
Show HN vs. TechCrunch vs. Product Hunt: what's most effective to launch a product - mathouc
http://blog.frontapp.com/hacker-news-techcrunch-and-product-hunt-which-is-most-effective-to-launch-your-product-2/
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nothxbro
Worth noting is that this was essentially number one on product hunt, above
all other items.

Meaning, the product hunt results shown are the absolute best result you could
hope for and most users will receive a far smaller amount of visits. PH gets a
bit of hype because its invite only and people assume it has a big impact, but
for most folk it would be much more impactful for their launch to even be on a
smaller tech blog like Read/write or recode.

For the average person who gets on PH and gets the normal amount of upvotes
(around 10-20 ) you can expect a blistering 250-500 visits. You would get more
traction just posting a comment in a HN article. PH seems more powerful
because its invite only and has tons of hype around it, but it does not
deliver on results yet.

Surprised that HN numbers were so high, but not surprised that Techcrunch was
number one. They still have a great share of the market when it comes to
initial exposure.

~~~
minimaxir
A good rule of thumb with Hacker News is that you get 90-100 unique visitors
for every upvote on a post given that it hits the front page. (as someone
whose blog has hit the top of HN multiple times, I can attest to this)

The app received 6100 hits with 76 HN points, so that's a good estimate.

I'm not a fan of Product Hunt because it's an echo chamber personified. It's
what happened to Quora, and I don't think that strategy will work twice.

~~~
murtza
I mod /r/SideProject, which is a subreddit similar to Product Hunt. Do you
have any recommendations on how to prevent the subreddit from turning into an
echo chamber?

[http://www.reddit.com/r/sideproject](http://www.reddit.com/r/sideproject)

~~~
aagha
Have you thought about joining forces w/ /r/producthunt and/or /r/startups?

~~~
murtza
/r/startups and /r/sideproject currently have linkbacks to each other. Are
there any other ways you would suggest?

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chatmasta
The most important lesson to learn from this successful "launch" is that they
iterated on their product for _seven months_ of beta before officially
launching it. How often do you see "Show HN's" of half-finished side projects
with no actual customers? All the time. And the feedback is rarely good. Even
if it is, the percent of qualified leads will likely be drastically lower than
if you release a refined product, since people will quickly realize its rough
state and promptly forget about your product.

The lesson is here to chillllll. Wait. Hold on. You don't need to "launch"
your product as soon as v1 is deployed to Heroku. HN, product hunt, and
Techcrunch will still be here in seven months. Don't waste your window of
opportunity for "launching" by announcing an extremely rough, underdeveloped
product. Hold out until you have customer feedback and have refined it
sufficiently. Then, the leads you get will be infinitely more valuable.

~~~
dang
I know you're talking about product launches, but you reminded me of something
I've been wanting to clarify about Show HN. I hope it's ok if I share it here.
It's not exactly off-topic, since Show HN is definitely for product
launches—but it's for other things too.

The way Show HN has evolved over the years, the bar for it is naturally low.
Show HN is for something you've made that other people can try out and talk
with you about in the thread. That can be anything from a first project or
weekend hack to a feedback-honed product like you've described above. The only
rules are (a) you made it and (b) it works.

By "it works" I mean that it isn't a landing page or an email signup or a
fundraiser, but rather something other people can play with and give feedback
and ask questions about. That definitely includes new products, but also other
things. Who knows what people might come up with! It just has to be
interesting.

A risk with setting the bar too high is that some users will feel like
contributing isn't for them. We want to avoid that. There are many talented
people who maybe haven't done anything of their own yet, or haven't yet shared
what they've done, or who suffer from that curse of our field, impostor
syndrome. It's painfully easy to look at the polished work of others and
think, "I could never do that". One reason we want Show HN to be welcoming to
all levels of work is so there will be plenty of examples where people think,
"I could do that". Not as in "meh, that's nothing," but in the DIY spirit of
"hey, me too".

But the main reason is that many kinds of things—including seemingly trivial
things—can be interesting. There's a secret relationship between the high and
the low. They thrive together.

Masterful paintings are wonderful but first sketches are interesting too,
especially in a workshop or a studio, which is the kind of place we want HN to
be. Besides, first sketches have a way of turning into something masterful
later. Most won't, but some will, and we love it when HN helps that happen.

