Tristan Today

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My Process For Winning at ProductHunt

Tristan Pollock

This is my step-by-step guide for how I hunt products on ProductHunt.com (PH hereafter).

How to get on my schedule

First, you’ll need to book a time with me to get into my hunting queue, talk strategy, and get your hunt scheduled. I’m currently using Superpeer for this. BOOK TIME HERE.

Why work with me?

People like to work with me because I give them the tools to drive thousands of new visitors to their site in just 24 hours. I’ve done this over 200 times and have one of the best upvotes/hunt ratios of anyone on PH. I think of PH as the Press Release of the Tech Industry and align my strategy respectively.

Strategy and scheduling

  1. Read THIS for an overview of PH. 👏👏 claps are welcome.

  2. Then read THIS for more data on traffic and revenue benchmarks and maximizing your hunt’s success. I do love your 👏👏

  3. I only need this information to schedule your hunt. You can add the rest after.

    1. website

    2. name

    3. tagline

    4. thumbnail

    5. description

    6. ProductHunt username(s) as Makers and editing

  4. I can schedule your hunt up to 6 days in advance so email me your details and preferred hunt date within that time frame.

Growth tips and tricks

  1. You will be featured on the homepage of PH with me as your hunter. My thousands of followers will get a notification when your hunt goes live.

  2. When your hunt goes live make sure to thank/tag me (example) on all social networks and I'll be happy to retweet and share. Twitter and LinkedIn are the most effective. Here’s how to write a viral post for LinkedIn.

  3. For 24 hours, your goal is to stay above the fold (~Top 5 products) on the PH homepage. That will get you scores more of organic traffic. You can also win an award for being in the top Product of the Day. Example on the top right.

  4. Rally your network. Online groups and 1:many channels are good with a compelling offer, but nothing beats good ole 1:1 outreach via personal emails and messages. Now you can finally hit up all of your LinkedIn contacts with something interesting to say.

  5. Prep your family/friends network by helping them make their accounts on PH active with 3-5 upvotes/comments each. Active accounts = stronger votes.

  6. Tag investors, customers, and other supporters via @user in your Maker Post. Your 'Maker Post' is where you make a comment on your Hunt Page and explain why you created the product and shout out who's helped you along the way. People tagged on PH will get notified.

  7. Turn your comment section into a Q&A by asking for family/friends to ask questions (you can seed them) as well as asking for thoughts/feedback from your greater network.

  8. Tag PH on Twitter w/ a 'We are so excited to be TRENDING on @ProductHunt today! Check us out if you like X. We have Y special promotion & would love your thoughts!" PH may retweet you or tweet about you. PH may also add you to their newsletter. Two big wins for promotion.

  9. Guide your family/friends to go to the PH homepage, find your product, click on it, and upvote, recommend YES, and comment. This will help balance your organic upvotes with direct link upvotes. Send people who don’t know you as well straight to your Hunt Page.

  10. Have people on the same IP as you vote from their phones on cell reception with WIFI off. This will also help give you stronger upvotes.

  11. Optimize for 4:1 upvote/comment ratio. Too many upvotes without any commentary may look strange.

  12. Long term value on PH ranges from SEO and link backs to lead generation and a strong referral channel.

  13. Finally, remember to be authentic, excited, and not too spammy. You need to hustle to be successful on PH, but don’t be too flagrant in asking for upvotes in public spaces. Think up your own growth hacks and experiment. You will always want more upvotes, so be prepared to work at it. 1,000 votes is a good stretch goal that will make you work for it.

Timeline

To recap, the general timeline of the plan is to launch early morning (12am—4am PT) and then get into top positioning for the next shift (5am PT—12pm PT) and take advantage of the organic eyes that visit PH during peek times and then continue pushing upvotes/comments till the end of the day.

Pacific time late morning into the afternoon will be one of the highest traffic times.

If you are really gun-ho then keep pushing and promoting for 48 hours because the Yesterday Top Hunts are right below the Today Top Hunts on the home page.

Good luck 🍀