On Product Hunt, a community with passion for curation

Last week we told you about our experience of launching a product on Hacker News.

But something else happened that day.

At the same time we were featured on the HN homepage, I got an unexpected DM from Javier. Charlie Irish posted our product on Product Hunt!

Product Hunt is not only a website where you can submit the latest products, services you have learned about. It’s more than that. It’s a group of people looking for an alternative source that keeps them updated on what’s new out there. A group of people that care of what they are sharing with others because they expect the same quality from the rest. A community.

All the team behind PH, leaded by Ryan Hoover have done a terrific job to generate curiosity and online engagement in a moment when getting the attention to just one tab of your browser during more than 3 seconds it’s difficult to achieve.

Online communities seem to be living a revival: GrowthHackers with Sean Ellis on-board, Inbound.org with the team at Moz & Hubspot on top, etc. Getting the attention (and time!) of big industry names like Michael Arrington or Jason Calacanis among other well known product guys, investors, entrepreneurs (SnoopDogg is an entrepreneur too!) it’s something that you only get by prioritizing quality over quantity. And that’s what PH has done great.

.@ProductHunt – recently Snoop Dogg (twice), today @aplusk. They should pivot to Celebrity Hunt. — Jon Gold (@jongold) julio 30, 2014

‍

We are not the first ones giving our point of view about PH. Several founders have written about their exceptional experiences being featured on the site, like Carl Sednaouir from Mailcharts or Eduard Petit from Bunkr.

As well as we did in the case of HN, we want to share our experience with you.

The Facts

On May 14th Quaderno was posted on PH. The post received 24 votes and 7 comments.

Two weeks later we got the following metrics:

• 472 visitors
• 15 signups (3.18%)
• 7 qualified lead (1.48%)
• 0 customers (0%)

For us a qualified lead is someone who has connected his Stripe account with Quaderno.io.

Test the power of the product community

PH has been getting more and more relevance in the past weeks since they announce they are part of the current YC 2014 batch). For the early stage in which they are currently are, I am quite impressed by the quantity and quality of its referral traffic. From my point of view, what is doing that this platform drives so much traffic to any product listed there is its core element: its community.

Its users base is made up of people from the industry who’s really interested in discovering new products and giving feedback. There other similar platforms like Betalist that could have been in the place of PH, but certainly having a community behind is one key factor that differentiates them. Not all product aggregators sites have the know-how to grow an audience grow.

None source of traffic is insignificant. Though the results weren’t so good in short term – around a 1.5% of qualified leads -, we did some good contacts with potential customers, and we strongly believe this will turn into a happy relationship.

Easiest way to include your product on PH is by signing up on their site and submitting it. But, what I recommend you is to test the power of its community. Check out a bit what some of the current members have submitted. Is there any member that seems to be more willing to submit a certain kind of apps or products? Does your product fit in his ‘favorite’ category? What stops you to pitch that guy to submit your product in PH? 🙂

One thing is clear: Product Hunt is a must for your product launching!