How to Launch on Product Hunt and Show HN Without Breaking the Rules
Product Hunt and Hacker News' "Show HN" can send thousands of curious, technical visitors in a day. Both communities also have clear expectations, and launches that ignore them get flagged or ignored. This guide covers the rules worth knowing and the preparation that pays off.
Show HN: show something people can try
Hacker News' Show HN guidelines are short and worth reading in full. The key points:
- It must be something you made that people can try. Sign-up pages, landing pages, newsletters and blog posts are not Show HNs.
- Make it easy to try without a lengthy sign-up — a demo account or a free tier helps.
- Don't ask friends to upvote or comment. HN actively detects voting rings, and it can sink the post.
- Be there to answer questions. A short first comment explaining what you built, why, and how it works (the stack, the hard parts) is common and well received.
Titles follow the pattern Show HN: Product – what it does, plain and specific. Marketing superlatives tend to get edited or flagged.
Product Hunt: makers can launch their own product
- You can post your own product as the maker; you don't need a "hunter".
- The Product Hunt day starts at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, so launching just after midnight PT gives you the full 24 hours.
- Ask your audience for feedback, not upvotes. Product Hunt discourages direct requests for upvotes and may penalise unusual voting.
- Prepare a gallery (screenshots or a short video), a tagline of up to 60 characters, and a first comment from the maker.
Prepare your copy before launch day
You will need slightly different versions of the same story:
| Asset | Where it's used |
|---|---|
| Tagline (≤ 60 characters) | Product Hunt, directory listings |
| Short description (~100 words) | Directories such as BetaList, SaaSHub, AlternativeTo |
| Show HN post | Hacker News, written plainly and technically |
| Maker's first comment | Product Hunt, Indie Hackers |
The free Autonomous Launch Synthesizer drafts all four from a short description of your product, so you can edit rather than start from a blank page.
Make sure the site can take the traffic
A launch is a bad time to discover that your pricing page returns a 500 or your homepage takes three seconds to respond. Run through the pre-launch technical SEO checklist and check your homepage the day before.
After launch day: the long tail
Product Hunt and Show HN are spikes. Startup directories are the long tail that keeps sending a trickle of visitors and brand searches for months. Our Launch Package handles the 14 directories that accept third-party submissions and prepares ready-to-post kits for Product Hunt, Show HN, Indie Hackers, GitHub Topics and Crunchbase — the platforms where you should post as the maker yourself.