How I Launched My First Product on Product Hunt and Got My First Paying Customer

Ganesh Mani

January 15, 2021

Introduction

If you are an Indie Hacker like me, you will know the excitement of launching the product on ProductHunt. let me share my experience on launching my first product on ProductHunt and how it ended up as 2 Product of the Day.

The journey started when I joined Indie Hackers community. After, seeing a lot of IndieHackers sharing their journey about building products. I was inspired to build and gain some experience in it. but, I didn’t know where to start and what to start.

Then one day, i found an article Finding Micro-saas business ideas from Tyler Tringas. it gave me a complete insight into Micro-SaaS. one of the important takeaways for me was Scratching our own itch.

It makes sense to me because I was struggling to find an idea and validate whether it can become a profitable business or not. It can be because of a lot of reasons like I was thinking only as a developer and I didn’t have any exposure to marketing and Entrepreneurial life.

But, after reading the article. I learned that building a product for ourselves can break the barrier of it. since I will be the first customer of my product and I will know what kind of features can be a USP.

That’s how I started brainstorming ideas. I wrote every problem that I had and discussed it with my friends. Few of them gave me constructive feedback.

One of the problem statement was, Content sharing across several social platforms. Since I have blog and I wanted to write at least one blog per week. Sharing the content across all the platforms was time-consuming. it happens to me every week.

So, I went through the internet and tried to find an effective solution. few solutions solved this problem. but, those are not exactly what I was looking for. That’s when I decided that I wanted to build a solution for it.

As the result, Crosspost App came into the picture.

you can read more about the Inspiration behind crosspost here

I was working daily 2-3 hours to build the product. After 3 months, I had my product ready. I know that 3 months is quite long to build the initial version of any product. but, sometimes things will not go as we planned. there are some reasons for it. But, one crucial thing is I didn’t lose motivation for my product.

Finally, I had my product ready, Now I need to launch it and see how people react to it. There are a few ways to do it.

1. Tweet about your product on your profile
2. Launch it to a community
3. Launch it on ProductHunt.

Unlike me, if you have a strong following on Twitter. it will be easy to get users at an early stage. but unfortunately, I didn’t have many followers on Twitter.

I was not sure about launching it to communities. I’ve been a part of a few communities. But I don’t know whether it can be a suitable product for the community people.

So, I decided to launch it on ProductHunt. but, I was nervous to do it. because I was worried about how people react to my product, what happens if my launch becomes a disaster, how will I react if people criticize my product.

Then, I talked to a few people on Twitter and IndieStack community especially Yaro Bagriy. he encouraged and motivated me to launch it on ProductHunt. After gaining some courage. i planned to launch it.

I read a lot of articles about ProductHunt launch and blogs. one of them was The ProductHunt Blueprint. It helped me to plan for the launch. I even bought his launch checklist guide which is a gem for anyone who wants to launch on ProductHunt.

Here are some of the key takeaway if you’re planning for the PH launch

Launch Day is important

From my personal experience, Planning for PH launch on a less crowded day will be helpful. because there are fewer chances of losing traction on that day.

For example, I planned to launch my product on Saturday. because there are fewer chances of launching any popular products. Most of the time, they will launch on a weekday. So, planning to launch on weekend may help you to reach more people.

Plan for the Correct Time

Try to launch before 8 AM PST. ProductHunt resets 12:01 AM PST every day. If you launch your product between 4 AM-8 AM PST. It helps you to reach more people.

I launched my product by 4 AM PST. It helped me to be featured as #1 Product of the day(most of the day). it changed to #2 at the last hour.

Apply Grass Root Approach

Unlike me, if you have strong Twitter followers. then you can just tweet on your timeline to get initial traction.

I don’t have a strong following on Twitter(i am gaining more friends now :-) ). So, the only option that I had at that time is to reach people directly to support my product in any form. So, I approached them on Twitter, messaged them personally, posted in all the communities that I was part of.

It may backfire and it did for me too(to some extent). but, that’s okay. we are doing a cold approach here. So, I may backfire and we have to be prepared for it. But there are a lot of generous people out there who want to help others.

I DMed a lot of people whom I know, admire, and follow on Twitter. An unexcepted incident that happened to me was a tweet from Arvid Kahl

Here’s the tweet,

It helped me to reach a lot of people on Twitter and it started spreading on Twitter community.

As a result, My product was on #1 Product of the day

One of the benefits of being on the ProductHunt top page is your product will be visible to wider audiences. Since my product was #1, people started noticing it and spreading the word across their communities.

Like that, An admin from a Facebook group called SaaS Warrior reached out to me on Twitter and asked me to join their group. He shared my product with the group and people were interested to learn more about the features of my product.

Then, out of the blue, a guy bought A Lifetime deal(LTD) for my product in that group. it was the first sale for my product. it was the first time somebody bought something that I built(As a product). that feeling is inexpressible.

Finally, There was an hour remaining for the ProductHunt reset. Suddenly, I saw another product getting a lot of traction and My product ended up in the 2nd position. So, At the end of the day, it was #2 Product of the Day

My Advice for you

It was like a roller coaster ride for me. I used to wonder how people build products and launch. I never thought I would launch a product on PH and it becomes #2. So, my advice to you would be, if I can do it. you can do it too. I am just like you. I used to follow the people who were doing it and kept wondering how they did it.

As time goes by, I realized and started taking action toward my goal. It changed everything afterward. I kept working every day toward where I want to be. I still have a long way to go. PH launch is just a baby step towards my goal. But, I wanted to share this with you, so you can make your first step easily.