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.
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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.
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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.
>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!
Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/4qoY7o2.png
Code here: https://gist.github.com/airstrike/923a7049d5cde7405e60e99e22...
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!