How to Fail on Product Hunt
Last week I flopped, here’s how I did it.
I’m not new to this. I’ve made 20 products with an average of 270 upvotes. My stuff is tweeted about, featured on the newsletter, and nearly every time I launch I land top ten on the Popular page.
Last week though my latest product Popcoin ended the day with 12 upvotes. 12. And two of them were from my wife. At first I was angry. Angry at Product Hunt for changing their algorithm. Angry at my Twitter and Facebook followers for not caring. Angry at my Slack groups for seeing my post but not helping a brother out. Angry at Hacker News, Designer News and Galactic Talk for seemingly suppressing my content.
Popcoin is a good service. A great service even. I’ve personally used it and it’s rare I get as amped about a thing I’ve built. I’d pay for it myself. The product, while a little hard to explain, is amazing, and not the issue in last week’s failure.
Popcoin failed because I was uncouth. I spammed my community. I put so little effort into onboarding users, or explaining the value, or asking for feedback. I was cold, long winded and oh so wrongfully assumed that if I built it they would come.
I messed up, and a good product has gone unseen as a result. All hope is obviously not lost however. Product Hunt is not the end all of launching things online, but it will hurt not having that strong start. Serves me right though for my arrogance and assumptions.
So if you want to be like me and do as I have done. Build your stuff, love it, launch it and then post about it everywhere.
If however you want to do well, put in the extra effort and follow the rules.
