I hit #1 on Product Hunt… here’s how I guaranteed my win 🏆

No one is talking about this secret online

Last week, I launched this newsletter on Product Hunt. The results:

• 1,900+ upvotes

• Product of the Day (#1), Product of the Week (#1) and Product of the Month (#1)

• Email list grew from 4,300 to 6,600 almost overnight

Today, I’m going to share my simple playbook to hit #1 on Product Hunt.

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🧐 What is “Product Hunt” exactly?

For those who don’t know, ProductHunt.com is a 24-hour competition: People vote on what they love, and after 24 hours, the product with the most love wins. Big companies like Loom and Notion started here.

There’s a lot of “How to win on Product Hunt” advice out there.

Most of it’s noise.

I’ve discovered a little trick that's pretty much a sure bet—and it’s the only way to GUARANTEE a win (if you do it properly). I came up with this playbook myself and have never seen anyone else using it the way I’m using it, so I’m super excited to share it with the world for the first time.

Ready for my trick?

💌 The Secret Sauce: Direct Messages (DMs)

Yep, success on Product Hunt boils down to your DM game. Forget one-to-many channels (social media, forums, paid ads). The real magic happens in one-on-one conversations, where you ask people to upvote and comment directly.

The challenge is finding the right people:

• People who use Product Hunt frequently (to avoid bot suspicion)

• People who actually want to see you win

Randomly cold DMing people doesn’t work. They won’t help you. Instead, we need to create a list of people who are (1) active PH users; and (2) highly motivated to help us. If we maximize the number of people who meet these two criteria and DM them during launch day—victory is in the bag.

So… How can we find these people?

This leads me to my bulletproof playbook for securing your win #1 of the Day on PH. Beware, it requires a lot of preparation: 15 minutes per day for 4-8 weeks before launch. But it’s worth it. Here’s my playbook:

🧪 My Playbook for Winning #1 on Product Hunt

DO THIS EVERY DAY FOR TWO MONTHS (BEFORE YOUR LAUNCH) 👇

1. Visit Product Hunt daily.

2. Vote and comment on the top 5 products.

3. Find the makers of each product on LinkedIn.

4. DM each maker, and tell them you supported them (see template below).

5. Ask if they will support you in a few weeks when you launch.

That’s it! Here is the message template I’ve been using:

Hey {{name}}! Love your launch on PH today 🔥 I sent it to my team as well and we gave you a dozen votes and a few comments to {{product}} ❤️ By the way, I will launch my own product on PH next {{week/month}}. Support me then?

It works like magic 🪄✨

I’m not even kidding, over the last few months, I’ve gathered a mind-blowing number of 500-550 people to DM¹. I messaged them during their launch day and congratulated them.

Then, on the launch day of Marketing Ideas, I simply went through my chat history on LinkedIn and asked for their support. It’s a lot of leg work, but it’s super effective.

This playbook is gold because:

1. 🆘 During the 24 hours of this contest, makers are desperate for support. Every bit of help is overvalued (!) by them. You’ll seem like an angel on the day of their launch.

2. 🌀 When you re-connect with them about your own launch, they will see the history of DMs and remember how much you helped.

3. 🍏 The fear of looking ungrateful makes them help you back.

4. 🔑 Most of all, rumor says that makers (people who launched on PH before) are the highest-ranked users according to the Product Hunt algorithm. When makers support you, each upvote is worth more than the average user.

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🎁 Bonus Side Effect

Once you do it for ±2 weeks, you’ll start getting LinkedIn messages from makers without having to do anything! This is super helpful because it means you don’t have to scout them yourself - they will come to you.

By the way, it’s OK to support multiple launches every day, because (1) most of them will not know that you supported others; (2) they will appreciate every comment they have for visibility.

🔥 Few Last Tips

1. Tagline. Your tagline on Product Hunt is important. You must be specific and easy to understand. For Marketing Ideas, I’ve used “Never run out of marketing ideas ever again”, which is a combo of the value I bring + pain I solve. I also like the idea of using bigger brand names as a metaphor, like in here or here.

2. Weekend launches. If you only care about winning, launch on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. If you also care about getting a lot of traffic, launch on Monday-Thursday.

3. Existing audience. Obviously, having followers helps. I’ll be forever grateful to all of you - the early subscribers of Marketing Ideas - for upvoting and supporting my launch on launch day. The greatest benefit of existing followers is that they get the snowball rolling fast, and once you’re ranked #1 during the day, it’s easier to stay there (newcomers believe the social proof and hype, and they join).

📚 More Resources & Tools

This is not a full guide for launching on PH. I just wanted to share my little trick. If you need to see the bigger picture, here are guides and resources I recommend:

1. The official Product Hunt launch guide

2. Piggy’s guide

3. Netanel Benami’s launch template

Regarding tools, I highly recommend Product Wars for monitoring your launch. In addition, my friend Tommy told me about texts.com halfway through launch day, and I wish I had known about it earlier - it makes DMing on LinkedIn much easier!

And One More Thing...

I'm turning 29 this week 🎉 Feeling grateful for this community. If you're feeling generous, sharing MarketingIdeas.com with your network would be the *best* birthday gift. 🥰 Thanks, and cheers to more success together!

See you next week,

Tom

1. By the way, I actually did have a Slack channel at work where I shared cool launches on PH. Our team’s support for other makers was huge.