It stung. I wasn’t mad, well, maybe a little but mostly, I just felt invisible. The truth is, indie makers like me don’t have big teams or budgets to fight for visibility. We rely on genuine support and connections. I couldn’t stop thinking about how many great ideas never get the attention they deserve because they’re overshadowed.
So, I decided to build something different: https://itslaunched.com
Here’s the idea:
• 10 launches per day, max. Limiting the number of daily launches ensures that every product gets its moment in the spotlight.
• 2 votes per user, per day. This isn’t a popularity contest. You only get two votes, so people have to really think about which products they want to support. It’s quality over quantity.
• “Under Radar” feature. This one’s my favorite. If a product doesn’t get much love on its launch day, it gets a second chance to shine the next day. Because timing shouldn’t be the only thing standing between you and success.
There’s more like badges, comments, streaks but the heart of it is simple: a fair shot for indie makers.
I built this because I believe every product deserves to be seen, especially the ones built by solo makers and small teams putting their heart into something they truly care about. And I didn’t build this to compete with Product Hunt. I built it to give indie makers the platform they deserve, one where their creativity truly gets noticed.
If this sounds like something you’d want to check out, I’d love your thoughts. I’m still tweaking and improving it every day based on feedback.
Let me know what you think and if you’ve got a product you’re proud of, I’d love to see it shine.
It was proven by several data-science research that when users have to votes (or give ratings) and if they are able to see the previous result, then the first few votes have an extremely important effect.
For instance here is one stury, very well written article by a famous teacher Robert West, "of sheep and beer" https://dlab.epfl.ch/2017-08-30-of-sheep-and-beer/ which describes this effect on beer-rating sites.
One way to overcome this effect is to hide the votes until enough votes were collected (eg more than 50). Another way is to hide votes until you have voted yourself.
First few comments basically set the tone of the discussion and its dynamic. If they are shallow, negative or dismissive, the discussion gets stuck and takes a while to recover even if the submission has a lot of actual merit.
This is from personal experience, not from any study, so take it with a ton of salt.
My tactic? Find something that has something like 15 upvotes and you suspect to be rising quick in upvotes. Create the first comment and your best to make an as thoughtful comment as possible, even if you don't know anything about the topic.
Result: I was always within the top 3 getting between 10 to 50 upvotes.
One idea I have (just brainstorming) force users to make a vote first of 10 random products and only after they see the results.
It could probably use some UX tweaking since forcing someone to vote isn't quite nice, but at least it takes care of this effect that was described.
AFAIK points aren't worth anything and don't unlock anything after the first few, probably to help block spam/bots.
It's exceedingly rare that I even click a profile here, and even then it's usually to see what a person works on not how many points they've accumulated.
In fact, there are many cases where the most knowledgeable person on a subject comments, I click to see who they are, and realize they've only ever commented a few times. I imagine they either mostly lurk, or have an idle account they just use when friends drag them into the conversation.
On the other hand, the less prestigious tech blogs for regular people (think PC magazines) were much better at driving both real users and also traffic.
Anyway, the point is that your customers might not be on product hunt checking out the coolest newest hypiest products. In fact, it’s very unlikely they are. Just a reminder to not take these games so seriously.
I truly think that the conversion rate for advertisers on PH would go UP if the quality of the site (moderated posts, comments, bot traffic) did the same.
Any activity can be made worse if they find a way to increase users by other means.
Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/4qoY7o2.png
Code here: https://gist.github.com/airstrike/923a7049d5cde7405e60e99e22...
>10 launches per day, max.
What if your launch queue will be filling at a much faster rate aka backpressure issue? E.g what if this went viral and you get 1000 new projects per day, any new launch is scheduled after three months then?
>2 votes per user, per day.
Any idea how to prevent someone from creating 10 fake accounts and making it 20 votes per day? I'm sure any entrepreneur will see this opportunity right away if a little cheating means more exposure.
Looks like a good alternative to product hunt, the UI is looking fresh and I like it, however I'm genuinely interested about your thoughts on the problems this model can have at scale.
2) At the moment, I’m testing a few theories to address this and ensure fair play on the platform. I can’t share specifics just yet since these are still in the experimental phase, but I’m keeping this top of mind as the platform evolves.
Appreciate your interest and feedback, thank you!
One small issue with the launch date calendar. When I clicked a date in the calendar the popup with the actual launch date was always one day later. I wanted to launch on Tuesday, Jan 28, but when I picked that date it scheduled the launch for Wed, Jan 29.
BTW... what was the product you launched on PH that got buried??
Also... how funny would it be to launch ItsLaunched on PH and have it bubble to the top of PH! You should coordinate a launch on PH with all the users signed up for your new tool to get lots of votes. THAT would be awesome!
