Ask HN: Is ProductHunt Worth It?
I have a feeling that ProductHunt is only read by people who post to ProductHunt in a sort of pyramidal echo chamber. Is it the case, or does ProductHunt reach further than product managers in small companies?
67 comments
Been in product hunt since it was invite only beta. Things have changed a lot. In the beginning it was a community about hunting great products and nice discoveries.
Nowadays is about paying hunters with a lot of followers to post your products and asking all your network to upvote your product to brag about how you made it to top X of Product Hunt.
The posting about nice products of the internet and discovering them is now gone. If you try to publish something because you found it online and want to share it with the community, but you don’t have a network of people to “fakely” upvote it, the product will be hidden at the bottom and nobody will see it.
Discovery and community are gone.
Nowadays is about paying hunters with a lot of followers to post your products and asking all your network to upvote your product to brag about how you made it to top X of Product Hunt.
The posting about nice products of the internet and discovering them is now gone. If you try to publish something because you found it online and want to share it with the community, but you don’t have a network of people to “fakely” upvote it, the product will be hidden at the bottom and nobody will see it.
Discovery and community are gone.
About a decade ago, I started a few side businesses that I believe, in retrospect, were entirely reliant on a few of my personal connections with associates of popular blogs, most notably Hypebeast.
Startup culture refers to this loss of curation as “democratization” which is a cynical gesture that really just means replacing things like person connections with a ‘highest spender’ promotion industry that is even more dishonest than the curation model. Neither model is democratic in any sense.
Startup culture refers to this loss of curation as “democratization” which is a cynical gesture that really just means replacing things like person connections with a ‘highest spender’ promotion industry that is even more dishonest than the curation model. Neither model is democratic in any sense.
> Startup culture refers to this loss of curation as “democratization” which is a cynical gesture that really just means replacing things like person connections with a ‘highest spender’ promotion industry that is even more dishonest than the curation model. Neither model is democratic in any sense.
For a second there I thought you were talking about the crypto and NFT space. Still accurate.
For a second there I thought you were talking about the crypto and NFT space. Still accurate.
Yup. "Pay to play."
I used to be active in various startup subreddits. 2 years ago, I will get 2-3 requests per month to upvote their product. Those requests even though against producthunt's TOS seemed decent and was backed by real people.
Last year I was geting 1-3 spams per week on reddit. They were literally zero karma same day accounts. And those products were hitting top 5 of the day and staying there. Generic newsletter services and repurposed ideas with an SAAS branding.
Last year I was geting 1-3 spams per week on reddit. They were literally zero karma same day accounts. And those products were hitting top 5 of the day and staying there. Generic newsletter services and repurposed ideas with an SAAS branding.
Is there anything they could do to fix this?
Worked in a social media startup , want to build one too. My opinion -
- High level human moderation.
- Country based communities
- Actually creating services around the community to justify a subscription to participate model. You can't build any community where people without stake in it, gets to control it.
----
But this comes with the obvious problem of, this won't never work. People won't simply signup because there is so much loops to jump through to say something freely.
- High level human moderation.
- Country based communities
- Actually creating services around the community to justify a subscription to participate model. You can't build any community where people without stake in it, gets to control it.
----
But this comes with the obvious problem of, this won't never work. People won't simply signup because there is so much loops to jump through to say something freely.
Start new community around new products.
Paying?
My initial launch on ProductHunt was total and utter crickets. Now we have ~500 customers, multiple $100K in ARR and two rounds of venture backing.
Without the humble brag, use a platform like PH as any marketing channel: email, blogs, Twitter etc. Never, EVER think a post on PH will be your defining marketing launch. Just like there is no magic one email, tweet or post that will define your product or make/break you. Expect nothing. The real work begins after launch.
Without the humble brag, use a platform like PH as any marketing channel: email, blogs, Twitter etc. Never, EVER think a post on PH will be your defining marketing launch. Just like there is no magic one email, tweet or post that will define your product or make/break you. Expect nothing. The real work begins after launch.
Thank you for this. Can you please suggest some resources for learning more about what the real work after launch looks like?
Sorry, I'm not native english speaker but what does crickets mean in this context? Good or bad?
