Is Product Hunt a waste of time?

I always found the very concept of Product Hunt to be antithetical to the indie hacker mindset. Your product should not have one single “launch” but should rather be a continuous process of launching, testing, and improvement.

Even if you launch multiple times or multiple features on Product Hunt, you’re still getting pulled in the opposite direction - away from constant iteration. People end up putting so much stock into something so fleeting and frivolous.

And on top of that, if your product is not one aimed at other entrepreneurs, you’re broadcasting yourself to the wrong audience.

It's a classic look at me,... look at me platform. I read so many post-mortems from people along the lines of...

"yeah, so we didn't actually get any sales, but we had 143 page hits and 27 newsletter signups; so we're really pleased with things, because we really just wanted exposure"

Meanwhile, they are at home crying into their beer, because they spent 300 hours preparing for it, when they could have just used that time filling their funnel and calling actual real potential clients.

I think it's always been "by founders for founders".

One interesting thing I've noticed about PH is that its supply and demand is the same audience (founders, marketers, people who own small businesses etc.)

If your target customers are not in PH, yes.

Like for most of things in life I guess the answer here is „it depends“. There are products which do better and products which don’t benefit as much from a launch there. It mostly depends on the target customers.

A well positioned ProductHunt page can be very positive for your product even after the launch in terms of:

• increased visibility via SEO
• credibility for future customers

We launched our product last week. The preparations took quite some time and were demanding. But we got quite some traffic and about 7 new customers from the launch. Together with the other benefits like good SEO I don’t consider it a waste of time.

Last year when I was building my product, the goal was to launch on Product Hunt as soon as it was ready.

However, to be honest I felt it was never ready. I knew I only had one shot at PH and wanted to make a splash with an amazing UI, value prop, etc.

So... I never did it.

Fast forward 12 months and we just passed $20k MRR so I guess I didn't need to!

I still haven't gotten around to building version 2, but when I do I'll probably do a PH launch 😆

It is subjective!!

We've launched https://drotion.xyz/ on product hunt recently. We're #2 product of the day and made $1000+ on that single day. Besides that, we also got a lot of exposure and many curation websites added our tool to their list. So, Product Hunt launch boosts your sales and brand exposure.

Having said that,
Product Hunt might not be a right fit for you, if your target audience is not online creators or startup founders or marketers.

So, its up to your product and your target audience!!

It often comes to brand awareness. Try your max to put your product out everywhere possible (but obviously make it useful for the community, not spam) and build something that people recognize elsewhere. Producthunt is just another platform, so don't take it too close to heart if the product doesn't receive traction. Passion pays off!

Out of interest, if you don't launch via ProductHunt then what other methods are out there to gain exposure? I'm in the middle of launching a new product at the moment.

NOT at all! We recently launched https://peerlist.io on Product Hunt and became the product of the day. The kind of exposure we got is invaluable! Not in terms of traffic but also the brand awareness it brought.

I strongly believe it is a very valuable community where you will find early adopters for your product!

For about 95% of projects, yes absolutely.

You stand very little chance of being featured, and because the system can unfortunatly still be gamed it makes it extremely random.

You'll also find a vast majority of featured products are there because the founders had an established group of contacts within the ProductHunt community, who are able to help boost their post. This makes it very hard, near impossible for a small solo founder to get anything out of the service. This is also one of the reasons I personally found their launch platform to be a tad pointless.

what if you don’t have much budget for the marketing plan, so i would prefer to get the first customer in PH

I thinks it is best for building community around your impending products. Do not think it works for instant launch of your products

I think producthunt is a valuable community to be a part of. It all depends how active you are on there. Of course a good launch can really give you a boost. But it ain't easy to launch successfully. So it all comes down to how much time you want to dedicate to it, which is a personal choice. But there are still many smart, innovative, plugged in folks you could be reaching there- so my thinking is 'why not?'

For us, it's one of many channels we will use to get our product out there. No form of marketing hurts, especially if it's free.

Maybe people use it in the wrong way? They often create something, barely working, and they launch it there without any success. I want to launch soon, but I still feel like my product is not ready for this audience. I prefer to focus on polishing the product and the launching.

I haven't tired it yet. but I might be helpful for starting.

I think Product Hunt is not for everyone. There are some B2C apps, games or info-products that might get some traction from PH but it doesn't help much if you are looking to promote SaaS product / B2B products.

I don't think so there still cool products that get listed and helped me in my careers as a designer to grow.

In my opinion, it is not a waste of time.

Product Hunt is an incredible place to discover products, talk with other like-minded founders.

The problem is not the platform but how people might use it. If your entire marketing strategy revolves around PH, then it's a bad idea.

Otherwise, it's a neat place to discover brilliant people sharing their incredible products.

That being said, I'm working on a platform that shows some interesting statistics of Product Hunt launches. Check it out statsph.com

I don't think it is a waste of time but since you can not launch very often you really have to take your time to learn the platform and prepare the launch. Many WBE Members have had great results with their launches and were able to collect a lot of feedback...

Haha, you read my post? https://www.indiehackers.com/post/why-we-might-stop-with-product-hunt-8b83928c89?c

Like all platforms things change, I think in just 4 years the ProductHunt Audience changed, also PH has changed some things which had a direct impact on views. (like required to log in and the new homepage)

It is still a great site to discover new products, but only the first 10 products get good exposure, and upvotes go really quick, even with a good strategy I think you can fail easily.

But it is great that ProductHunt is still free, and very accessible for new startups.

is not a waste of time, but is overrated.

It's very difficult to get in the top spot on Product Hunt so in some sense it's a waste of time for a first-time maker who hasn't prepared at all for the launch. If you take steps though to prepare for it, it can really give your project a boost early on (I wrote a twitter post about my experience).

Also, if you were banking on Product Hunt being "the thing" that makes or breaks your idea then you aren't really understanding the purpose of Product Hunt (or really what it means to be a founder). Product hunt is just one small piece of the larger puzzle. For me, it got a lot of early, brutally-honest feedback that really helped me shape and improve the product early on. The launch also opened the door to talk to other founders, investors, and companies in my niche which was a nice plus.

So is it a waste of time? For some people it is, for some it isn't.

I just posted a writeup on my experience with launching on PH: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/postmortem-of-our-product-hunt-launch-5f2d4a86e5

If you have a product that appeals to the PH audience, it's a goldmine and and perhaps the easiest way to capture users/customers instantly. If it does not appeal to the PH audience, the impact will be zero.

Too many product owners launch on PH with uninformed optimism thinking their product will appeal when it does not, and conclude that PH is no longer effective. Couldn't be further from the truth.

In my opinion, a good product means 70% of your work is done. Similarly, in SEO a good niche selection is very important for starting a successful business projects. So, always spare good time on hunting a good product.
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