All right. So in the previous two scenarios we spoke about how you build up an audience of your own. 1
So whether that's through building an email list or through building a following by doing content marketing 2
or starting a blog, that's all well and good. But what if you need to boost your numbers or what if you 3
don't have enough of those numbers? 4
Well, this is where the third scenario comes in. 5
And this is about piggybacking off somebody else's audience. 6
Now there's three search services I really want to talk about. First and foremost and probably the most 7
important if you're working in tech is Product Hunt. Producthunt.com is a web site where essentially 8
you get to hunt cool things or new things that have launched. 9
So very often you'll see things being hunted here being featured on Techcrunch like maybe two or three 10
days later. 11
It's essentially a site where a lot of discovery happens and it's cool because if you're an early adopter 12
or if you're somebody who wants to be on the bleeding edge of tech, then this is where you discover all the 13
cool stuff. 14
So the way that it works is that when a product is hunted, it is live on the front page for 24 hours. 15
And within these 24 hours, you have the opportunity of being upvoted or being discussed. 16
Now the higher your upvotes, the more likely it is that you're going to gain visibility. 17
And it's the visibility that's really crucial because not only does this website get tens of thousands 18
of hits per day, but additionally you get hits from really relevant people within tech. So these are your 19
journalists, these are your tech bloggers, these are your VCs and your angels. 20
So depending on what you're going for, being hunted and discovered on Product Hunt can significantly 21
boost your product launch. 22
Personally this is one of my favorite websites and I've been a member very early on. 23
In fact, it's probably the first thing I do when I crack over my laptop in the morning and drink my coffee. 24
It's Product Hunt 25
I go to to discover what cool new things are being built and really tap the pulse of our tech community. 26
So I'm going to talk about a couple of things to note 27
when you are going to go for launch on Product Hunt because it has some quirks that you need to be aware 28
of in order to have a successful launch. As you can imagine, if there's tens of thousands of hits to this 29
website there's also hundreds of product submissions every day. 30
So in order for yours to appear within the crucial front page as you can see it gets cut off about here, 31
there's you know maybe 22 more. 32
And these are the featured products. 33
So that means it's either been hunted by somebody influential or it's been noticed by the Product Hunt 34
team or it's just gain a massive amount of traction. 35
Now if you sign up to the website either through referral or by yourself and you try to hunt a product 36
where it will end up is this tab which is the newest hunts. 37
And as you can see by looking at the upvotes or the comments, this is not as readily discovered compared 38
to the featured page. 39
So here we've got about maybe 70 products and this is not what you see when you first go onto Product 40
Hunt. And the way that most people use this website is that they'll scroll through typically just you 41
know the first featured page. 42
And in order to end up here there's a few things that you need to know. 43
Firstly, the 24 hour cycle starts at 8:00 a.m. GMT. 44
So that means if you want a full 24 hours of exposure on the front page, you're going to have to you're 45
going to have to get your product hunted at 8:01am. And the person who hunts your product matters a great 46
deal. 47
There are super influences within Product Hunt who have the ability to boost you straight to the featured 48
page and that's where you need to be because there's a whole bunch of APIs a whole bunch of newsletters 49
etc. that scrape from the top post on Product Hunt. 50
And also if you end up in the top five, you get distribution out to their email list in a daily sort of 51
summary. 52
So get in touch with people who are influential hunters and the best way is usually through Twitter. 53
And you need to provide them with a number of details that they'll need. 54
Now this includes the name of the product, the URL, the tagline. 55
These are basically things that they're going to have to input into Product Hunt in order to hunt you. 56
Now if they're a pro Hunter then they might have other things that they want from you. 57
But essentially the point is just to make their lives as easy as pain free as possible 58
and on top of that that you have an interesting product for them to want to hunt. 59
Then you have maximum chance of success. 60
So how do you know who are the super influencers? 61
Well there's a website that I've linked down here which is a Product Hunt leaderboard and you can see here 62
the top 200 products of all time but you can also see the top 200 hunters 63
and this is updated every day or so. And that depends on the number of votes and the number things they've hunted, 64
the number of followers. 65
And these are people who have a lot of influence on this platform. 66
Essentially the way to do it is one by one, figure out who these guys are on Product Hunt. 67
Check out what they've hunted previously and try to figure out what are they interested in, what kind 68
of products do they tend to hunt. 69
And out of that list find maybe 20 or 30 people who you think could be interested in what you're doing 70
and hit them up over Twitter. 71
So Product Hunt is linked with Twitter. 72
So in most cases if you just search Twitter for their handle, it will be the same person and just tweet at 73
them and see if they will be kind enough to hunt your product. 74
Now the other thing about Product Hunt is that when you do get hunted and you obviously want to be upvoted 75
because the more up votes the higher you go. 76
Now that's not always the case because if you look for example here, these people Avocode have a 77
168 upvotes. 78
But these people have 169 upvotes. 79
Why are they below this one? 80
Well because Product Hunt actually has a sophisticated algorithm and it's getting more and more sophisticated 81
day by day. 82
So the thing that-- so one of the things to note is that if you go to the page for your product and you 83
share this link with people, the resulting upvotes that you get won't be as strongly weighted as if 84
they discovered it from the home page. 85
So if from the home page I upvote Avocode here, 86
this is a much stronger indicator of interest than if I came to Product Hunt through the shared link. 87
The other thing that you really have to try not to do is never share the direct link on Facebook, on 88
Twitter anywhere asking for votes. 89
It's a part of Product Hunt community guidelines. 90
They don't want people to solicit upvotes. 91
Now that can be okay if you're you know already near the top and you just share the home page and tell 92
people you know go upvote us, 93
We are Pitchbot on the front page. 94
But what if you're not there? 95
What if you're on the newest list which is really hard to discover? 96
Or what if you are actually below the show 22 more? what if you're somewhere down here? 97
Then it can be really hard to direct your community to help you out and upvote you. 98
So one of the things that you can do is so say if you are something you say Bookup right? You can actually 99
search for Bookup and hit enter and share this link instead. 100
Now this doesn't always work especially if your name sounds really similar to a whole bunch of other 101
startups or products. 102
But it can often mean the difference but it can often mean the difference of being penalized for your 103
upvotes or actually having it count. 104
So the big no no is sharing the link, pasting it everywhere that's public and trying to solicit votes. 105
You often see products that start climbing the charts on Product Hunt home page and then suddenly crash 106
because they trigger the algorithm. 107
So I could probably talk about so I could probably talk about Product Hunt for days and days if not 108
a week. 109
And there's a lot of intricacies that you have to abide by if you want a successful launch on Product 110
Hunt. 111
But the important thing is that once your product gets hunted, then nobody can hunt the same link again. 112
So make sure that you're properly prepared if you are going to go for a Product Hunt launch and make sure 113
that you try and get an influencer on Product Hunt to help you out. 114
Now what are the advantages of actually ending up on here? 115
Very often through either personal experience or friends of mine who have done product launches, 116
if you end up on the front page especially within the top five you can expect tens of thousands of hits 117
just within 24 hours. 118
And that usually translates to a couple of thousands of either downloads or buys or whatever it takes 119
to acquire your product. 120
So it is a huge thing. 121
And also you get noticed by the right people. 122
So if you're going to launch a digital product or even a physical product, as long as it fits one of 123
these categories it's well worth just investigating and planning your launch on Product Hunt.