I can see you have customers and nice ARR, but is this because of PH? I don't really understand your first sentence and can't figure it from others either...
I can see you have customers and nice ARR, but is this because of PH? I don't really understand your first sentence and can't figure it from others either...
"Crickets" means that there was no response. It was so quiet that you could hear the crickets chirping.
Always means bad
Always means bad
Pre-ProductHunt, HN was the place to launch your product[1]. Having a "Show HN" post reach the front page was (is?) the ultimate brag, and founders would always mention it in seed/Series A pitch decks if it had happened to them. Being featured on HN would usually mean being contacted by a TechCrunch reporter, and that was a Big Deal. So, you'd use your personal connections to make sure everyone upvoted your post. If you were all in the same location (eg: co-working space), you'd tell everyone to use a VPN or tether to their phone to avoid being IP-blocked[2].
Then, ProductHunt came along with the pitch to be more curated, and to speficially solve the launch promotion problem. Now, people have figured out how to game it, just like they did with HN.
I fully expect the cycle to continue with a new ProductHunt with the same value proposition. For Web3, Twitter seems to be doing that job pretty well.
--
[1] The launch of my own startup (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4196585)
[2] Source: I was in 500 Startups Batch 5, and we were all advised on how to upvote each other's HN posts in a way to avoid bans.
Then, ProductHunt came along with the pitch to be more curated, and to speficially solve the launch promotion problem. Now, people have figured out how to game it, just like they did with HN.
I fully expect the cycle to continue with a new ProductHunt with the same value proposition. For Web3, Twitter seems to be doing that job pretty well.
--
[1] The launch of my own startup (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4196585)
[2] Source: I was in 500 Startups Batch 5, and we were all advised on how to upvote each other's HN posts in a way to avoid bans.
I tried using it a few years ago to find new stuff to use and was turned off by the amount of meaningless, buzzword laden vaporware. I also didn’t like the weird long comment chains between the product’s founder/cofounders/CTO in an effort to make it look like the page was more active or something. It all felt shallow and like a shinier version of cork board of business cards by the Lowes bathroom
Unlike HN, Product Hunt explicitly encourages posters to go out and ask their network to upvote. This one key aspect makes ProductHunt much less meritocratic IMO and just a mirror of how large the poster’s network is.
So I’ve stopped paying too much attention if a product claims they made it to #1 product of the day/week/month on ProductHunt.
So I’ve stopped paying too much attention if a product claims they made it to #1 product of the day/week/month on ProductHunt.
Are you sure? PH's official line has always been "share with people you know but no bots/asking for upvotes/manipulation" or something akin to that. It's still in their community guidelines, albeit with language that gives them a bit of wiggle room.
https://help.producthunt.com/en/articles/2690626-how-do-i-sh...
https://help.producthunt.com/en/articles/484935-can-i-ask-my...
I think the problem is that they don't seem to have a good enforcement mechanism, and so for what must've been years I haven't really seen staff proactively go after those who do game the system. The only times when I've seen action taken is when the community comes out and basically calls out a product/maker. Most people don't care enough to do that kind of stuff, I'd imagine. I've done it a few times (either outright illegal stuff like peddling American legal services from overseas without qualifications, or obviously scam crypto projects) but these should have been obvious. The staff is also unresponsive on email, although better on the forums.
https://help.producthunt.com/en/articles/2690626-how-do-i-sh...
https://help.producthunt.com/en/articles/484935-can-i-ask-my...
I think the problem is that they don't seem to have a good enforcement mechanism, and so for what must've been years I haven't really seen staff proactively go after those who do game the system. The only times when I've seen action taken is when the community comes out and basically calls out a product/maker. Most people don't care enough to do that kind of stuff, I'd imagine. I've done it a few times (either outright illegal stuff like peddling American legal services from overseas without qualifications, or obviously scam crypto projects) but these should have been obvious. The staff is also unresponsive on email, although better on the forums.
I'm not sure how recent those articles were added, but at least as of a year ago when I tried to post something on ProductHunt, part of the post creation flow (which is quite intricate and a story for another day) explicitly encouraged you to post on social media and "share" with friends.
