E393: The most straightforward way to get automatically Featured on Product Hunt without having to message support.
Things covered: - Benefits of launching a technology product on Product Hunt. - The difference between the Featured page and the All (New) Page. - Can you Hunt your own product, which you are also a Maker of? - How to submit and fill out a launch (what is necessary and what is not) so that you are automatically Featured on the front page. - How many times can the same product be launched on Product Hunt / how often you can launch. - How to organically get upvotes for a Product Hunt launch. - Testing on Product Hunt and warming up an account. - Nuances of Product Hunt.
00:00 Product Hunt 101 00:41 Product Hunt Featured vs. All/New 01:36 Exact Steps to Get Featured on Product Hunt 02:31 More Submission Details 03:37 Videos Are Necessary! 04:36 Testing and Warm-Up Strategies 06:42 Post-Launch Tips 07:54 Frequency of Launches 08:52 Final Thoughts
#producthunt #digitalmarketing #startups #indiehackers
The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
Today's episode of the podcast is going to be a very straightforward guide about how to get featured on product ton. Product ton is the best place for launching any technology product. I have launched on product ton, maybe a dozen times. I've had many successful launches on product ton. I've used product ton to get in lots of blogs, to get lots of business, lots of customers. Every time I launch on product ton, when I launch well, I have a direct search engine optimization boost. I get a direct boost to my rankings and my search traffic. I adore product ton. It is a wonderful platform, really the best place for launching any new technology product. Problem is, lots of people don't know how to get featured on it. And if you do it wrong, you go to the new page. There's the new page and the featured page. The page, both pages, refresh every 24 hours. They start at midnight Pacific Standard Time. And then products will stay on this front page, either on the new page or the featured page for 24 hours. And then every 24 hours, it resets. There's a new batch of products. And you're pushed down to the previous day, and you're pushed down and pushed down and pushed down. The thing is, if you don't get featured within this first day, and if you don't get featured at the beginning of the day, you're going to lose out on a lot of opportunity for eyeballs, for impressions, and for upvotes. You need to be on the featured page to get noticed, to get upvotes. And those upvotes will propel you to the top of product time. But again, if you don't get on the featured page, people aren't going to notice you, you're not going to get upvotes. You might even share with your network, but that's still not going to be enough to get on the featured page. I'm going to share just how to get featured right away. Get on that featured page right away. You don't want to be on the new page. The new page requires a click to see a lot of people don't click into the new page to see it. You want to be on the featured page. The featured page is right there on the front. The new page, the new page is now called the all page. It used to be called the new page, but it's the same thing. And this is what you have to do. This is going to be a very straightforward guide. I've just explained why I love product ton. You probably already know this. This is what you have to do to get on that coveted featured page so you can get upvotes and do well. First thing, do you need somebody else to hunt your product? You do not. You can hunt your own product. In fact, if you want to test this, you can hunt somebody else's product as a test just to see how this works just to go through it yourself, but you can hunt your own product. I have hunted my own product most times, actually, you can hunt your own product. So you start you submit your product. You give a link. This is going to be a quick episode. There's going to be a fast walkthrough of how to do this. I just want to pack as much action and usefulness into this episode as possible. The short version of this is basically fill out everything except for promo codes. Promo codes are not necessary, but everything else are in promo codes will be a little bit better for performance, but it's not necessary. So you submit your link, click get started. You name the product, you give a tagline. You want to put in all of the details. Put in a Twitter account, put in a description. If you don't have a Twitter account, create a Twitter account. If the Twitter account is your Twitter account as the maker, you can use that instead, but put in a Twitter account, put in the description, select three topics. You got to fill out everything category, subcategory, write the first comment, select a thumbnail image. You can even put in GIFs. I've seen lots of people put in GIFs so that their thumbnails move. That's more noticeable. However, the moving thumbnails only work if you hover over them on the front page, but it's still a nice effect, but it's not necessary, but you need a thumbnail, put in an image. Now, here's where I see a lot of people get it wrong. Everyone does that stuff that I previously described. Lots of people don't have videos for their products, so they only submit images. And if you only submit images, you won't be featured. You actually need a video. So what if you don't have a professional video made and you don't have a professional video done? Here's what you do. Literally use Loom. Use Loom or any other screen capture product. Share your screen, share your face, share yourself talking about your product. Try to make the best video that you can, of course. You can use the script