[1] https://www.nimbleai.co
I’ve had someone else mention the calendar issue too, but I haven’t been able to replicate it on my end, so I’m struggling to pinpoint the exact cause. If it’s not too much trouble, could you send me a screen recording or some details about the steps you took? That would really help me figure this out. (Send me a DM on twitter @lakshikagayal)
As for PH, I’ve launched not only one but several products there in the past, but since I don’t have a big community following me, they all ended up getting buried pretty quickly.
And launching this on PH and make it the #1? now that would be poetic, maybe we’ll make it happen someday :D
Edit: Here’s a proposal for a bigger change. do some free advertising for the submitted ideas. Run simple Google/youtube/facebook ads for them, just directing people to their page on your platform. Hopefully this doesn’t burn too much cash, since you’re actually advertising for their page on your platform, so it’s good for you in the end. Perhaps submissions have a small fee in the long-term, to monetize the platform.
So, the audience gets to stay on top of all the cutting edge products and services.
I know there have been big launches on PH but those are outliers because they also have put efforts into digital marketing and PH was just one of platforms for them. Majority are indiehackers, who are happy with a small MRR which is very much possible within this club of creators.
If it ever gets to a point where demand grows too much, I would explore ways to keep things manageable while still giving every product it's moment to shine. Thanks for brining this up!
FYI, you seem to have an encoding issue. There is a bunch of `'` in your pages. [0]
[0]: https://itslaunched.com/product/sponsorapp
And thanks for catching the encoding issue. I will get that sorted out to make sure everything displays properly. Let me know if there's anything else you spot or any feedback you have. Thanks again for checking it out.
Your approach seems promising. Have you considered taking it even further, maybe by making the platform more decentralized or democratized, kind of like a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization)? That might align the incentives more directly with the indie maker community and help keep everything transparent. In any case, I’m glad to see new ideas that give smaller products and teams a fair shot.
Keep at it!
D
I love the idea of exploring ways to make the platform more decentralized too. However for now, I'm more focused on keeping things simple and fair while improving based on feedback like yours. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
"This isn't a popularity contest... so anyway, here's how voting works" is a bit silly, and right there on the front page is "yesterday's winners" which is more than a bit disingenuous.
What if I vote for nothing because all of the products are bad? Why do I care about a user leaderboard for with streaks and their voting history? No noise?
People are so concerned with having an actual downvote button but not-so-concerned with how gameable upvote only systems are.
One of my favorite newsletters just gives links with one-line description. Done. What if this site just listed 10 products a day. No voting, no "judgment" by anyone except the person curating the links.
What if 100 products come out in a week. How do you choose?
etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
Just another channel to saturate
As for the leaderboard and voting history, I understand your concern. The idea behind it is to encourage meaningful participations, but I get how it could feel like extra noise.
Also right now, it's first come, first served, with makers able to schedule their launch up to 30 days ahead. This keep things fair and transparent, ensuring everyone gets an equal opportunity without having to compete for visibility.
If the platform grows, I might explore other ways to keep things manageable whether that's a curated selection, specific categories, or something else BUT for now, the goal is to maintain a simple and fair system that gives everyone a shot.
Can someone please tell me what I fail to understand? I fail to see why such apps focus on the creator than the creation itself?
But I agree- it's important to make sure the product is always the main focus. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Most product launches from seasoned makers get a fair amount of attention anyway, isn't your mission to put focus on product no matter the maker? Not let the product get buried down because a well known maker has launched something else thats getting most of the attention?
As far as successful launching on Product Hunt and getting feature isn't just for everyone. You have to do marketing, building hype around your product, moderate product idea (it's a minimum to get featured), good copywriting and whatnot.
I'm also going to sign up because of its features.
Also excited to have you on board, and I hope the features make your experience worthwhile. Would love to hear your thoughts once you’ve explored the platform.
1) In categories it says (1) even for things that don't have a single launch listed when clicked maybe cuz there is an upcoming launch for the category, but none yet? IDK why, but just to let you know 2) Confirming the launch date (alert) said it was for one day before the one I selected, then on the confirmation page though it had the correct date.
I hope your site takes off! GL! ;)
1) The category issue is probably because it's counting upcoming launches as well. I will take a look at it and fix that right up.
2) Thanks for catching that date issue. I will dig into it and get it sorted out ASAP to avoid any mix ups.
It means a lot that you took the time to share these with me. Wishing you a great launch, and thanks again for the support.
Submitted my product for tomorrow, excited to see how it goes!
Some feedback: - Could probably benefit from adding white-space: pre-line; in a couple of places, e.g. comments to support line breaks - The encoding issue mentioned elsewhere too, stuff showing up as like ' - Launched today should maybe be a bit more prominent, but maybe it also looks better once there are more products that just one.
