We made $2500 from our Product Hunt launch
We launched our Quora marketing tool on Product Hunt at the end of August. We had a solid user base with hundreds of users back then, so we thought it was the right time for this campaign.
QApop ended up in 6th position with about 250 votes and almost 100 comments. We were pretty satisfied with these results.
However, it’s not about upvotes and comments. You can’t buy bread with them, right? I think a successful marketing campaign is about the revenue it generates. Can a Product Hunt campaign generate any?
Let’s face the truth. A successful Product Hunt launch is time-consuming. You need to prepare in advance, be active during the day, answer people, promote your launch in communities and social networks. What’s in exchange for it? Usually, nice feedback and a few users coming from the supportive Product Hunt community. However, does it affect your cash flow?
Many people think launching a product on PH is a game-changer. I’m sure there are many success stories of products that skyrocket after that, but that’s not the typical case. There are dozens of products daily, and it’s hard to keep attention after the initial spike.
We knew that, and that’s why we decided to put a little twist into it.
We created a special limited Lifetime deal that we promoted during that time. I think it was a great idea. Let me explain why.
Product Hunt is great for creating a buzz on the Internet
It’s something you can count on when you effectively launch your product there. Many people explore your product for the first time but also the last time. I mean, unless you keep their attention, right?
That’s why our lifetime deal was successful. We put those visitors in a position where they need to decide immediately because it’s a time and amount limited offer.
We set a goal to sell 50 coupons for $49. To our surprise, we sold out in 5 days, made $2500.
You receive different feedback from paying customers than free members/visitors
If someone pays for the product they require more attention. It could help you tune up your product really fast. Compared to free users who just don’t usually complain when the product is free, and they haven’t committed to it yet. We have fixed many issues during that time and received great feedback and feature requests from these paying users.
There were other side effects that surprised us:
Many people just wanted to support us and bought the deal
We got in touch with these LTD users to find out more about them and why they decided to purchase this deal, how they plan to leverage Quora, etc.
We discovered that many users were indie makers like us who just wanted to support our project because they liked it. It was awesome! We were kindly surprised by that and really thankful.
People offered help with LTD distribution for free
We didn’t run an LTD campaign. We just mentioned it on our website during the PH launch. However, other people were promoting our deal across the Internet for free. I got like 5 messages from strangers who liked our product and decided to promote it on their website, or FB groups, and so on.
We upsold other marketing services
While we were talking to these new paying customers, we learned more about their businesses, so we could offer other growth marketing services. We didn’t plan this initially, and it felt natural to advise them on other marketing channels besides Quora. In the end, it doesn’t feel like a lifetime deal where they pay once, and you will never see a cent from them again. We are building a long-term partnership.
Conclusion
We were sceptical about our lifetime deal campaign and afraid of offering access to our tool for a one-time payment. However, it turned out to be a good idea. We got new users from our Product Hunt campaign who stick with our product. They shared great feedback and brought many new ideas on how to optimize our marketing tool. Also, we could learn more about their business which helps us better target similar companies in the future.
I recommend anyone try this technique next time when you will be promoting your product on Product Hunt.
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p.s. thanks Justas for a nice Product Hunt cat icon.
