that keeps on giving — if done right
• Ziel sind die Top 5
• PH kann eine nachhaltige Quelle für Kontakte sein

Your move 👊

Da haben wir's, junger Padawan.

Ich habe nichts mehr, was ich dir beibringen könnte. Mach mich stolz.

If you’re not so sure about that, feel free to hit me up on on Twitter @gillesdc. Ask me anything or tell me about your project. I love to chat — you probably got that already.

Oh, and come say hi on Product Hunt 😸