You’re an indie hacker who would like to launch on Product Hunt for the first time and you’ve heard a lot of stories about the launch. A lot of advice on how to do it properly. A lot of people telling you don’t screw it, you have one chance. This thing is important, that thing is important. And all you do is waiting. Waiting till your launch has perfect pictures, perfect copy, perfect logo. Guess what. It doesn’t really matter.
Action over advice
Let me be clear in the beginning. I don’t value generic advice. Things like You need to learn how to tell a story. Really? Or, for example, book recommendations. What works for you doesn’t necessarily work for me. What else we have in this category? You know those moments when you have a group of people and some special guest among them (e.g. some successful businessman) and there’s a rule that one of those smarty-pants would ask a question What advice would you give to yourself at the beginning of the career? Guest would politely answer, but the person who asked that already knows the answer and nodding like all the knowledge is being transferred in those two and a half minutes. I just don’t see value in that. We all have different scenarios.
But what I do like, and prefer, are those actionable pieces of advice. Or just doing something, experiencing it for yourself, seeing it in action. I’ll search the internet for the books I would enjoy reading. Actionable advices are doable. Measurable. You can do it and see if it works for you or not. This post should be actionable advice.
Execution vs Optimization
One thing is how people are executing things (e.g. launching on product hunt), and the other thing is how they optimize it. Like how to drive additional traffic.
I’ll give you one example. You often heard that for a successful launch you need to launch at midnight PST. And you’ve heard it so much time that you also know now that you should launch at midnight. But then you fell in a trap. You know it, you strongly believe in it, but you havent executed that even once.
Then, when your launch is about to happen you are not sure what that “launch at midnight” actually means. What it means in technical details. From the execution point of view. Yeah, you did timezone research but what does it mean. Can you start one hour earlier preparing and when the clock is 00:01 to hit publish or you need to start the whole process after the midnight? Those things you won’t find in all of those “how to launch on product hunt” tutorials. Those things you need to do by yourself.
Launch something irrelevant on Product Hunt first – as I did
You’re preparing the launch for your main project, and you are all into that. Building relations that would help you on the launch day etc. You might think you’ll ruin your “reputation” by launching some funny side project. Let me tell you something. Nobody knows you’re about to launch something else.
Of course, to do that, you need to have a mini product that is doing one thing that might get people using it. No big deal, something that you wouldn’t put too much work in promoting. In my case, it was Commit Art
What can you get?
You’ll get 100% genuine experience. Delivered right to you in person. No blogposts, tutorials, reading material where you will read how it looks like.
Luckily, launch time is here like at 9 AM. I got up in the morning, made myself a tea, and started submitting a product around 8 AM. No pressure. I also took screenshots for each step. Just to have it when I’m about to prepare my next launch. “Big one”. In one moment I was thinking like – maybe some sessions would be invalid, so I need to start over, because I finished up my product description and everything so I’ve just waited. That wasn’t the case.
At the end of the day, I got some followers on twitter, I got around 20-25 upvotes on Product Hunt. Except a few tweets in the morning, I didn’t promote it heavily. I got Product Hunt followers. This is important, they will get a notification once I’m launching again. There’s a dashboard where you can track your upvotes and your position. I didn’t know about that. At the end of the day, I got some traffic, ended up in the very bottom list of the products. Of course, it’s nothing surprising. The product itself doesn’t bring too much value.
One thing I would do differently
Only one thing. I would launch this product over the weekend. I’ve launched it on Thursday, and it’s a working day where all the big launches are happening. Maybe it would be a bit different.
The story about the bouldering training for the end
I’ll tell you a story for the end. Disclaimer, I don’t remember where I’ve heard it so I might not tell it 100%. But you’ll get a message.
There was this bouldering camp where you could pay for professional training. Price was high but you get full professional support. And, since it may be a risky activity, people would pay more to hear from professionals. Security, equipment, tricky situations, everything.
After trainees got their equipment, they were all standing in line, waiting for a trainer to give them an introduction, because many of them never climbed before. Instead of an intro, the trainer just said Start climbing and refused to give any additional inputs.
Many of them were couldn’t believe what they got for the price they’ve paid. They could do the same in some other places for a way less money. Many were commenting they were tricked.
Upon their return to the ground, the trainer lined them up again and then he started talking.
Many of you are doing for the first time. I could start the training by introduction talk but that would be a waste of time. You wouldn’t recognize what I’m talking about. You wouldn’t pay attention. You wouldn’t listen. I let you experience it first and now we’ll start…
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