14 ms·

What it's like to be listed on Product Hunt, twice

41 points by zoltarSpeaks 12y ago

fesuffolk 12y ago
I'd not even heard of product hunt, is it a UK only thing?
- zoltarSpeaks 12y ago
  No, not at all. They're US based and are in the current YCombinator batch. http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/17/product-hunt-the-popular-tech-product-discovery-site-is-in-current-y-combinator-batch/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/17/product-hunt-the-popular-te...
- fred_durst 12y ago
  Its basically one of those scene pumping deals. Its seems more common in the art and music world than tech as far as I can tell. Get together with a group of people trying to do similar things and then make it look like you are more popular than you are by acting in concert with each other. For example liking each others posts, promoting each others projects on social media and in person. Essentially you give each other a fake buzz to get new things off the ground, like a head start. Then others from the outside looking in think that you have created that buzz organically and come to check out what all the excitement is about.
  - patrickbradley 12y ago
    hah, that is a super-negative interpretation of it. It is also a really one-sided view (only looking at it from the perspective of people who submit links). The bulk of their users will never submit anything, they just enjoy reading the posts, trying out the products and giving feedback. I'm not sure what you see as "fake" about the "buzz"? It isn't like they are bots. They are actual human beings who might even purchase the service or product. Another view (a far more accurate view) is that it is a spin-off from Hacker News with a more focused topic. I quite enjoy the site, and I've never posted anything on it. Non-technical people and product focused people can find a lot of the stuff on HN outside of their interests where product hunt hits much closer to the bullseye, more consistently.
    - fred_durst 12y ago
      I'm not saying it to be negative. Its the standard way to get any type of endevour that needs a network effect(hype) to get off the ground. When starting a band its really hard to get people to come to your shows and listen to your music. But if you get together with a group of other like minded bands and start pumping each other up, it looks like you are already popular and attracts attention. Standard scene building stuff. I just wanted to clarify that Product Hunt does not appear to be an organically created phenomenon, but a very engineered process that from the looks of things was very well executed. I could also be completely wrong.
BrianPetro 12y ago
Thanks for the information. I've been interested in going to the site with LinkPlug > http://www.linkplugapp.com http://www.linkplugapp.com
- bjones53 12y ago
  Looks similar to http://snip.ly/ http://snip.ly/.
  - BrianPetro 12y ago
    It's very similar. Of course I believe we do some key things differently.
eps 12y ago
Page hit count is a vanity metric. We were featured on PH and while it does indeed drive a lot of traffic, the quality of it is about the same as from StumbleUpon's paid discovery, i.e. near zero. They come, they see, they bounce. No conversion at all.
- rrhoover 12y ago
  Agreed re: page views. As Peter pointed out, it really depends on the product. Founders have reported as little as 0.5% conversion to as high as 40% conversion from page view to purchase via PH.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - wuliwong 12y ago
    I agree 100%. The author spells out explicitly that you should consider if the users of Product Hunt are in your demographic. Seems pretty smart, it would be like advertising a fast food app in a fitness magazine and then being upset that the conversion rate was low. I also look at things like PH, HN and Reddit as tests of my product. I had a post about a new feature make the front page of Hacker News, the product is a Swift programming resource and I had 8500 views within 5-10 hours. After that, the shark fin died out and I'm back to nearly where I started. That tells me that I haven't quite figured it out. An interesting difference (just observing my own behavior) is that every new feature I release, I submit to HN. But, I am waiting until a certain point to submit something to PH. I think it is because of Product Hunt's focus on Product that makes we want to only show things that are more "ready for primetime" . I might be fooling myself, but I feel that the probability of meeting people interested in joining my cause in one way or another on PH is much higher than on HN. Obviously, that's just what my brain has decided on its own, no data to back that up.
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  True re: page hits. That said, I think Peter does a good job qualifying the traffic he got, and pointing out the caveats: that it can fade over time (and he's not afraid to post his "shark fin" graphs); that it shouldn't be interpreted as a false positive; that PH's userbase might be very different from your target market. And even if you do think PH is your target market, you can learn something useful from a shark fin. You're getting feedback from an abnormally insightful group of people, which is both good and bad. Bad, because the feedback isn't necessarily market-generalizable. Good, because the depth you'll get is better than what you'd get from a test group plucked at random from the general population. In any event, getting featured on PH shouldn't be the beginning and end of one's marketing plan. And Peter is pretty careful to point that out. I'd imagine that conversion looks better for products whose intended target falls more in line with the PH crowd. (See Ryan's comment re: 40%. My guess is that products on that end of the spectrum were right in the wheelhouse for this community.) So the operative lesson here is to understand the PH userbase, and to put that userbase into context within one's broader marketing strategy.
A_Pizza_Guy 12y ago
At this point in time Product Hunt is only really known to a very small community of people
- tabrischen 12y ago
  Yes, and it's a very niche demographic. I think Pete made a great point about bearing in mind where the feedback is from.
oonny 12y ago
what did you mean by "after clearing it with the Product Hunt crew." isn't the process just submitting your link?

