Do Product Hunt followers matter when you launch a product?

Basharath
15 replies
I've had this question for a long time. I see people take the help of popular Hunters to hunt their products. So does the followers count matter or is there any other metric other than having an audience on other platforms?

Replies

Amine Aouragh
Movydick: And The Oscar Goes To...
Movydick: And The Oscar Goes To...
when you launch on product hunt, all your followers here will get notified and the upvotes/comments you get from those people are considered organic upvotes & comments if those people go to your product lunch page while they were in PH and i think that the algorithm gives extra points in the ranking to products with organic upvotes & comments more than upvotes & comments you get from people who clicked on your product lunch link on Twitter or LinkedIn or IndieHackers...
Basharath
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@amineaouraghone Oh, is it? So PH followers give that advantage. But the way PH shows or maps followers is not something good. Have you ever observed people without any launches having thousands of followers?
Amine Aouragh
Movydick: And The Oscar Goes To...
Movydick: And The Oscar Goes To...
@basharath i launched my first product last week and I already had a decent amount of followers before that, of course not thousands - only 120 or so haha BUT you can actually have a lot of followers on PH without launching a product since launching is not the only way to get in contact with people and grow your following here, you know what i mean. You can be active on PH discussions, post one time a day, reply to other discussions, etc... write comments on product lunches... and people who see your profile picture, your name, your headline and what you write can get interested and decide to follow you. Another way to get followers on PH - an easier one - is to connect your PH account to your Twitter account. Your twitter followers will see that you are also on PH and then they can follow you... if they want. A lot of people are following me both on Twitter & PH.
Basharath
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@amineaouraghone > then they can follow you... if they want Shall I tell you something that you do not know? It's not if they want to, PH maps your Twitter followers to PH followers if they follow you on Twitter even if they do not follow you on PH. Similarly you can check the people you are following on PH, probably you will see a bunch of people whom you do not even follow on PH but follow them on Twitter. That's why people without even launches, without even interactions having Twitter followers can be seen to have a lot of PH followers. This is the vague implementation of the algorithm I have been observing it for over a year on PH. You can confirm the same by cross checking.
Amine Aouragh
Movydick: And The Oscar Goes To...
Movydick: And The Oscar Goes To...
@basharath no PH doesn't always map your twitter followers to PH followers. That's wrong. I know so many people following me on Twitter and not following me in PH even if they are actually in PH. And also speaking about how some people on PH can have a lot of followers on producthunt it's because they are showing up for the people they are followed by Like if I join ProductHunt and people who follow me on Twitter are here too, sometimes they can see my profile picture and name showing up in an attempt by producthunt to make them follow me here too. Exactly like Substack does. I use Substack for newsletter. If somebody I follow on Twitter starts writing on Substack I get notified. So I can subscribe to their newsletter if I want.
Basharath
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@amineaouraghone You say: PH doesn't always map, it means it maps sometimes? Other than makers/hunters not many show interest in following anybody. I was following just 15 members for over an year but that number has been increasing every time without my consent. The reason is I have been following so many on Twitter these days and all those people who have PH account got mapped as my followings. I bet even the followers I have are not explicitly followed me. I unfollow them manually. I have been making a keen observation for over a year. Do you think people who do not have any history of making anything, people flock to follow them simply on PH?
Bakemono Fra
I think that having active communities outside ph can help a lot! You can drive them to your launch page and prepare in advance! However, having followers here can help as much even with smaller numbers
Basharath
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@bakemono Ok, just now I'm getting to know how useful PH followers could be. What I see is Twitter and LinkedIn are the popular other sources where people come from to support.
Nilan Saha
I think it definitely helps. But that doesn't mean you cannot succeed without a ton of Producthunt followers. I launched when I had no followers and still got 4th Product of the day.
Ian
I don't have any launches however I do like to see what others are launching and have starred. This gives me a great way of keeping up with what interests me.
Ryan T - Dezbor.com
@ozian Man, love your profile description