Today, I launched my product on Product Hunt, expecting an exciting day of engagement and support. Instead, I was bombarded with over ten offers to boost my upvotes for a fee. This experience raises a provocative question: Is Product Hunt's launch system rigged?
The Dilemma of Paid Upvotes
Throughout the day, I received numerous offers promising guaranteed success in exchange for money. If upvotes can be bought, what does this mean for genuine indie hackers? Those of us who pour time, passion, and hard work into our projects may be overshadowed by those willing to pay for artificial success.
Impact on the Community
Product Hunt has been a platform where indie developers could showcase their work based on merit. However, the rise of paid upvote schemes threatens to undermine this foundation. If the playing field isn’t level, true innovation may be stifled, and the voices of real indie hackers silenced by those with bigger budgets.
A Call for Change
To preserve the integrity of Product Hunt, we need:
- Stricter Monitoring: To detect and prevent paid upvotes.
- Clear Guidelines: On ethical promotion.
- Community Reporting: To encourage fairness and support.
Conclusion
My experience today prompts a critical question: Is Product Hunt's launch system broken? Can indie hacker succeed based on merit, not money?
Top comments (2)
You need to start the process of marketing your product 6-7 months before you launch by becoming an active participant in the PH Discussion forum. Before the launch Founders generally reach out to other Product Hunt members encouraging them to support the launch. Product Hunt launch will bring the traffic but this traffic will mostly stop coming within 6-7 weeks.
A good idea is to grow by directory listings, there are many good directories that can bring traffic and backlinks. You can use paid listings in some of these.
Not sure if it is institutionally rigged, but we launched our startup Zipy.ai 2 years ago and we ranked number 1 for the day on PH. In my experience, there are a lot of hacks that people use like joining whatsapp groups with vote for vote exchange kind of schemes or using click/vote farms in bangladesh. But We havent tried any of that. We genuinely reached out to 500 dev influencers 1 month in advance, and also kept all our networks active and aware that out launch was going to happen. We had the support of all these people and genuine votes always works. There might always be hacks available, which give certain launches undue advantage.