How We Launched the #1 Book Ever on Product Hunt

Product Hunt is where MVPs and startups go to die or thrive.

Which one are you?

If you launch successfully on Product Hunt, you can get thousands of subscribers and customers.

If done wrong, you’ll realize you never had a product people wanted or took the time to build an audience.

We did it the right way when launching THE BAMF BIBLE which led to over 4,000 new subscribers and thirty high-quality leads for my agency – all within nine days.

Before reading on, ask yourself:

“Should I launch on Product Hunt?”

If you check off these requirements, then yes:

1. You have a product targeted at early adopter market in the tech startup scene
2. You have a product people are willing to pay for
3. You’re not pitching a pure enterprise product
4. You have consistent value once they opt-in
5. You have an audience ready to engage

THE BAMF BIBLE is a book with 25+ growth hacking from 2017. It fits the early adopter demographic because growth hacking implies you have a secret sauce to grow startups. Moreover, people expressed over and again that they’d be willing to pay us for the book. And, most importantly, we had #4 and #5 covered.

This is where most Product Hunt launches fail.

They gather thousands of subscribers.

Then what?

They get a generic thank-you email, then there’s no follow-up.

If you don’t have email or Messenger blast that consistently provides value every week – don’t launch.

Otherwise, you’ll lose the people who visit your website and opt-in. Most people who launch on Product Hunt do this – that’s why most fail even with a thousand plus upvotes on their product. Ouch.

You can’t guarantee upvotes either.

You need momentum and that comes from a community who will engage with your launch.

“I launched my super awesome AI-driven GIF creator on Product Hunt. I’m guaranteed to go viral.” – Said no one ever.

You need to post on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and send out email and Messenger blasts. If you’re not active on social or run an engaged subscriber list, then your chances of success are almost zero.

You can always spam many Facebook Groups and Facebook friends, then ask people to promote you for free, but this will make you look like an asshole and you won’t get results 🙂

Rather than rely on bad marketing, let’s rely on what works – systems with proven results.

I’ll take you step-by-step of how to create an audience, have a successful launch, and take care of your subscribers afterward:

Step 1: Assemble a Team & Create Trust

One of the main factors that contributed to my book’s success was the people involved. I had many high-level entrepreneurs, marketers, and founders who contributed. As a result, upon release, they’d share it with their communities.

Who’s involved in the making of your product?

Whether it’s beta testers or a huge community, ensure they’re the right people for when you launch. You don’t want them pretending to love what you do, then dropping out right before the finish line.

To highlight our contributors, we gave them a dedicated section at the beginning (NOT THE END) of our book. We wanted them to know we genuinely cared about their contribution. Then we used that page as one of the first pictures on Product Hunt.

Did it work?

Each one of them shared.

Plus, it better reflected the vision of those who wanted to engage – a product that represents the Badass Marketers & Founders’ community.

The second half is I needed people to trust that this would be an epic book of growth hacks. People don’t have a reason to upvote unless you’ve given them tons of value beforehand. Imagine you’re on Product Hunt and never heard of Badass Marketers & Founders. Would you upvote the book right away?

Of course not.

You haven’t even read it.

And we can’t expect people to upvote the book a month later once they’ve finished reading.

We needed people who trusted the value we were providing, so they’d upvote us before reading. This was a critical piece to our success.

By publishing growth hacks over the previous year, we had built that trust. It takes time – there’s no way around it.

Step 2: Collect Emails & Subscribers

I took a different approach than many Product Hunt launches. Rather than building my email list beforehand, I built my Messenger list.

Why?

A small two-hundred person sample size on Messenger gave me ridiculously-awesome results:

An eight-times higher click-through rate and three-times higher open rate than email.

Looking at the data, my 1,000-person Messenger list before launch engaged as powerfully as a 10,000-person email list. To build my Messenger list, I used ManyChat because they have many landing page features that enable me to catch subscribers.

Not ready to jump one hundred percent into using Messenger, I promoted both my email and Messenger list. First, I promoted my Messenger list on my email list. This got me an initial several hundred subscribers.

Then I turned the home page of my website into a Messenger opt-in.

Within a month, I had seven hundred subscribers.

Next stop: LinkedIn.

For four months, I’d been publishing many engaging statuses on LinkedIn to build a following. Then I began to promote my upcoming book with teasers. For instance, I took a screenshot of possible book covers and posted it on LinkedIn asking which one they liked the most.

I kept a low barrier to entry and made sure my audience knew I valued their opinion. All they had to do was type  “1,” “2,” or “3.”

As predicted, the post took off.

I ended up not using any of these covers, but I did get several hundred subscribers interested in keeping up with the launch.

Then I promoted my Messenger list in my Facebook Group by giving away viral LinkedIn outlines. This gave me three-hundred-and-fifty Messenger subscribers. A nice jolt to get my list above a thousand people.

Step 3: Start the Hype-Train Announcements

The book had been planned for a year, but I wanted the extra push to finish it. I also wanted to gauge the demand for the book.

After the announcement, it was clear people wanted it – and they wanted it now. Many were excited to pay for it and didn’t realize I was releasing it for free.

I got a lot of engagement on the announcement because I’d been documenting my growth hacks online for an entire year while connecting to people in the industry. People knew, liked, and trusted me. If you don’t have an engaged audience, there are still ways to get around it. I’ll explain later.

Many times I had talked about publishing a growth hacking book, but it never happened. Growth hacks get outdated fast. I had enormous pressure to keep the book current which meant replacing thirty-page chapters with up-to-date growth hacks. A four-month writing process turned into an entire year.

Step 4: Find a Hunter

Having an invested Hunter will help drive more engagement.

If you’re new to Product Hunt, know that Hunter is someone who uploads your product to the site with images, a link to your website, and tags the Makers (creators of the product). Once he hits publish, the product is officially live.

Jack Smith, one of the top hunters on Product Hunt, had been a part of my community for a while. As a result, he had an incentive to spread the launch via word-of-mouth or sharing online. I’m not sure how much of a difference this made, but anyone who has a loyal startup following and loves what you do will help make a dent in engagement.

When I reached out to ask him if he would hunt our book, he gave the okay. We did change the date several times, but he stuck with us. Thanks, Jack!

Step 5: Oil the Hype Train with Pre-Announcements

The day before the launch, I wanted everyone to know when the launch would go live.

We didn’t have the book entirely finished. It took us until 7 a.m. in the morning – an hour before launch.

Still, we decided to go all in and put pressure on ourselves to perform. With that said, it’s better to launch right after midnight because you only get one day on the front page. At midnight – every night – the front page of Product Hunt refreshes with new launches. By waiting until 8 a.m. to post, we lost eight hours of being live on the front page.

The good news: We still kicked ass.

We had the first pre-announcement in our Facebook Group. We tagged all the book contributors and I used a live stream to make sure I hit as many people in my community as possible with the message.

Ten minutes later, I announced it on my Facebook profile. This drove an insane amount of engagement.

And, of course, I posted on LinkedIn to keep the hype wheels moving.

Then came the Messenger blast which had a glaring typo (see if you can find it):

“Hey [First Name],

Tomorrow @ 8 a.m. PT we’re launching our free eBook on Product Hunt with 25+ growth hacking case studies from the best marketers and founders.

It took us an entire year to create!

Please share share the book upon its release. We’ll notify you via Messenger. Let’s make the world a better place for marketers and founders.”