~~~
nostromo
Would you guys consider adding /show like you have /ask?

Show HN is best HN.

~~~
dang
I've emailed you. :)

------
viggity
My product (www.machete.io) has been on both HN and PH in the past week. Its
hard to measure HN because rel=nofollow => no referrer in google analytics.
Also, our HN post wasn't specifically about our product, but rather a
visualization of seed funding by accelerators (machete lets you easily create
interactive pivot charts). PH was more focused specifically about machete.

HN: ~10K sessions, 293 requests for beta access, on a Tuesday+Wednesday

PH: ~1800 sessions, 495 requests for beta access, on a Friday+Saturday

I have a very hard time separating out HN's impact long term because of the no
referrer, PH doesn't do that and from last friday to tonight (wednesday),
we've gotten a total of 2,687 visitors from PH and 709 signups (yes, a 27%
conversion rate). We got even more indirect signups from PH via tweets that I
don't think we would have gotten otherwise.

I don't know how things would have been different if my HN post was
specifically geared at telling HN about Machete and our data visualizations
instead of just a sample visualization we made. Had tons of PH readers email
me asking about specific features, if we were looking for funding and when
they could actually get into the beta. Didn't really have that at all with HN.
Although I would say that we had equal numbers of VCs from HN and PH sign up
(assuming they didn't use their gmail account)

~~~
bobfunk
A bit off-topic, but it's not the "nofollow" that leaves you with no referrer
in analytics, it's SSL.

HN forces HTTPS and your page is HTTP. The browser never sends a referrer when
you follow a link from an encrypted site to an unencrypted site, so you can
loose quite a bit of data in analytics by not using HTTPS since more and more
inbound links will be from encrypted traffic.

Add HTTPS to www.machete.io and you'll get better data.

~~~
viggity
ahh.... wow. I knew that google was going to stop sending referrer info on
https, but I thought that was some how optional and not the default. Thank you
very much for the info, I'll have to go find a cheap cert.

------
eli
Are your customers likely to be other startups or related companies? If not,
then probably none of the above. "Wherever your customers hang out" is the
right answer.

~~~
davidw
Yes, this can't be emphasized enough!

For instance, I've had LiberWriter on the front page a few times, and it
basically does not convert, at all. Most people here can make their own eBooks
without problems. Our target market are self-published authors who are not at
all technical and need some help.

------
heytessa
I've found HN to be a high quality community. There is a higher concentration
of people that can give you meaningful feedback when you post your product
under a Show HN. Product Hunt on the other hand seems to get you really
useless feedback. Product hunt just feels like it belongs to a clique, is way
too hyped up and lacks substance .

