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independence3 unconnected
standing

contested · 2 claims against 1

applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

mixed results

confidence

high

evidence

3 claims · 3 articles · 3 receipts

window

2017-10-102017-10-10 · nothing since 2017

3 builders who never spoke to each other · contested

Count the second wave, not the referral clicks

Direct referrals understate what a launch does: in one measured week they came to four thousand while direct traffic quadrupled, referrals from Twitter rose eightfold and a design publication picked the project up. Even a launch that reached the wrong buyers seeded posts, reshares and mentions elsewhere. The opposing reading is that all of it decays to almost nothing once you run out of places to post, because roughly one product in a hundred actually takes off.


Where this splits

Two makers judge a launch on the mentions and coverage that follow in the week after, while another expects the whole burst to fade to nothing once the boards are exhausted.

2 claims against 1

Harry Dry · Victoria Duben

Judge the launch on the knock on effects following

  1. 01Judge a launch on its knock-on effects over the following week, not the referral count on the day, because the secondary exposure outweighs the direct clicks.
  2. 02A Product Hunt launch that misses your buyers is still worth running for the secondary effects: it seeds mentions, reshares and coverage elsewhere.
the objection · 1 claimCory Zue

The burst fades once the boards are all exhausted

Assume the traffic burst you get from announcing on Product Hunt, Indie Hackers, Hacker News and Reddit will decay to almost nothing once you have exhausted the list of places to post, because only a tiny fraction of products go viral.


What it returned

  • 7

    Direct referrals over 7 days were 4,361, while direct traffic rose fourfold, Twitter referrals eightfold, and a Tympanus feature followed; weekly traffic of 16,616 converted 2,490 (15%) onto the list.

  • 1%

    Zue puts the share of products that magically take off virally at roughly 1%

  • Viewst went on Product Hunt eight months after its public launch, while the product was still basic. It did not reach the intended audience but generated posts, reshares and several mentions across communities and media.


Sources


the second source

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the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

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