Almost every PH post these days has a little back and forth comment thread between the maker and the people who they've clearly asked to upvote and/or comment.
Almost every PH post these days has a little back and forth comment thread between the maker and the people who they've clearly asked to upvote and/or comment.
Who is your ideal user? Do you think this person frequents ProductHunt? That's your answer.
My experience is that the main users of PH are those launching a product.
I'll also add: after my PH launch, I experienced a lot of email spam from "growth hacker" types. I suspect they scrape PH. I tried to take down our post (because the spam was overwhelming), but PH refused.
My experience is that the main users of PH are those launching a product.
I'll also add: after my PH launch, I experienced a lot of email spam from "growth hacker" types. I suspect they scrape PH. I tried to take down our post (because the spam was overwhelming), but PH refused.
I like nicer products but last time I found a good product on PH was about 5 years ago. The best of awards every year also hints at how bad it is - most of those products aren't even that good.
I noticed some things did do really well, like a list of decks from successful startups. Again, reinforcing that the main user of PH are people trying to launch a product.
I noticed some things did do really well, like a list of decks from successful startups. Again, reinforcing that the main user of PH are people trying to launch a product.
its just a massive pyramid scheme. everybody goes there to vote, and roll the dice on getting the #1 tag for fake social proof. its useful for social proof insofar as the vast majority of people dont know that product hunt is fake.
semi related fun fact, i had a friend run the numbers for fun - 8% of "#1 of the day" winners die within a year of launch https://twitter.com/jakobgreenfeld/status/146816583831853875...
semi related fun fact, i had a friend run the numbers for fun - 8% of "#1 of the day" winners die within a year of launch https://twitter.com/jakobgreenfeld/status/146816583831853875...
I spent ~3 years building a product before launching on PH. It's a real product with an existing community of (at the time) around 1k on Slack and real companies using it. Got ~80 up votes and finished the day somewhere around position 10. I was moderately happy with it.
Around the same time, a known smooth-talking vaporware peddlar in the same industry launched on PH with literally a bare GH repo and a minimal landing page. I knew 100% that there was no actual usable product. The founder had recently been involved in a similar project that collapsed under huge promises. He got hundreds of upvotes and plenty of "awesome product, LFG man!!!" type comments.
That's the moment I really understood PH.
Around the same time, a known smooth-talking vaporware peddlar in the same industry launched on PH with literally a bare GH repo and a minimal landing page. I knew 100% that there was no actual usable product. The founder had recently been involved in a similar project that collapsed under huge promises. He got hundreds of upvotes and plenty of "awesome product, LFG man!!!" type comments.
That's the moment I really understood PH.
I don’t think there’s much that can be taken from that. There’s a lot of reasons products die within a year, the non-product hunt #1 rate is probably much much higher. People post products on there all the time that aren’t meant to be some startup in the first place
I made it to the front page of ProductHunt twice in the last year and was above the fold for the first product. In that case it drove a couple thousand page views and some signups and for the second it drove like 10 signups and a couple hundred views but the long-term effect in both cases was negligible. For what it's worth it's always cool to see something I've built hit that front page but as far outsized effect and the fact that I've since canned both projects it's not going to make a difference in your viability.
Echo chamber. Can still be worth it, especially if that's your target market, but don't overinvest effort into it. And don't expect people to think "#1 on product hunt" to be a signal of quality and not of "we couldn't think of anything important to tell you about our product instead". (you occasionally see people try that e.g. on HN. it doesn't work, at all)
Posting on ProductHunt, if you're a small company, can be harmful. Program Managers of big companies prowl this site, looking for interesting ideas to copy.
If the only value of your business is an idea to add on to another business that is trivial to copy, rather you get shut down sooner than later.
Timing matters. A big company can snuff out a small competitor if they respond quickly, before the small competitor gets a chance to take root. Once it takes root it is harder to snuff out. So it makes sense to stay out of sight of big competitors until you have had a chance to establish.
We were #1 product of the day/week on PH and it didn't really bring us a lot of new users (fitness product), but it did bring us a lot of VC attention (that was all-in-all too early).
