Product Hunt has become a big target for the technology community by providing companies with a platform for releasing product to a hyper-engaged community that is not afraid to download a new app, try it out and provide the maker with useful feedback. It also doesn’t hurt that traffic originating from Product Hunt can, in some cases, trump the traffic from a respected tech journal like TechCrunch. Because of this phenomenon, it now seems that just about every product-based company Voxus works with is, at the minimum, curious about posting to Product Hunt.
And so we engage in simple, drill-down discussions. If there’s a good fit for posting, we’ll help that company’s product listing reach Product Hunt’s main page, but if it is a bad fit we will provide them with counsel to avoid Product Hunt, at least for the time being. It’s the companies that don’t share their love for Product Hunt with us and post on their own without our knowledge, not knowing we have access to the main page, that cuts me down at the knees.
Why does it bother me?
I’m all about getting results, whether with a media pitch, a piece of cool content or with Product Hunt. Those products that are posted to the platform willy-nilly never make it to the main page, and so no one in this community ever sees the post. In fact, at this point in the site’s evolution, I don’t think those posts are even searchable. It might as well not exist! Unfortunately, I’ve seen five companies do this over the past year and each time the result was the same: sorry! Thanks for playing! And once a product has been posted it cannot be reposted by someone else, even by one of Product Hunt’s influencers with main page posting privileges.
Fortunately, a few lucky Voxus clients approached us with plans to post on Product Hunt before they proceeded. By asking for our counsel, we were able to not only gain the client main page access, but also help it with the actual post and shape the type of content that resonates with the Product Hunt community, such as user videos or demonstrations. We’ve also negotiated an exclusive discount for the Product Hunt community. I can’t speak to the amount of traffic sent to this client’s product landing page on its own site, or how much product this posting helped to sell, but I can share that the post on Product Hunt drove over 700 upvotes, which is a relatively robust number. Most importantly, the post led to a very happy client.
In business, as in life, sometimes we get ahead of ourselves. As engineers, product managers or marketers, it is easy to get carried away by thinking you are the only one with specific knowledge of something special that can benefit your company – in this case the phenomenon of Product Hunt. Communication is so central to business success that keeping those nuggets to yourself can actually backfire on your company and its wares. If you, as a product manager or business owner, have dreams of Product Hunt’s main page, please share that desire with us at Voxus so we can help you achieve those dreams through tried and true best practices, and help you reap the benefits of this powerful platform.