To be fair, I do think product hunt brings in a tiny amount of traffic.

~~~
rrhoover
We have a long way to go to reach HN-level numbers but I think we're doing OK,
considering Product Hunt's been around for ~8 months. I shared more numbers
earlier in this thread here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7981057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7981057)

------
twocommas
Above all I enjoy the diversity and intellect of the perspectives within HN
comments. It's truly a special place with a high caliber of valuable exchange.

Except for the few startups that consider tech power users as their
demographic, I think it's naive and counterproductive for many of them to put
so much time into getting their links on these sites. If they put the same
effort into getting their product in front of their actual customers they
would stand to benefit much more.

------
apidoc
It depend on what you want.

HN/TC/... are good to show a new product to people that want to see new
products. Thats it.

That did not mean that you get customers or a wider audience.

One year ago i launch [http://apidocjs.com](http://apidocjs.com) (OpenSource
for RESTful API documentation), i show it to HN and got 2.500 Visitors in one
day (yeah!), but the next days nearly zero.

Further development and step by step more users find their way to apiDoc ->
organic growth.

------
tosinaf
Just like to add my two cents.

I'm the little guy in the story. 300 followers on twitter, only just starting
to develop a name for myself.

I launched theNews ios ([http://bit.ly/thenews-ios](http://bit.ly/thenews-
ios)) recently which basically lets you read Hacker News & designer news in
one app.

You'd think that would go down well in HN but nope, it faded into the bowels
of HN & im not surprised. There is so much content due to how "open" it is.

Meanwhile people auctually took notice of my app on PH & DN because u dont't
entirely need points to be relevant due to the moderate number of submissions.
Frankly a better system for the little guy.

Show HN has its place for hacks & product launches while PH is like a
brilliant way to launch your product & get feedback from amazing people that
you look up to

& i don't think PH is tryna be like Show HN, it's doing its own thing. giving
its own spin on Show HN.

All communities can't be open & frnakly the number of products on PH is
already overwhelming at its current amount & with more its only gonna get more
where it just becomes impossible to keep up. Thats probably the biggest
challenge PH faces.

it's a nice alternative to Show HN & will shine in a different way.

------
api
It seems Product Hunt is closed to most submitters... how did you post there?
Did you score an invite?

~~~
rrhoover
As previously mentioned in this HN thread, we'll be opening posting to
everyone to submit products for review by the community (not everything can
hit the homepage or it will get too noisy with the current design) in addition
to a recommendation/invite system so that the community can refer others.

------
return0
Fun, but how many products have actually "made it" from such "launches"? I
think you get a small bump from "da geeks" and that's all.

------
yaph
A "statistical analysis" with one sample product is certainly enough to tell
you what platform is most effective to launch it. /s

------
propelledjeans
The Product Hunt results for sign ups, leads, and shares are skewed. You're
pointing at a completely different part of your product (mobile).

You should be pointing at the same link across all three sources before you
compare the three sources. Note: fixing this does not affect the number of
links clicked, of course, but it could significantly change the number of sign
ups, etc.

------
sparkzilla
I've submitted my site to Show HN (last week) and to Product Hunt (well you
can't actually submit but I sent an email to Ryan Hoover) and haven't been
able to get any clicks from either of them because the Show HN link wasn't
promoted and PH haven't added us yet. TechCrunch just ignore my emails. So
your mileage may vary!

------
danielhonigman
For business-related products, it's also helpful to gain exposure in the
industries you're in. For instance, if you're launching a product that might
serve both the healthcare and legal sectors, any type of exposure there not
only proves legitimacy for potential customers, but to investors as well.

------
ajiang
Really cool to see how far Product Hunt has come, rivaling TC on visit traffic
and HN on signups /leads

------
ramoq
We had similar numbers with Planleaf, minus TC. Except our conversion rates
were quite high, but that lends itself to the product more than anything.
Great job with Front App. 7 months is a long time. I think StatusPage.io
waited a long time before doing their Show HN as well.

------
arfliw
Next please teach us how to launch and make TC, the front page of HN and the
top of PH.

Most people struggle to get even get one of those. The trifecta is quit
impressive.

------
austenallred
Our product ([http://grasswire.com](http://grasswire.com)) was recently also
on the top of HackerNews and ProductHunt (Show
HN:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7954327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7954327)
, ProductHunt:
[http://www.producthunt.com/posts/grasswire](http://www.producthunt.com/posts/grasswire)).
No TechCrunch writeup yet.

Not all posts are created equal, so it's important to note that we never hit
#1 on HN to my knowledge. We were #2-4 for the majority of the day, and fell
off the front page about 24 hours later. We also had a blip where we were
removed before we could show our post wasn't a dupe, so we lost an hour there.

