4th product of the day, without any experience (3 factors that helped me)

You may be wondering why this guy is bragging about a meager 4th place. Others write about having the best product of the day, week, or even the month. That's true. I can't boast about such success. Nevertheless, I'm rightfully proud of my very first launch on Product Hunt. And at the same time, I think it's finally time for someone to write about Product Hunt from a different perspective. Everyone wants to boast about their best results, but we all forget that there are many more of us who finished somewhere in the middle. And then there's an even larger group of those who never succeeded, even though they had a good product. Unfortunately, that's just Product Hunt. It doesn't always reward the best products. Often, it rewards the loudest ones. But that's enough for now. Let's take a look at how I managed to finish in 4th place with no experience. — First, let's clarify one thing right from the start. Although I had no experience, I read several articles on how to successfully launch a product. So, I wasn't completely clueless. Here are a few articles that are worth reading, and I recommend them to everyone: Official Product Hunt Launch Guide How to Launch on Product Hunt (Playbook to #1 of the Day) How I Build Remote OK and Launched it to #1 on Product Hunt Let's be honest. Your success on Product Hunt depends significantly on how well you prepare for Launch-Day. This is especially true regarding the number of fans/users who are willing to vote for you. Without informing and preparing them that you need their votes, you'll have significantly less chance of success. I skipped this part, or rather, I had no other choice. No one knew me or my project. I had no social media followers or project users to turn to. In retrospect, I see it as one of the biggest mistakes founders make. They launch their product too soon. Although Product Hunt pretends to bring you your first users and give you feedback, the opposite is true. Without a quality background, you have no chance of success nowadays. What do I mean? If you carefully watch which projects are currently taking the top spots, you'll find that they already have hundreds to thousands of active users. Regardless of what anyone says, I'm 100% convinced that Product Hunt today is better used in a later project stage, with a certain user base, to accelerate the project, not for product validation or getting your first hundreds of users. — Anyway, let's get back to my project. Armed with only a few articles and a simple desire to experience the adrenaline rush of launching my product on PH, I decided to take action. To be honest, three factors helped contribute to my relative success: the weekend, being a newcomer, and luck. Let's break down each one: 1. Weekend One of the most important pieces of information I learned is that there is less competition on the weekend. For a founder without an audience, this increases the chances of getting in the top 3 and staying there throughout the day, providing greater visibility. However, this is at the expense of the number of website visitors or registered users. Later, when I studied how many visitors products that launched on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday were able to attract to their websites, you understand how big the difference is compared to the weekend. Even though I held on to the 3rd or 4th position all day, I brought approximately 1200 visitors to my website in just three days. If you launch your product during the week and stay in the 3rd or 4th position all day like I did, you'll get ten times more visitors to your website. Regardless, the weekend helped me. Without it, my project would have ended up in oblivion and probably wouldn't be functioning anymore. 2. Being a newcomer Honestly, I don't have any confirmed data on this. It's just my theory. But I think it also helped that I openly talked about it being my very first launch in my post. In retrospect, I feel like I received more exposure on the front page at the right time from the admins because of that, which led to several important initial supporters, including some well-known accounts who supported me with their vote. And then it just snowballed from there. Visibility on the front page guarantees a flow of new votes that secure further votes and so on. It's just like a snowball. 3. Luck Let's not fool ourselves. Luck played a role in my case (and I'm convinced that it plays a role to a greater or lesser extent for everyone). You can prepare as much as you like, but you can't control how strong the competition decides to launch their product on the same day. You don't know which users will sign up on PH and support you with their vote that day (it's been confirmed that the weight of a vote matters, with users with a long history and hunters having more voting power than new users). I undoubtedly had a bit of luck that day, which supported me. — So, what were my results? Here they are: 290 votes 12 comments ~1277 website visitors ~190 registered users These numbers may not seem significant to someone who has already created 3+ products, but they played an important role in motivating me to continue the project. However, more important than the numbers themselves was the feedback I received. From comments on Product Hunt (as well as on Reddit, where I simultaneously launched my product), I received several interesting feedback points that made me think about the project from a broader perspective. I received tips on how to monetize the product, as well as several other features that the application should have. However, these features were very difficult to create on the Wordpress platform that I used for my first MVP. This feedback prompted me to look for another no-code tool that would allow me to move the project forward and make it a self-sustaining project in the future. After hours of research, I eventually switched to the no-code platform Bubble. If you're interested, I'd be happy to write a separate piece about Bubble in the future, because I have to say that for anyone who can't code, Bubble is the best tool for creating web applications. Thanks to Bubble, I discovered completely new dimensions of creating web applications, practically without limitations. I completely revamped Entrepreneur List within a month - from a simple page where you could find interesting people to follow on Twitter, to a hub for finding interesting educational content for entrepreneurs with profiles of individual authors. — Still, it's a very simple application, basically a directory without deeper features. However, all of this talk is leading to one valuable lesson. It doesn't matter if you can code or not in today's world. It doesn't matter if you have this or that education. In the age of the internet, you can learn anything just from YouTube, blogs, and courses. The only thing you need to invest is your time. You must not be afraid and you must start. For me, it started with a desire to create my own internet project. I wanted to be a part of the indie builders community on Product Hunt. So I started. Even with a very simple project, I felt like a part of the community. I learned to work with no-code tools like Bubble or Softr. In addition to the Entrepreneur List, I created five more projects that I eventually did not launch or closed very soon. But on all of them, I learned something new. And that's how I launched my second project a few days ago, which I believe in for the long term - Userdome. Thanks for reading and good luck with your launches!