Yesterday, With Jack was the fifth most up-voted product on Product Hunt.
This isn’t the first time With Jack’s been featured on Product Hunt. Last year, a kind individual submitted us when we were known as ‘Insurance by Jack’.
As much as I appreciated this person’s interest, we had been hunted too early.
‘Insurance by Jack’ was what I refer to as my MVP. Its business model was built upon third-parties (you can read more about that). We were using someone else’s quote system to distribute policies and didn’t exercise any control over the process.
With Jack is new and improved. We own more of the customer experience and are developing our own quote system instead of directing you elsewhere.
Unfortunately, Product Hunt doesn’t let you submit the same product twice. I figured we’d missed out on all of that glorious traffic.
To illustrate the power of Product Hunt, I’ve previously had two products featured. A photography course and Insurance by Jack.
The spikes in traffic above are from, you guessed it, Product Hunt. The analytics from the first image are for my photography course, which understandably had a lot more interest than an insurance business.
Feeling like we couldn’t miss out on ‘The Product Hunt Effect’, I emailed Ben, the community lead, and explained how Jack had improved since we were last listed.
New name, new product and new system.
Ben gave us the green light to re-submit! Now that Jack is a better product than before, our listing performed stronger this time around.
Stats from being featured on Product Hunt:
- 1123 hits
- 214 upvotes
- 30+ quotes (a lot of dummy entries / people testing the system)
Compare this to the last time we were listed:
- < 500 hits
- 59 upvotes
- 4 quotes
Regarding the 1123 hits, not all of them came directly from Product Hunt. Many were a by-product of being featured on Product Hunt, through sites like Panda and The News.
One question I do have: If Jack made top 5, why did my photography course perform better in terms of traffic?
I can only guess. I don’t know Product Hunt’s algorithm, but I do know it’s more challenging to get people interested in an insurance product. The engagement is always going to be lower. With that said, Lemonade did really well with their listing. I assume it’s further impacted by what other products have been submitted that day and the size of your network.
I’m going to part with a few tips.
- Don’t rush into submitting your product. Spend a bit of time curating images and brand assets for the gallery. Write a well-thought-out opening comment explaining your product, your goals for it and anything interesting about your journey making it (I could have done a better job of this. Regret).
- Don’t be afraid to self-promote and tap into your network. After I submitted, I tweeted about it and reached out to the entrepreneurial communities I’m a member of. Those first handful of people will help you get the ball rolling with upvotes.
- According to Levels, the best time to submit is 12:01AM San Francisco time. This is because the leaderboard refreshes at 1 minute past midnight.
- Read 10 Tips To Reach A Top 10 Spot. It’s written by a Product Hunt moderator.
Product Hunt is a great launchpad to help promote your product, but it shouldn’t be your sole strategy. I’ve found its results can be unpredictable.
If you do well from it, enjoy the flow of increased traffic and respond to all comments. Product Hunt is a curious community of makers.
