Which is the first channel you should promote your product?

#1

Hi there

You know, there are plenty of channels where you can post your product. I mean, except google ads, facebooks ads etc.

Like producthunt, indiehackers, betalist, hacker news etc.

But. Producthunt looks for me like quite a serious step, publishing there should be prepared and the product should work well, since it’s almost one-time opportunity.

Betalist on the contrary don’t get much visitors, as I heard, and it takes way too long to be published if we don’t pay them.

So what’s the ideal channel(s) to start from, in your opinion?

#2

Sup man. Great question!

You are totally right about Product Hunt. A few years later it was a cozy community where everyone one could show off their side-project or a new startup. But today PH requires a more serious approach to get noticed.
People understood that PH is a free source of quality traffic and today one can not simply get first user from the community. A huge preparations are needed: a polished product, a nice presentation and - I believe - an amount of first loyal users to support you on the launch day.

I think every community becomes less beginners-friendly over time :slightly_smiling_face:

BetaList is not a big help. The audience is not very active and huge. It looks like BetaList is there to just get money from beginning makers. I do not recommend to pay for a BetaList featuring.

A great start would be small niched online chats of makers. There are a bunch of them in Telegram: https://t.me/solofounders, https://t.me/makerlog.
Online chats are always accessible and easy to launch: you do not need to prepare a logo, description, fill in any forms etc. You can just shot a link and wait for the initial feedback :smile:

2 Likes
#3

Regarding PH. Am I right that these steps are necessary or would help a lot:

  1. Find a hunter. Do not publish from your account, since you don’t have many followers. Moreover, find a good, popular hunter :slight_smile:
  2. Gallery should be made with a designer help, or at least a lot of work should be put there. Not just dumb screenshots of your app
  3. Logo should be animated and nice
  4. Am I right that it’d help so much if you have a video. I mean here that you can tell about the product on your own, wearing some kind of producthunt t-shirt, with good speech. I think it’s kind of attractive
  5. As soon as you launch ask friends to upvote. Not in comments. Just your friends, maybe maker communities. To get initial upvote base, like, first 100 upvotes.
#4

Logo should be animated and nice

Yeah.
But remember that bad animation is worse than no animation :slightly_smiling_face:

wearing some kind of producthunt t-shirt

Product Hunt merch is a great addition!

Just your friends, maybe maker communities.

It is officially forbidden to ask for an upvote. So if you ask it publicly, a PH staff may find it and block you. I do not recommend trying to trick their rules and explicitly ask for an upvote. Just do not do it.

Btw, I’ve seen some companies ask for an upvote in their newsletters. I personally would not do it.

#5

Well, you still can publish your product everywhere, but do not explicitly ask for upvotes. You’ll still get them

Plus, you can ask them in private messaging from your friends, which 100% won’t hurt.

Omg, for the past week I saw 2 projects on PH which are clones of existing ones, and for example one of them was top of the day. With a lots of negative comments. So I doubt PH even do something to prevent this

#6

I would imagine that the best place to promote your product is wherever your prospective customers are hanging out. If you’re selling coding education, get 100k+ views on as many YouTube videos as you can in that genre. If you’re selling pink iPhone cases you probably want to advertise to girls on Instagram. They don’t sell Ferraris in Oklahoma, they sell them in Los Angeles. Etc

1 Like
#7

What about appsumo & co ?

#8

Appsumo looks like a serious channel you need to be fully prepared to dive into :thinking: Perhaps not the best option for the first launch. It is more suitable for scaling your product IMO.

#9

Hi,
Why Appsumo is not good for first launch?