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Ask HN: I had a successful Product Hunt launch. What do I do now?

9 points by mcrowe ↗ HN
I released NameQL (a better domain name generator) on Product Hunt last weekend and had a great response: 1000 upvotes and lots of positive feedback. People seem to be genuinely excited about the product.

Now, five days on, I'm feeling high and dry. The initial traffic spike was great (8000 new users in the first two days), but it quickly decayed and I'm left with a trickle. NameQL is a bit of a one-time-use product, so those initial users aren't sticking around, and its just me and the crickets now. I guess I was expecting that a successful launch on Product Hunt would be enough to generate some sustained interest...

So my question to you is: What should I do now? Does the success on Product Hunt validate the product, or does the fact that interest died so quickly mean that I should move on? With the initial hype gone, is Product Hunt a dead channel for me now, or is there a way to leverage the success I had there? I'd like to be able to focus on making product improvements and release features requested on PH, but right now it feels like no one would care...

Thanks in advance for your wisdom!

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Background: I built NameQL as a weekend project. I am the sole developer, designer, marketer, etc. For reference, you can check it out here: https://nameql.com , or on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/nameql .

24 comments

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simantel
If you want to capitalize on your Product Hunt launch, I've seen people have success blogging about their launch experience and then getting a second bump in traffic from sharing that post on Hacker News, Indie Hackers, and Reddit.

In the long term, though, you're in the same boat as everyone else: you have to find sustainable marketing channels that work for your business. I highly recommend Traction[0] by Gabriel Weinberg to learn more about growth and marketing.

[0] https://medium.com/@yegg/the-19-channels-you-can-use-to-get-...

mcrowe
Thanks for your suggestions simantel! Writing about what did and didn't work for the Product Hunt launch to help others is a good idea. I really enjoyed Traction, but I should probably re-read it. Thanks for the reminder!
laksmanv
Good email to reach out to you?
mcrowe
nameql@mitchcrowe.com should do the trick.
mottomotto
I clicked through via PH. I did a few searches and left.

How about an option to send me updates on my query? That way, you can capture my email and notify me when the query results have changed.

Maybe that's not useful but I'm wondering if there are ways to engage your visitors more long term.

Also it's not quite clear -- is it .com only? That's fine if it is but it might be nice to add .com to the results (but fainter or something).

mcrowe
Yes! You're absolutely right. Probably my biggest mistake was not thinking about retention before launching on Product Hunt. I suspect that your experience matches that of most visitors through Product Hunt. Your suggestion about query updates may be a good one to try, and I will brainstorm other ways to make the product give more long-term value.

And yes, it is .com only for now (plans to add other TLDs soon). Thanks for the feedback that this could be clearer.

mottomotto
Well supporting more TLDs would be great. I know we just had that big discussion about the downsides to .io domains on HN (but I actually am reliant on a .io domain -- domain squatter is on my .com and not sure when I can afford, if ever, to buy it).

So more TLDs would be great. Although really, it does seem like .com is the most important. I'd just make it clearer it's .com only as now I'm going to go back and do some more searches as that is useful actually that is only .com.

Sorry, that is like pro and con feedback on more TLDs.

mcrowe
Yeah. I agree on both counts, though. I think .com is still far more important, and adding other TLDs shouldn't take away from its prominence. For the short term, making this super clear is a good way to go.
mottomotto
One last thought -- you could add 'app' as a potential suffix to the search term.
godot
Thanks for sharing this, it's a good, realistic look at what a PH launch means (even a successful one at it). It matches what my opinion is on the subject roughly. As a post-mortem, I think an ideal product for PH (that can take advantage of a successful PH launch) should include a signup step or at least some sort of email-subscribe step. The idea is that the PH spike gives you the burst of signups that establish a connection between you and your users, which you can then email/outreach later. In your case, it's a "one use" product without signups, so best case scenario is people will bookmark you, but may or may not remember to use you when they have a need for it in the future.

I don't know if this helps you at all right now, that you're past the point of the PH launch. At least, it'll be a good lesson for future PH launches. Do you have a long term plan for NameQL? The site doesn't suggest there's any sort of signup or premium service.

mcrowe
Thanks a lot for your thoughts!