HackerNews Traffic:

HackerNews day 1: 5,750

HackerNews day 2: 1,115

HackerNews day 3: negligible

HackerNews Total: 6865

HackerNews was posted on a fairly slow Friday, so it's probably different if
you post Monday morning. We had 82 total upvotes on HN.

On ProductHunt we were/are one of the top products ever, so I have no idea
what it's like if you don't get a lot of upvotes. We also posted to
ProductHunt on Monday morning.

ProductHunt Traffic:

ProductHunt day 1: 1,273

ProductHunt day 2: 465

ProductHunt email: 1,114 (this is rough, because I only have it as "direct"
traffic, so I'm estimating what our direct traffic is on a given day and
subtracting that out. But we're new enough this could be off).

ProductHunt day 3: 247

ProductHunt total: 3,126

Day 3 is today, so I don't have much data, but ProductHunt certainly has a
slower drop if you're going to die. Though, again, that's probably only true
if you have 150+ upvotes on ProductHunt.

But that's quantitative. Let's go qualitative.

As far as the feedback we got, HN was 10x better. Almost all of the people
commenting on PH work for PH, so I assume there's a lot of dog fooding going
on. It's a very young product, so it's understandable, but I can't see that
growing unless there's more happening there.

Some negatives of ProductHunt are that I've had people go through and tweet at
_everybody_ who voted for us (including me) because your twitter account is
publicly listed when you vote. That's kind of annoying.

Overall, why not post to PH? But it has a _lot_ of ground to make up before it
catches HN. Anecdotally, I check every single "Show HN." I've maybe clicked on
two or three things on ProductHunt, mostly because I don't care enough about
other people's products to seek the site out specifically.

~~~
aagha
Thanks for posting. I saw grasswire when it was posted on PH and immediately
took to it; I think you're doing a great job with "visual news".

Re your question:

 _Overall, why not post to PH?_

Because, for the most part, you can't. You have to be invited to do so, making
it (near?) impossible to get on unless you know someone who knows someone who
already has access.

What do you mean by "Almost all of the people commenting on PH _work for PH_
"?

~~~
rrhoover
I (founder of PH) have the same question re: "Almost all of the people
commenting on PH work for PH." You can see the list of people that are or have
worked on Product Hunt on our about page
([http://www.producthunt.com/about](http://www.producthunt.com/about)). ~95%
of the posts and comments are submitted by people that don't "work" for
Product Hunt.

aagha is correct in that we've limited the number of people that can post. If
anyone could post a product to the homepage, it would be overrun with self-
promotion and frankly noise, with the way it's currently designed. We're
working on a recommendation system so that people in the community can refer
others to join the conversation in addition to a new posting flow that allows
anyone to submit a product to be curated by the community.

It's early days and I empathize with the frustration of not being able to
comment or post on the site. We're working hard to open it to a larger
audience.

~~~
aagha
_We 're working on a recommendation system so that people in the community can
refer others to join the conversation_

Don't you this just perpetuates the "bros" ethos? How likely is a solo
entrepreneur in his mid-40's working on a web startup and plugged into the
Digital Valley but unable to attend meetups in the city to get an email from
someone in the community of your friends and their friends? I think the
chances are low.

Perhaps you should allow people to request a membership. I tried to submit a
cool startup I found to PH last week and quickly determined I couldn't. Before
that, I'd been checking PH ever morning to see what was cool and out there.
After not being able to participate in the community (or the conversation--you
could easily moderate comments) its basically fallen off my radar and I've
stopped visiting.

------
hexleo
More people visited is not sure bring good effect. It influence by other
factors. So complicated.

------
shahocean
Its about how big the STORY you make!

------
gearoidoc
Betalist.

------
norenjr
Build a good product.

------
dang
We changed the url from [http://fr.slideshare.net/Frontapp/hn-vs-tc-vs-
ph](http://fr.slideshare.net/Frontapp/hn-vs-tc-vs-ph).