I get the impression that almost every time a product-rating service becomes highly popular, it get coopted (or at least seriously compromised) by sellers. E.g., Amazon reviews, and This Old House (Bob Villa).
The only exceptions I can think of are Consumer Reports, and probably large newspapers. But I cringe that even relatively trusted sources like Reddit, Home Depot customer reviews, and RTings are doomed to this fate.
Is this simply as inevitable as death and taxes? Or is there some reason to hope for progress?
The only exceptions I can think of are Consumer Reports, and probably large newspapers. But I cringe that even relatively trusted sources like Reddit, Home Depot customer reviews, and RTings are doomed to this fate.
Is this simply as inevitable as death and taxes? Or is there some reason to hope for progress?
This seems like a game theory problem, doesn't it?
I think you're asking if it's worth to get the things you make on ProductHunt?
I can't answer that, I'm not a creator, but I can answer as a consumer/user/reader of ProductHunt. I get the weekly digest thing and I always read it, and often try things, and share things I see there with other people I know that might find that "new" thing useful. It's really the only thing I follow to find new stuff like that.
I can't answer that, I'm not a creator, but I can answer as a consumer/user/reader of ProductHunt. I get the weekly digest thing and I always read it, and often try things, and share things I see there with other people I know that might find that "new" thing useful. It's really the only thing I follow to find new stuff like that.
On its launch day, I posted my side project to ProductHunt:
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/escape-team
It got #2 Product of the Day, 563 upvotes (its 'GIF trailer' helped a lot, I think!) in total.
It was a great launch, despite the community of PH not being too board game-savvy. It's a good activity for your launch day – I would, however, not link to the PH page directly, but rather make a page on your website that embeds their upvote button:
https://www.escape-team.com/out-now-mission-pack-2
(I did that for the first expansion of Escape Team, which got way less upvotes and traction as you can see, but that might just be the smaller news value of an 'expansion'.)
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/escape-team
It got #2 Product of the Day, 563 upvotes (its 'GIF trailer' helped a lot, I think!) in total.
It was a great launch, despite the community of PH not being too board game-savvy. It's a good activity for your launch day – I would, however, not link to the PH page directly, but rather make a page on your website that embeds their upvote button:
https://www.escape-team.com/out-now-mission-pack-2
(I did that for the first expansion of Escape Team, which got way less upvotes and traction as you can see, but that might just be the smaller news value of an 'expansion'.)
I think there's people who do check out Product Hunt without posting themselves, although it's probably not a whole lot. I regularly check it out to find new products, or for general inspiration, but that said I do post in there myself.
It's worth it from experience if you manage to get in the top 5 or so, and get featured in the newsletter as well. I've personally gotten a decent amount of users and traffic by posting in there. Plus it can also help to get all sorts of opportunities, after a launch I tend to have people and companies reach out who are also in the space, or looking to partner - it's generally pretty good for networking. But it also depends on the kind of product you're launching, I've had more success with productivity tools (a task management app, screen recorder, design tool...) than with other types of products (directories, communities, niche tools...), you have to know the audience.
Definitely do agree though that it can be a bit of an echo chamber. I wish there were more platforms that were used by "lurkers" where you could post your product and reach your audience. Unfortunately many platforms discourage self-promotion, it's a shame really. I love discovering new things all the time, but it seems nowadays the only products that reach you are the popular ones, it's incredibly hard to discover niche ones. Not just for websites and apps, but it also goes for movies, books, and all sorts of other content.
It's worth it from experience if you manage to get in the top 5 or so, and get featured in the newsletter as well. I've personally gotten a decent amount of users and traffic by posting in there. Plus it can also help to get all sorts of opportunities, after a launch I tend to have people and companies reach out who are also in the space, or looking to partner - it's generally pretty good for networking. But it also depends on the kind of product you're launching, I've had more success with productivity tools (a task management app, screen recorder, design tool...) than with other types of products (directories, communities, niche tools...), you have to know the audience.
Definitely do agree though that it can be a bit of an echo chamber. I wish there were more platforms that were used by "lurkers" where you could post your product and reach your audience. Unfortunately many platforms discourage self-promotion, it's a shame really. I love discovering new things all the time, but it seems nowadays the only products that reach you are the popular ones, it's incredibly hard to discover niche ones. Not just for websites and apps, but it also goes for movies, books, and all sorts of other content.
