Channels · 6 min read
Product Hunt isn't a marketing strategy
It's a one-shot traffic spike aimed at a page that probably can't convert it yet. Here's when a launch is worth it, and what to do instead if it isn't.
A launch feels like a plan. There’s a date, a checklist, an adrenaline spike, and a number at the end. After months of quietly building, that structure is enormously appealing — which is precisely why so many founders spend two weeks preparing one before they’ve got anything for the traffic to land on.
What a launch actually is
A launch is a single, non-repeatable burst of curious visitors, most of whom are other founders, most of whom will look for twenty seconds. It is a multiplier on your page, not a source of customers.
You get one launch. Spending it on a page that can’t convert is spending it.
The maths is unforgiving. A good day might send you a couple of thousand visitors. If your page converts at 0.5% because there’s no social proof and the headline names a category rather than a problem, that’s ten signups from your one shot. The same page fixed first, converting at 3%, gets sixty. Same traffic. Same effort. The difference was one week of work done in the right order.
You’re ready to launch when
- Your homepage states a specific problem and who has it, in the first line, without jargon.
- Someone can go from landing to using it without talking to you.
- There is evidence another human has used this — a quote with a name on it, a usage number, a changelog showing you turn up. Anything that isn’t your own claim about yourself.
- You’ve watched at least five people sign up and know where they get stuck.
If any of those is missing, the launch is worth less than the week you would spend preparing it.
What to do instead, this week
Get three users on record. Email the people who signed up and actually used the thing, ask what it saved them, and ask if you can quote them with their first name and what they do. Two of the three will say yes. That takes an afternoon and it changes the conversion rate of every visitor you ever get afterwards — including the launch ones, whenever you decide to spend them.
The counter-argument you’ll hear: “just launch and iterate”. Iterate on what? The spike doesn’t come back, and two thousand people bouncing tells you nothing you couldn’t have learned from five conversations.
And when you do launch
Treat it as one action among many, not the plan. It goes in the same category as a directory listing or a good forum reply: a thing worth doing once, at the right moment, in the right order. The founders who get a lot out of a launch are almost always the ones who didn’t need it.