to edit it very easily. I use the script to edit everything that I do, but you need a video. Images are not enough. You want images, but you need a video. Use at least three images and a video, and you need a video. It is necessary. If you don't have a video, you will not be featured. That is one of the biggest things that I learned. If you just want to be featured automatically, do all these things and have a video. And if you want to test this, test this by hunting somebody else's product, you'll give them free presses, a nice thing to do, hunt somebody else's product. In fact, it even warms up your account. If you create a new account, you have to wait one week before you could submit a product, so it can warm up your account. You can do this, hunt somebody else's product, go through the test to make sure that you get featured just to see how it works yourself. It doesn't even take a lot of work to submit a product. You could even record a Loom for the other person's product as you're hunting it. Hunting just means that you are submitting the product. The maker means that you have made the product. There's hunters and makers, but you can both hunt and make the product. You can make the product and submit the product. The interactive demo is not necessary. Then submit if you worked on the product or didn't work on the product. If you're listening to this, you most likely worked on the product, but I would recommend testing as well if you've never done this before. And in that case, if you're testing, you'd say you didn't work on the product. Then you submit the makers, find the people who made it, see if they have existing product hunt accounts or maybe it's your own, fill out the extras, whether it's free paid, paid with a free trial or plan, you don't need a promo code, say whether it's bootstrapped or you're going to be seeking VC funding, and that's it. That's all you need to do. Depending on the age of the account, products might be reviewed, but I've seen lots of people hunt their own products where the products were not reviewed before. It's really just if you fill out all the information you are seen as trustworthy. There's not so much spam on product ton that they need a highly dedicated mod team, but they do want to feature fully filled out profiles on the front page, on the feature page. And so to get featured, you got to fully fill the launch out and that is your launch. Do it in advance, schedule it in advance. It's always good to schedule it a couple of days in advance, I tend to schedule mine a week in advance. Again, if this is your first time using product ton and you are planning a big launch, it's really important to you. It might be worth just giving it a test run with somebody else's product. You want to know what's up. Okay. So now you've launched. You're featured. You've launched. Everything's worked. Here are some quick things to do. Share your launch several times a day on lots of different platforms. You want people to see it, you want to get votes. Your community will come and support you. Just keep sharing updates. Most people in your network will not see the update the first, second, third or fourth time, so just keep sharing it relentlessly, share any update that you can, consider cold messaging people, cold messaging friends, not strangers. I hate, I get so many DMs on X or other places asking for me to upvote people's products. Don't do that. Do it with your community. Obviously, you want your launch to have been polished. You want your launch listing to have been polished. Don't use chat GPT to generate copy. Please do not use chat GPT to generate copy. People can tell. I actually, I just reported somebody on LinkedIn because I clicked on an article that looked interesting and then the article was entirely written by a chat GPT and I reported it for spam because it's wasting my time. It wastes people's time. If you generate copy or articles with chat GPT, don't do that. And then the last thing, the last thing that I want to cover on today's episode is how often can you launch on product ton every three months? If you have an update to your product, that is better, but you can launch on product ton every three months, the same product every three months, but you can launch lots of different products. But the same product has to be launched within three months intervals, three months or more. And if you have an update, that's better. You want to have an update. But if you don't, that's okay. You can still launch again. I have seen that too. People are not keeping track. People are not keeping track of whether you've updated or not. There's always a second chance and a third and a fourth and a fifth. Product tons is great. Like I said, it brings lots of users, traffic, blog posts and SEO boosts. It is great for all types of technology products. I have even seen it used to launch technology podcasts. That is how crazy product has gotten. If you were making an app or a piece of hardware, product ton is so good. And I hope you will give it a try. And if you're wondering how to get featured on product ton, now you know this is episode 393 of my daily digital marketing podcast. Normally I tell stories, I could have told the story on how I launched on the same day as chat GPT. Maybe I'll tell that story another time. I think I've told it before, but I haven't told it in a long time in several hundred days and it is a good story. I launched on the same day that chat GPT launched on December 2nd, 2022 and I almost beat them. That was a crazy story. I'll say that one for another time. I hope this was useful. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for watching. I will talk to you again tomorrow. Bye now.