OrgPad has been #5 Product of the Day on ProductHunt on 24th of December 2021. It was very much unexpected, we didn't really invest much into the launch at PH.
It brought us some nice traffic and a handful of new subscriptions, when we expected a very calm day considering OrgPad is still used more to create stuff than consume and it was Christmas Eve. We asked the community to give us up-votes and many have certainly done so, but I think most of the up-votes came organically.
OrgPad is a SaaS tool we develop for about 3 years, where you organize ideas and materials in a graph/ network manner. OrgPad is used for anything from IT planing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvw2uRQ64xE) over teaching/ presenting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sk75P8BJDM) to documenting long stays/ sightseeing in foreign countries such as Japan: https://www.orgpad.com/o/Cq4wzd04hJZ6JFZSCWGKU6 and much more. You can try it out for free. In short, it is a real tool that works, has some individual and institutional paying customers and has thousands of users overall.
I should add, that my colleague Kamila said, PH support was quite helpful.
It brought us some nice traffic and a handful of new subscriptions, when we expected a very calm day considering OrgPad is still used more to create stuff than consume and it was Christmas Eve. We asked the community to give us up-votes and many have certainly done so, but I think most of the up-votes came organically.
OrgPad is a SaaS tool we develop for about 3 years, where you organize ideas and materials in a graph/ network manner. OrgPad is used for anything from IT planing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvw2uRQ64xE) over teaching/ presenting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sk75P8BJDM) to documenting long stays/ sightseeing in foreign countries such as Japan: https://www.orgpad.com/o/Cq4wzd04hJZ6JFZSCWGKU6 and much more. You can try it out for free. In short, it is a real tool that works, has some individual and institutional paying customers and has thousands of users overall.
I should add, that my colleague Kamila said, PH support was quite helpful.
Product Hunt is useful if you treat it as a software directory. It lists free and open source software (especially self-hosted B2B services) that can be hard to find elsewhere.
Here's a list of the most recently submitted open source products on Product Hunt:
https://www.producthunt.com/topics/open-source#order=by-date
Here's a list of the most recently submitted open source products on Product Hunt:
https://www.producthunt.com/topics/open-source#order=by-date
Not used it in years, conversion rate fell. Eventually ended up much like SoundCloud where it's mainly creators rather than consumers.
PH takes much more work and strategy but "success" is somewhat deterministic if you did your homework. In our case we saw similar uptake, signups and conversion then ~20h on HN front page over the course of a week. PH had a much higher half-life and we saw stable uptake for a few days while HN was all in the first few hours.
It was definitely worth it for us. Some of our best customers found us on PH and our lead investor first heard of us during our launch and reached out.
For the curious product is https://hookdeck.com
As a PH user thought, I'm not sure how much value you should put in the ranking..
It was definitely worth it for us. Some of our best customers found us on PH and our lead investor first heard of us during our launch and reached out.
For the curious product is https://hookdeck.com
As a PH user thought, I'm not sure how much value you should put in the ranking..
Seriously, It will depend on the type of product you are realising. My experience is PH have built an experience that forces sign up; therefore, if you don’t have an account, your can’t upVote; consequently, you will only reach those with an account to your point. I prefer Niche slack/ discord communities where you may know a leader, i.e. for products leaders; I’ve asked a Fiver freelancer to build a list of all slack communities that fit my product. Without spamming, you will find the connectors and making a list of those may be a better route to distribute your product.
A lot of startup/indie people take product hunt as false validation. It’s only worth it if you’re launching a tool for startups or remote work or something like that, anything else you’re just getting a false positive signal from early tech adopters. PH also lacks the sometimes brutal, honest feedback that HN has.
i know i don’t need a product when they advertise their ProductHunt rating
it’s an echo-chamber of marketers trying to push useless/trivial products for huge subscription fees
if you add your product you’ll get emails from people trying to sell you upvotes, then you know how it works
it’s an echo-chamber of marketers trying to push useless/trivial products for huge subscription fees
if you add your product you’ll get emails from people trying to sell you upvotes, then you know how it works
Yes it is. It helped me discover the "New mac smell" candle. It improved my life and helped me reach perfect nirvana well before the 40-45 hours if its burn time.
