What happens on the day
The listing goes live at a fixed time: 12:01 a.m. Pacific on Product Hunt, Friday 00:00 UTC on Aback Launch, the moment you submit on Hacker News. The maker posts a first comment, tells the people who asked to hear about it, posts on social networks and spends the rest of the day replying to comments and fixing whatever breaks.
Why preparation decides it
Almost everything that makes a launch day go well happens before it: a clear tagline, a landing page that says the same thing, screenshots that show the product working, tagged links for every channel and a list of people to tell. On the day itself there is no time to write copy, so everything should be drafted the week before.
The first hours matter most on ranked platforms, because early comments and votes decide how many people see the launch later in the day.
One day, or several
Founders who launch everywhere on the same day cannot reply well in all those places, and they learn nothing between launches. Spreading launches over a week or two, one main platform per day, gives each one full attention and lets the copy improve after each.
After the day
Write down the numbers by source before you sleep, while you still remember which post went where. The next morning, email new users personally and fix the most reported problem. A launch day is the start of the work, not the end of it: most of the users a launch brings come from the follow-up.
Example
A maker schedules a Product Hunt launch for a Tuesday, drafts every post on the Monday, goes live at 12:01 a.m. Pacific, and spends the day answering comments while a teammate watches sign-ups and error logs.
Questions people ask
- What should I do on launch day?
- Post the first comment, tell the people who care, share the launch once per network, and spend the day replying to every comment. Write nothing new if you can avoid it.
- What time should a launch go live?
- At the platform's start time: 12:01 a.m. Pacific on Product Hunt, Friday 00:00 UTC on Aback Launch. On Hacker News, post when you can stay in the thread for several hours.
Related terms
- Launch weekA launch week is a week-long launch window: on weekly launch platforms the products launching that week compete together, and for makers it is the week they spread launches across several platforms.
- Product Hunt launchA Product Hunt launch is publishing your product on Product Hunt for one day, starting at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, where it competes with that day's other launches for upvotes and a spot on the leaderboard.
- Maker commentA maker comment is the first comment a product's maker posts on their own launch, explaining who they are, why they built it, what makes it different and what feedback they want.
- UpvoteAn upvote is a vote of approval on a launch platform or forum. Upvotes decide a launch's position in rankings and leaderboards, and with it how many people see it.
- UTM parametersUTM parameters are tags added to the end of a link (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign and others) that tell analytics tools where a visitor came from.