My launch on PH was a failure. Whad I did wrong?
Hi everyone, A month ago I built a website where people can share their salaries in an anonymous way so you can compare and get a better idea of how much is earning people in similar positions.
I posted about it on Reddit and it was a success (well not completely I'll write about this later). I got approx 50k visitors that day and more than 5k people shared their salary, I took it as product validation and I was very happy with the result.
So a couple of days later I decided to launch it on PH. As I was confident with my product, I decided to prepare it well: I read about other people experiences on launching, I created some simple but, what I thought, beautiful images, I wrote a complete description to add as a first comment, even I created a small gif. I checked that everything was perfect using PreviewHunt.
Also, digging into other PH launches to get ideas I found one that the product was based on the same idea as mine, even the same name. The product was very simple, a simple page where you can filter some twits by a couple of cities, just that, and it got 600+ votes. At this moment I was very excited, I thought that people would love mine as well, is almost the same idea, with an improved UI, a couple of useful features more, but still very simple, a better-prepared launch with screenshots and description, so I was ready, I scheduled my launch for the next day at 00:00.
Finally the big day, I shared the PH link on twitter, on communities like this one, Indie Hackers, some Slack and Telegram groups, dreaming about what if my website goes viral if some cool site decides to feature it… But the reality hit my face. I got approx 50 votes and almost 500 visitors to my site.
Since that day I'm thinking about what I did wrong? it was just bad luck? is because I don't have an audience? or the product is not interesting enough? So here I am, trying to learn from my failures, I'm asking for your help to identify what I could do better? what do you think I should improve the next time?
Thanks!
TL;DR: My launch on PH was a failure when I thought I had a solid product so now I'm asking for help to identify what I did wrong and what I should improve.
Hey Nicolas, One of my projects was product of the day, another got the 2nd place, a two more in top 5. My recommendations: Your product is much better than the previous one, I'm saying this honestly, what a solid project you have there! congratulations. Now, ProductHunt launch should be a complete process, it's much better to have the help of a community to get initial traction and voting in the first hours, now, every single day you see PH launchings in all communities, so, you need a real community, people that trust and know about you, people that you previously helped, honest connections. All those posts about PH launching are mostly ignored if they came from random users. Try to get a hunter, again, not a random one, do your work, know which one might be more interested in hunting you. You can re-post, a second version, of course, you need to improve the tool and do some changes. Finally, don't trust only in PH, and don't get frustrated about this, ProductHunt will give you initial traction, but to get a life from your product you have to do the full journey: SEO, Marketing, community, etc etc…
Good luck !
Thanks for your response! As I said I think that my launch on PH was a failure, but not my product, I have confidence in it and I'll keep working hard to make it work. Currently, I'm working to improve my SEO and adding some features that came up from useful feedback that I got on Reddit. I know I should not compare myself with other work, and this will sound unpopular, but I was trying to find out why my launch only got 60 votes when the other was 600. I'm trying to learn from this. Thanks again!
Be very wary of thinking that popularity on HN, Reddit or PH = validation.
Your failure in PH might be a success, because it might force you to focus on better validation.
You can do more reliable validation by finding people who you think are a good fit, reaching out to them individually, listening to their needs and giving them a ton of value. The Mom Test is a great guide on how to do that kind of validation.
That method does not scale, but that is the point. Do things that don't scale is one of the few pieces of startup advice that seems to apply to all businesses, whether bootstrapped, VC backed, lifestyle, Indie Hacker or you name it.
Thanks for your useful answer, I'll check the Mom Test later, I added to my bookmark, sound interesting. Actually a couple of guys contacted me to have a chat to see if there are ways to work together, one has job boards and the other one a site that automatically sends cv to job offers. Let's see how it goes. Thanks gain!
But you got 50k visits from Reddit!
I'd say look at the glass half full :)
I'd guess though if someone had the same idea recently that's why yours didn't do so well.
PH isn't the be all and end all :)
I agree and the comments on Reddit were super useful and I don't say that my project is a failure, just trying to learn from my mistakes, and in this case, I'm trying to find out what they were. Thanks, Pete again for your support! you were one of the few that Retweet about it and even comment on my PH launch, I appreciate it!
Your problem is that you had too high expectations for the launch. It's only another directory. I launched my podcast last month and I finished at 12 or 13th.
I only got 100 downloads. The day of the launch I released an episode so less than that from PH. I've gotten more traffic from random places.There was a day I got 600 downloads, no idea where that came from.
The PH launch is a nice free source of traffic and helped me build a little of credibility though.
Don't put too much into it.
OK, maybe I should forget it. I'll continue with my work and let's see how it goes. thanks for your answer!
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