You're right. I would recommend the same thing to others launching on PH from now on. I didn't have any system in place to engage with users after they try it out. My product was easy to get started with, but also easy to forget.

Glad my mistakes can be lessons for others ;-).

My short term goal for NameQL is to make a really great free offering: support more TLDs, smarter suggestions, and to check for related trademarks, etc. For profitability, I was hoping that affiliate links would be enough to generate a decent revenue. It doesn't seem to be very effective, though. I'm considering adding value-added features for a small price, but I haven't planned out what those will be.

sharemywin
I might use the product once a month. So, 1000/30 = 33 users per day based on likes.

add a login so I can view saved words on different computers(optional) and you have a way to email users on updates.

mcrowe
This is really useful to know. You're right, I think an engaged user might use a product once a month or so. The challenge is to stay at the top of their minds the next time they look for a new name. Having a login with value-added features may help with that.
genbit
Ideas for featuresz:

- add an option to subscribe to updates or newsletter - auto-generate 10 interesting domains and send them out.

- add an option to watch domains based on a combination of words, subscribe by email

- add an option to search domains based on an industry: Health, Security, Consumer, Photo, etc... - I can share more how it can be done

- add an option to support a project - donate button.

- I would probably a/b test for moving save|buy buttons next to domain, it was not clear for me that I can buy

- would be nice to have some help with synonyms and meanings of the words, should help to non-english speaking users.

Overall, I love the project, so far it has best UX compared to others I used. The challenge with your business model - people don't need to buy domain right away, but they might put your service in a bookmark and return after a while, so:

1) first marketing it a couple of more months, to grow the total number of such users.

2) I'll probably not use namecheap, and go with another registrator - can you add more options here and make money on other referral program?

3) you can add a referal link to more services, such as Launch a Landing Page

Except Product Hunt - there is beta list, indie hackers and many forums, quora and etc - and as some said, you can capitalize on blogging, twitting about successful Launch on Product Hunt, as well as do 2nd launch with major upgrades.

mcrowe
Wow! This is super helpful. Thank you so much for to ideas, genbit.

Loved your feature suggestions. Definitely some things to move to the top of my list there. I'm curious about what exactly you meant about "search domains based on an industry". Could you elaborate on that?

Great tips on improving the business model, too. This is super valuable for me. Thanks!

genbit
Idea is to prebuild lists of domains that will likely to be sold - for this you can create categories, like industry or product hunt topics, and for each topic have list of words and synonyms and then use it to offer domains. User can click on topic, ex Photography, and see list of suggestions. If I want to build startup in photography, I have hard time to come up with words from which I can create domains.

Also, one more suggestion, try to market it in non-tech related websites and for not tech people - they might not know how to buy domains cheaper or have preference for registrator.

tabeth
honest feedback: the only thing with this, and most things like it is that it's not actually accurate.

type in best -> see it's "available" -> go to namecheap -> see it is not unavailable.

Once this happens once, you realize there's no point of going to the middleperson.

mcrowe
I always value critical feedback. Thank you.

I think you mean that you found a name that was suggested that was not actually available. Unfortunately, this does happen, but in my experience it is less than 1% of the time. The zone files for TLDs are missing some domains which are actually unavailable.

Sorry that you had a frustrating experience.

tabeth
It's not really frustrating, but just feedback. It's way more than 1% of the time. Type in best and try out the first 5 examples -- 40% of them are inaccurately reported. FWIW every service akin to this has the same issue.
mcrowe
I had 1/10 be inaccurate when I did that, which is still not good enough. Its definitely something that can be addressed. Not easy, but fixable. Thanks for bringing this particular query to my attention.
mcrowe
Tabeth. Thanks for alerting me to this. I have addressed the issue. Now all the domains you see suggested should be available.
mabynogy
Contact few registras, tell them your success story and propose them to sell domain names.
mcrowe
Thanks. That's an interesting suggestion. Might be a good option for revenue.
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