Learnings from being PH Product of the Day
Sharing learnings and tools one month after the launch of our latest bootstrapped SaaS.
I didn't write in September because I was very busy, so here's a recap, tips & milestones.
🧑💻 Before launching
Pre-launch is important. I recommend that you to visit PH often before you launch. So you can see the best time to launch, the possibilities of your category, users, upvotes, etc.
Be part of the community, follow people, and not only in PH. Engage, comment on the forum and the product launch posts, is the better to be familiar and to start being familiar.
The Coming Soon section is key to paving the way. If you create your teaser page before launch, users will check out the page. If they like the description, they can click the “Notify me” button and become followers of your product. They will get a notification on the day of launch to upvote. This can give you a little more push from the start. And playing with the scheduled launch date can also help.
Not only do I create the teaser page. But I shared it privately with every user I talked to before to validate the product. Ensuring a minimal user base until the expected day.
🏆 Product of the Day on PH!
On September 22nd we launched RealMail on Product Hunt. We became #3 Product of the Day, and a lot of good things happened after that.
We wanted to have the opportunity to reach the top 3. And although I have already achieved to be Product of the Day with my previous investor backed startup, there is more and more competition, and it is not easy at all.
So we decided to go for a weekend launch. Our product targets is B2B and could reach fewer professionals on the weekend. But in reality, Sunday also allows you to continue to have an impact the following week after the launch. And that is what happened.
The launching day was exciting, we get more than 100 comments in total. We, my partner Víctor and I, spent 24 hours (in 2 shifts) answering to all the comments, emails and chat. This is a good practice, because users feel you close and push the conversation.
We started in first/second position, but we saw that others were ahead of us. Then we saw some corrections (the line drops on the graph below). This is probably because the PH team detected upvotes being bought by who those who were ahead. The penalty cut votes, as you can see in the middle of the day. The problem is that they never drop all the false ones. And in the end we were in 3rd place, but at least we did it by being honest. Because despite all the vote buying proposals I received, I refused to buy a single vote. 🙂
✅ Results
As a result of being Product of the Day, RealMail was featured in the PH newsletter. And this brings us a little more of traffic and visibility.
We also get mentions like this video review
Tweets:
Or mentioned in blogs and newsletters:
Webdesigner Depot - Exciting New Tools for Designers, October 2024
Brief Tech News - founder news for the 23/09/2024
Aideations - The Intelligence Age is Here: How AI is Shaping Humanity’s Future
Product Hunt Newsletter - The Leaderboard // AI girlfriend for salespeople
8020ai - Billion-Dollar AI Project Revealed!
And surprisingly we were added organically in directories:
https://i.buzzing.cc/ja/ph/posts/2024/38/en_ph_2024_09_22__realmail/
https://steemit.com/steemhunt/@vaheeed/realmail-the-email-validation-for-saas
https://steemhunt.com/@vaheeed/realmail-the-email-validation-for-saas
So as many asked by it, we launched the RealMail Affiliates Program.
If you like RealMail.. 👉🏻 You can earn 25% recurring on all paid referrals.
🛠️ Tools
For launching on Product Hunt, you can leverage some of these interesting tools:
WhenToLaunch.xyz: An amazing project. It helps to understand trends and a lot of interesting information about PH.
Hunted.Space by Dan Mindru: A great tool to monitor the launch day.
ProductFlair.io: A bunch of curated resources for launch inspiration. Like: thumbnails, images, videos or first comments.
💵 Acquisition offers
The best part is that we received our first acquisition offer on the same day we launched. I have never seen anything like it. 😳
And after that, surprisingly, other offers followed this. 💸
We are still in the middle of the process.. So I will update you, if I have any news. 😏
See you in 𝕏, Product Hunt, Peerlist, or WIP. Or discover our next project. 🤫 It’s coming..