Hunting the Hunters – Tips for Releasing on Product Hunt
merchbar.comThis article fails to mention one of the most popular "tactics" for releasing on Product Hunt: begging your friends for upvotes.
In fairness, the OP did not explicitly ask for upvotes on Twitter, just provided a link to his Product Hunt submission. ( https://twitter.com/aten/status/511904562857254914 ) The difference is that doing that on Reddit or Hacker News will get your post killed and you potentially shadowbanned. And justifiably so, since putting an emphasis on social media popularity in determining ranking takes away from the quality of the submission.
If you don't believe that upvote begging is a problem on Product Hunt, just look at Twitter. ( https://twitter.com/search?q=product%20hunt%20upvote&src=typ... ) Note how most of those have Favorites and Replies from Ryan Hoover himself or another employee.
I doubt this policy will be reversed since it's the reason PH became so popular, but this is the primary reason I'll never take Product Hunt seriously.
Agreed, I only recently found out how much Product Hunt relies on astroturfing tactics to grow their userbase and promote the site, but whenever I'd check it I was always baffled by what was getting to the top of the "best new products" lists. Their growth hacking and employee "hustling" seem to mess with the quality, so it's just not reliable. I'd actually figured it was organic because top entries still only have about 200 upvotes despite Product Hunt having 50,000 users.
We discourage people from explicitly asking others to upvote their product and you may notice often times product with a high upvote count are actually at the bottom of the page or removed entirely for trying to game the rankings. It's not perfect but we have systems in place to ensure the products featured toward the top, are what the community genuinely thinks is most interesting or useful.
How do you discourage people, exactly? (genuine question)
Is there a warning on submission that says something like "Please don't ask your friends to upvote your submissions. If you do, your submission may be penalized. The best products stand on their own merits."? If that's the case, then why do you Favorite Tweets from companies begging for upvotes instead of warning them that their behavior is unacceptable?
I personally have received spam asking for Product Hunt upvotes ( http://i.imgur.com/B5hLdYG.png ), and you of all people should be interested in not supporting that.
We're updating our FAQ (producthunt.com/about) to be more clear. We're also considering sending an email to makers when they engage in the discussion, recommendations and policies on this topic. Would love to hear if you have more ideas on this.
Also, as I mentioned in this thread a minute ago, I favorite people talking about Product Hunt (and often reply, too) to let them know I'm listening. I don't mean this as a sign of endorsement when people explicitly ask for upvotes, although I understand how this could be interpreted that way.
Ultimately, our goal is to empower the community to surface what they want to see and also encourage thoughtful discussion. Sharing ones post and soliciting conversation is important for the latter, and we're making improvements to our recommendation/invite system so that more people can join the discussion.
That's simply not true. minimaxir just linked to hundreds of Twitter results (as recent as yesterday) of you favoriting and positively commenting on tweets from companies that are explicitly asking for upvotes on their products. I also learned that Product Hunt does this because I've heard/read you specifically mention it in interviews, saying "it grows the site."
https://twitter.com/search?q=product%20hunt%20upvote&src=typ...
I favorite to show people I'm listening (read-receipt). It's not an endorsement for asking for upvotes. I realize how this would be misinterpreted so perhaps I'll avoid that in the future.
Wait, what? By showing companies "you're listening" to their astroturfing, you are even more actively condoning it. And you ignored this part, but aside from all the tweets and favorites condoning astroturfing, you've said and written that having companies beg users and social networks for upvotes is a growth tactic for Product Hunt. Just come clean when you're called out, man.
I've never told makers to beg for upvotes and in cases where people have incentivized people (e.g. donating money to charity for every upvote -- yes, that happened), we've removed the post entirely.
Not sure I follow. So you are dismissing PH because some people are publicly asking publicly for instead of via gchat, gmail and FB like ppl do for HN?
Actually, if you do that on Hacker News, you'll kill the post too. (upvotes from the direct submission URL but not from a HN referrer are not counted.)
To follow up on #5, talk like a human. People are generally turned off by PR speak so I recommend makers be personable. :)