41 points by zoltarSpeaks 12y ago

fesuffolk 12y ago

I'd not even heard of product hunt, is it a UK only thing?

zoltarSpeaks 12y ago
No, not at all. They're US based and are in the current YCombinator batch. http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/17/product-hunt-the-popular-tech-product-discovery-site-is-in-current-y-combinator-batch/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/17/product-hunt-the-popular-te...
fred_durst 12y ago
Its basically one of those scene pumping deals. Its seems more common in the art and music world than tech as far as I can tell. Get together with a group of people trying to do similar things and then make it look like you are more popular than you are by acting in concert with each other. For example liking each others posts, promoting each others projects on social media and in person. Essentially you give each other a fake buzz to get new things off the ground, like a head start. Then others from the outside looking in think that you have created that buzz organically and come to check out what all the excitement is about.
- patrickbradley 12y ago
  hah, that is a super-negative interpretation of it. It is also a really one-sided view (only looking at it from the perspective of people who submit links). The bulk of their users will never submit anything, they just enjoy reading the posts, trying out the products and giving feedback. I'm not sure what you see as "fake" about the "buzz"? It isn't like they are bots. They are actual human beings who might even purchase the service or product. Another view (a far more accurate view) is that it is a spin-off from Hacker News with a more focused topic. I quite enjoy the site, and I've never posted anything on it. Non-technical people and product focused people can find a lot of the stuff on HN outside of their interests where product hunt hits much closer to the bullseye, more consistently.
  - fred_durst 12y ago
    I'm not saying it to be negative. Its the standard way to get any type of endevour that needs a network effect(hype) to get off the ground. When starting a band its really hard to get people to come to your shows and listen to your music. But if you get together with a group of other like minded bands and start pumping each other up, it looks like you are already popular and attracts attention. Standard scene building stuff. I just wanted to clarify that Product Hunt does not appear to be an organically created phenomenon, but a very engineered process that from the looks of things was very well executed. I could also be completely wrong.

BrianPetro 12y ago

Thanks for the information. I've been interested in going to the site with LinkPlug > http://www.linkplugapp.com http://www.linkplugapp.com

bjones53 12y ago
Looks similar to http://snip.ly/ http://snip.ly/.
- BrianPetro 12y ago
  It's very similar. Of course I believe we do some key things differently.

eps 12y ago

Page hit count is a vanity metric. We were featured on PH and while it does indeed drive a lot of traffic, the quality of it is about the same as from StumbleUpon's paid discovery, i.e. near zero. They come, they see, they bounce. No conversion at all.

rrhoover 12y ago
Agreed re: page views. As Peter pointed out, it really depends on the product. Founders have reported as little as 0.5% conversion to as high as 40% conversion from page view to purchase via PH.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- wuliwong 12y ago
  I agree 100%. The author spells out explicitly that you should consider if the users of Product Hunt are in your demographic. Seems pretty smart, it would be like advertising a fast food app in a fitness magazine and then being upset that the conversion rate was low. I also look at things like PH, HN and Reddit as tests of my product. I had a post about a new feature make the front page of Hacker News, the product is a Swift programming resource and I had 8500 views within 5-10 hours. After that, the shark fin died out and I'm back to nearly where I started. That tells me that I haven't quite figured it out. An interesting difference (just observing my own behavior) is that every new feature I release, I submit to HN. But, I am waiting until a certain point to submit something to PH. I think it is because of Product Hunt's focus on Product that makes we want to only show things that are more "ready for primetime" . I might be fooling myself, but I feel that the probability of meeting people interested in joining my cause in one way or another on PH is much higher than on HN. Obviously, that's just what my brain has decided on its own, no data to back that up.
jonnathanson 12y ago
True re: page hits. That said, I think Peter does a good job qualifying the traffic he got, and pointing out the caveats: that it can fade over time (and he's not afraid to post his "shark fin" graphs); that it shouldn't be interpreted as a false positive; that PH's userbase might be very different from your target market. And even if you do think PH is your target market, you can learn something useful from a shark fin. You're getting feedback from an abnormally insightful group of people, which is both good and bad. Bad, because the feedback isn't necessarily market-generalizable. Good, because the depth you'll get is better than what you'd get from a test group plucked at random from the general population. In any event, getting featured on PH shouldn't be the beginning and end of one's marketing plan. And Peter is pretty careful to point that out. I'd imagine that conversion looks better for products whose intended target falls more in line with the PH crowd. (See Ryan's comment re: 40%. My guess is that products on that end of the spectrum were right in the wheelhouse for this community.) So the operative lesson here is to understand the PH userbase, and to put that userbase into context within one's broader marketing strategy.

A_Pizza_Guy 12y ago

At this point in time Product Hunt is only really known to a very small community of people

tabrischen 12y ago
Yes, and it's a very niche demographic. I think Pete made a great point about bearing in mind where the feedback is from.

oonny 12y ago

what did you mean by "after clearing it with the Product Hunt crew." isn't the process just submitting your link?