And thanks for the feedback; 1) I will add line breaks for comments 2) I'm aware of the encoding issue and will fix it soon 3) I agree that launched today section could stand out more. I will tweak that as we get more launches
Really appreciate your input, and good luck with the launch tomorrow!
The one thing to solve for imo is the initial attraction needs to be incentivized for being the early set in of users/contributors to arrive. On that note, make it possible for me as a product recommender to recommend someone else’s product if I want to, and that can be a separate bucket for recommendations.
Then what you have now is essentially digg and Reddit but for startups. It submission will be slow on day one, but hopefully ppl stick around if you capture their imagination and plant a seed for them to come back for.
A second tab by other recommendations by the user will always be buzzing as people will naturally want to hack their chances into being promoted to the LIST on the first tab and/or by being promoted, or feeling good about it, or helping a friend etc and the recommending submitter gets points that can be used for launching their own product and with greater placement or give them one vote for every 10 votes their reco gets on the other tab.
Anyway, I’m riffing but I’m also taking a break from working on a stratplan for my startup and winding down on the couch.
Love the simplicity. PH sold out.
P.s. instead of votes, give people satoshis’ and use as an opp to on-ramp more people onto crypto.
“It launched” is concise, direct, to the point and active.
Funny how words work. Well then, who cares about what I think now. Thanks for the correction.
Does a launch have to be software only? Can I announce, say, the launch of an e-book? Or a newsletter entry?
A few notes:
- Sign up with Twitter? Please consider sign up with Apple, Github and maybe Google. - You should def hide votes until someone has voted or used all their votes for the day to reduce bias.
About your suggestion, hiding votes until users cast their own is a really smart way. I will look at the possibility of implementing something like that.
Bug report : When you post a comment, if you refresh the page it's sending it again and you have duplicates
However this is something I will definitely reconsider as I continue to improve the platform.
In fact they're terrible products, too, even if you don't aspire to run one as a business.
People don't realize this, so they keep building more launch platforms to replace the previous launch platforms, thinking that a different design will "work." But it won't work. Because the idea is flawed from the get-go.
Launch platforms are inherently competitive. There is no way for "everyone" to get to number one. As you scale and get more and more people adding their products to your platform, your homepage and your visitors' browsers' viewports stay the same size. So the ratio of launches:visible_launches grows and grows, and therefore the percentage that get any attention shrinks over time.
You can try to remedy this by making it less competitive to launch, e.g. by cycling through submissions so no one is at the top all the time, or giving products second-chance days, or adding more launch lists so there's more real estate of products to upvote, or whatever. But this just leads to a second and more impactful problem…
…which is that you won't get any traffic. A launch platform is a marketplace, and the only value the supply side has for posting to a launch platform is to get users and/or feedback. Those users and feedback come from traffic, i.e. the demand side of your marketplace. And traffic comes from people referring their friends/audiences to the launch platform to upvote their product. In other words, it's the competition that drives traffic. That's it. Nothing else brings traffic. People en masse don't tend to make a habit of frequenting launch platforms, nor do launch platforms show up for popular search keywords, nor do they get shared on social media (except when first launched), nor do they receive traffic in any other way other than people promoting their launches.
So when you kill competition, you kill the only source of traffic you're ever going to have, and your launch platform ceases to be valuable. You killed the demand side of your marketplace, which made it useless to the supply side.
Limiting your platform to 10 launches per day seems like a clever way to circumvent this, but even if that "succeeds", the result will be that you have many more than 10 people per day who want to launch. And you will either have to expand to accommodate them (and thus encounter all of the above problems), or you'll have to implement some sort of rules or system for who gets to launch and who doesn't. Which is just you picking the winners/losers, and doesn't avoid the entire problem you sought to solve, which is preventing people from losing. All the people who don't get to launch will be on HN in a month writing about how they're making a new launch platform that works for everyone.
So what's the solution?
It's to understand and accept that marketing is competitive. And launching is just marketing. So launching is competitive.
Attention is zero sum. Not everyone can win. The vast majority of all products built will die in obscurity, and it's not because of a flaw in the design of launch platforms, social networks, search engines, etc. It's an inescapable fact of reality. It might as well be a law of physics. It's better to just embrace it.
Good look!
Edit: or best case scenario, bought
I'm not seeing what makes this more fair or product hunt unfair. Can you talk about that piece?
If I'm reading between the lines, it kind of seems like you think product hunt is unfair because savvy startups activate their users for votes. Wouldn't the same thing happen here?
Here, the goal is to limit the number of launches per day and the number of votes per user. The under radar feature also gives products a second chance if they don't get enough attention on their launch day, ensuring that timing is not the only factor in success.
I do believe that some level of community support will always play a role, but I hope this system makes it easier for products to get a fair shot even without massive voting power behind them.
Thanks for raising this point, it's something I'm constantly thinking about as the platform grows.