How Product Hunt brought us 4k new visitors in 1 week [case study]

Everyone developing an application, tool, or browser extension knows that Product Hunt (PH) or Hacker News (HN) are great sources of promotion.

We tried Product Hunt for 3 our tools and Hacker News for 1. In this case study, you will find what we did and what were the results including the number of visitors, registered users and their engagement.

Product Hunt

Product Hunt is easy to use. Just in case you are new to it, this review provides some useful information.

Not only custom feeds but the “Today” and “Yesterday” top lists bring a lot of attention to your product. Attention = clicks. The best part is these clicks are relevant, not to mention there is a strong potential these people may become your new customers.

There are 2 ways to submit a product to Product Hunt:

• You’ll do it on your own
• Someone will become the “Hunter”

Hacker News

Though the interface of Hacker News is quite an old school, it’s another source of immensely relevant traffic we tried for RockingPage. These people seek new tools, inspiration, beta testing opportunities and growth-hacking ideas. They are the ones you want to reach.

Case study

When it comes to Product Hunt, there are basically 4 scenarios that can happen:

1. Someone features your product and you try to get the best of it
2. Someone features your product and your reaction is not sufficient
3. You plan wisely and feature your product (this truly works!!!)
4. You plan wisely but you are too late

Yes, your guess is right, our tools experienced all of them. The chart below is a brief summary of total results of the 1st week. Continue reading to find out all results of each submission!

* based on Product Hunt and Google Analytics data

LinkMiner (1st and 4th scenarios at the same time)

When LinkMiner was featured on Product Hunt, our CEO’s Twitter profile was tagged so we were notified and started a campaign promptly. By the way, we were about to feature LinkMiner by ourselves soon, we had a plan but we were too late. It was a combination of 1st and 4th scenarios.

So what did we do? First of all, we updated the product information, added a couple of nice screenshots and did our best to boost the number of upvotes by:

• Engaging the whole team
• Adding a button to upvote it on our landing pages

During a couple of hours, LinkMiner’s PH profile got more than 150 upvotes and got featured on the “Today” top list. What a shame it was featured a bit too late in the day so it quickly dropped to the “Yesterday” list.

Let’s get back to the main point, the website traffic. Thanks to being in both trending lists, LinkMiner got a real traffic boost.

During 2 days, visitors from Product Hunt created 38 Mangools accounts. Two weeks later, there were 56 new accounts. That’s cool, isn’t it?

SERPWatcher (2nd scenario)

Scenario no. 2 took its place as SERPWatcher was “hunted” by one of our users. We didn’t respond in time and lost the potential of boosting upvotes. We were in the middle of SERPWatcher launch campaign.

There was simply no space for Product Hunt. On the other hand, to be honest, we didn’t plan it at all. Despite this, we were lucky! SERPWatcher was upvoted almost 200 times in 2 weeks. It wasn’t featured in the “Today” nor “Yesterday” list but the traffic was solid.

What’s more, there were 74 new accounts created and 1 paid subscription during the 1st week! Who knows what would be the results if we planned it out.

RockingPage (3rd scenario)

Featuring RockingPage on Product Hunt covered the most optimal scenario. We came up with a plan, timing and clear strategy to earn as many upvotes as possible.

Timing is crucial. We submitted RockingPage on Tuesday morning UTC+1 (CET) which was around 2 AM UTC-8 (PST). I did a bit of research afterward and found out that Product Hunt’s servers are set to PST so the best idea to have 24 hours to get enough upvotes to be featured in the “Today” list is right after midnight PST. It’s a widely discussed topic on Quora.

We placed a sitewide Product Hunt announcement link on RockingPage to get more upvotes. However, we had to generate more traffic on RockingPage.

We placed a sitewide announcement link on all Mangools SEO tools landing pages. On top of that, we featured it in the Mangools monthly newsletter, we did campaign on social media and specialized forums such as Quora and Reddit.

And the results? RockingPage became #3 product of the day on PH! As of today, it has 595 upvotes.

Let’s take a look at referral traffic that came from PH during the 1st week. It was the biggest source of traffic: 2,731 users out of 9,638.

We featured RockingPage on Hacker News as well. We basically did the same to increase the synergy of all campaigns. Regardless of getting lost in tons of other submissions in a couple of hours, our post generated solid engagement and traffic.

Lessons learned

All scenarios have pros and cons. Altogether, they brought us 165 new registrations and thousands of relevant visitors until today.

Nevertheless, I think the 3rd holds the biggest chance as it lets you plan and execute all steps in your own way. To sum it up, here are the lessons we learned you can use as best practices:

• It’s better to feature something you have done by yourself and plan activities to get as many upvotes as possible
• Engagement leads to more visitors and possible upvotes
• Add sitewide Product Hunt or Hacker News announcements to get more people to those pages
• To get more traffic on the product landing page do social, email, paid campaigns or cross promotion if applicable to maximize the synergy
• Submit your product to Product Hunt around midnight UTC-8 (PST) to have 24 hours to earn as many upvotes as possible
• Getting to “Today” featured list leads to high traffic
• Is your product worth to be upvoted or shared? It has to attract people

Quick tips

Here are some tips for Product Hunt:

• Being visible on PH is all about getting upvotes and engagement
• Invite people to upvote your post, include your team, the whole company, etc.
• Select a good time so you won’t drop to the “Yesterday” list after few hours (America time zones)
• Include catchy information, headline, screenshots or videos, even a special offer for PH users can be a motivator
• Feel free to ask influencers to “hunt” your product to get additional visibility
• Answer to all comments, be friendly and encourage others to upvote
• You can log into PH from Twitter, Facebook or Angellist
• Don’t forget to add the PH post to your product’s landing page to get upvotes from visitors who came from other sources

Keep in mind there are some rules and tips when posting new stuff on Hacker News:

• “Show HN: …” is used when you want to share something you have made
• Make sure your post enables HN users to test and feedback your product
• Engagement is a king and it’s all about upvotes and comments
• Try the above-mentioned PH tips for HN to get more upvotes

How about you? Have you ever tried to boost your product launch by using Product Hunt, Hacker News or similar sites? Share your thoughts in the comments below.