This message has been written from across the Universe at the Heavenly plane.
This message has been written from across the Universe at the Heavenly plane.
For an industry centered on innovation it is possible to be in a dry period where there are just too many people trying to make the 'latest thing' using older things. New tech tends to show up and keep things interesting.
I got a free product featured there recently. Got a lot of traffic but most of it was crap - visits and upvotes without any downloads. And that's for a free product - I guess I would not make any sales if it was paid.
From my limited experience, the prototype PH user is someone who is into startups/sass/software/design. If such kind of people are not your target market, then I see no reason to post your product in PH.
Most of the comments on I see on Product Hunt look like they were paid for, are made in broken English, and sometimes don't make any sense. I don't trust what I see there.
Product Hunt is only useful if you are selling products to startup people (monitoring, DevOps tools, SMB marketing stuff, etc)
(tl;dr: crapshoot as to whether you get featured, but worth it if you do.)
my personal experience with it was positive.
I posted my site on PH over the summer (plug: https://avant.fm, a customizable feed of new releases from the best indie music labels).
After a couple weeks it was featured for a day. Not sure how that happened, but someone with some pull "hunted" it I guess. About 30 other sites were featured that day.
I eventually made it to #4 and got 1000 hits, roughly, with a very slowly decaying tail. I still get a couple referrals a day from PH.
Now the traffic was nice, though temporary.
But I also appreciated it as a an additional reason to get out there shout about my site. I had already announced it on twitter, but this gave the opportunity to spend another day hyping. I made a couple twitter posts as I climbed up, and then a final one when I had reached my peak and the day was over.
But I also reached out individually to many people via DM or email, asking them to upvote me. This was an unique opportunity because it's a less awkward ask than "check out my website and tell me what you think."
This created some nice networking moments and opportunities where I felt like the site got on the radar of a few people in a helpful way, hopefully paving the way for something in the future.
my personal experience with it was positive.
I posted my site on PH over the summer (plug: https://avant.fm, a customizable feed of new releases from the best indie music labels).
After a couple weeks it was featured for a day. Not sure how that happened, but someone with some pull "hunted" it I guess. About 30 other sites were featured that day.
I eventually made it to #4 and got 1000 hits, roughly, with a very slowly decaying tail. I still get a couple referrals a day from PH.
Now the traffic was nice, though temporary.
But I also appreciated it as a an additional reason to get out there shout about my site. I had already announced it on twitter, but this gave the opportunity to spend another day hyping. I made a couple twitter posts as I climbed up, and then a final one when I had reached my peak and the day was over.
But I also reached out individually to many people via DM or email, asking them to upvote me. This was an unique opportunity because it's a less awkward ask than "check out my website and tell me what you think."
This created some nice networking moments and opportunities where I felt like the site got on the radar of a few people in a helpful way, hopefully paving the way for something in the future.
No.
Is that a "No" to "Is Product Hunt worth it?" or a "No" to "it's a pyramidal echo chamber..."?
Not worth it. You get a tiny number of visits (compared to what you need to make a viable marketing plan.) The people who visit are interested in their own products, not in yours.
If your product was something that guaranteed some other product could get a handful of visits from Product Hunt that would be a good product for Product Hunt.
If your product was something that guaranteed some other product could get a handful of visits from Product Hunt that would be a good product for Product Hunt.
It’s a “No” to “Did you care to read the discussion and make a meaningful contribution?”
Yes.
It's probably more worth it than Hacker News. I submitted my new site Cancel Culture Live (cancelculturelive.com) yesterday evening and it was just removed. Months working on a new shiny webapp, it starts getting a few upvotes and traction on HN, only to be removed?
'Cancel culture' is a political thing and against the guidelines, since it could create flame wars and unwanted discussions that are rarely useful: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
So it's more about the related topic than the webapp itselve. It's always been that way fyi
So it's more about the related topic than the webapp itselve. It's always been that way fyi