Substack Newsletters Could do Product Hunt Launches
But you have to follow a playbook template
Hey Guys,
There may be some of our niche Newsletter topics that are appropriate for promotion on Product Hunt.
Product Hunt is an American website to share and discover new products.
Users submit products, which are listed in a linear format by day. The site includes a comments system and a voting system similar to Hacker News or Reddit.
For a Substack Newsletter this could work if your niche topic relates in some way to this community and its audience. Generally younger, male and working in technology sector.
If your Newsletter has professional relevance this could work better.
Ali Abouelatta (a Substack Grow grad -video) a recent Egyptian immigrant to the U.S. who growth-hacked his Substack to 50,000 subscribers chronicles this pretty well.
He talks about this in his 1000 to 10,000 recap on his growth here:
Product Hunt Referrals if Launches Goes Well
Firstly, a quick introduction: Product Hunt is a community-driven website that allows product makers & marketers to place their products in front of a tech-loving audience. The community interacts with your product through votes and reviews, sharing praise and feedback alike – the necessary ingredients in the early stages of a product. Overall, whether you are looking for inputs on your new product or trying to boost traffic to your website, Product Hunt is the place for you.
Accelerate signups to your Newsletter
Convert some die-hard fans of your Niche topic to paid
Get more exposure for your personal brand
Improve your marketing experience
Opportunity (or excuse) to network with others
Read Product Hunt’s blog on how to do this.
Setting a Goal
Establish the numbers you want to reach in terms of specific measurable metrics. This could include:
Number of new free subscribers
Traffic to your Substack e.g. web views
Paid Signups of enthusiasts on your topic
Follows or mentions on social media, e.g. Twitter.
Number of upvotes and comments on Product Hunt
Once you have set the bar, and you know how to measure your performance, you can begin preparing for your product launch.
How to Launch
You can post something new here. To post a product, signup with a personal account (no company/branded accounts please!) and then follow these steps.
Consider Success is Slim
Launches that get the most up-votes get featured for the day.
Each day, the five best-performing products are listed at the top of the Product Hunt homepage. If you aren’t among those 5 of 30 or 40 products of the day, your results may be minimal.
On average, 30-40 products are posted in a day of which only 15 products make it to the “Popular” section. If you do not manage to make it to even the top 15, your product will not even be searchable through the search bar, after launch day.
Once you make it to the top five products list, a virtuous cycle is set off: You get more visibility in front of the Product Hunt community, increasing the likelihood for further upvotes, thereby ensuring you stay at the top.
The top five most upvoted products are also marketed in a daily newsletter to 500k+ members the next day. Now that’s a one-way trip to a huge spike in traffic to your website!
Product Hunt is therefore for talented, smart and methodical planners. A Newsletter is not always a product, but maybe yours is if you have diversified your niche, topic and given full value to your audience in a considered manner?
After all: Substack itself also had its Product Hunt launch.
Launch Checklist Continued
Links: Add your product or company website as the primary link, followed by links to the App Store, Google Play, and other places where people can download or use the product where applicable.
Title: Just the name of your product. No descriptions or emojis here.
Tagline: Describe what your product does in under 60 characters. Be specific! Communicate the value your product provides to the people you’re trying to reach, even if that means leaving out 95% of the features. Avoid slogans, optimize for how users search for products after launch day.
Product Hunt’s blog post goes further too: (so there’s potentially lots to consider if you are serious)
Thumbnail: Describe the product visually. This might be shown best as a static image, or subtle GIF to help capture attention. For some products the entire value prop can be communicated through a GIF animation (see Jack Dweck’s Pitch with a GIF collection). P.S. We recommend using 240x240.
Gallery: This is the best real estate to show off your product and the first thing people see when entering your post. Upload at least two assets at a minimum — the order is important. If you upload a video (via YouTube link) it will always show up first. Have at least one image/GIF that’s “tweetable” — that is, rectangular (roughly 2:1 ratio) that shows up well on social. The recommended size for images in the gallery is 635x380. Make it easy for people (and us) to promote what you made. P.S. Images/GIFs should be under 3MB.
Description: Add a 1–2 sentence description of your product that appears under the gallery images to give users a little more information about you’re working on. Short, to-the-point sentences work best!
Topics: Only choose 3–4 topics for your product. While your product might have a great user experience, please don’t add “User Experience” as a topic. An iPhone camera app might include “iPhone” and “Photography Tools,” whereas a product management app might include “Productivity,” “Designer Tools,” and “Developer Tools.”
Makers: When possible, always add the usernames of everyone that worked on the product — personal accounts only. This allows them to join the conversation and receive recognition for their hard work. As an added bonus, followers of each maker receive a notification on launch day, resulting in more discovery so make sure to add all your teammates. You need to have a Product Hunt account to be added as a maker. P.S. It’s better to link your account to both Twitter and Facebook so more of your friends can find you.
Product Hunt
If it went well you could gain likely around 200-500 free subscribers by doing this. At the beginning of your Newsletter it would be worth a try if your niche topic was somehow related to startups, product, youth culture, software engineering or other career related themes, but who knows!
Many Substack Creators are now using new ways to grow their audiences faster including making a course, executing a good podcast, using LinkedIn posts to go viral and so forth. I think where these approaches compound is when you are diversifying the value for your audience in a way that’s also more sticky for paid subscriptions or as a funnel to other services you offer.
What do you think?
Hope you are having a relaxing Sunday.
