Yesterday I launched my product on Product Hunt, and I think I could have done things better.
Here's what I would have changed.
What I didn't know is that when the day starts, all products for that respective day start in some kind of "incognito mode" or "randomized period".
That means that you don't see your votes, nor do you see the votes of others.
During this time, the products that are shown on the home page randomly change.
During this "randomized period" Product Hunt decides based on upvotes and comments (I guess) which products are going to be shown on the home page after.
This randomized period lasts for approx. 4 hours.
The 25 products with the most votes and comment ratio will get featured on the home page from then on. I think you can climb into this top 25 also later if your votes and comments allow.
But I would say the first 4 hours play a super important role, or maybe THE most important role, to success.
What I saw from today, you would need 100 to 150 upvotes and approximately 10 to 50 comments in this randomized period to be able to get featured (shown on the homepage).
Btw.: In the image, you gonna see how some of the winners of the day already started the day with 50 up votes. Not sure if this was a fair competition from the beginning.
Anyways: Before you start with Product Hunt, you should have at least this amount of supporters that you can drop in within the first 4 hours.
As far as I understand, the top five of the week will then be promoted in the daily Product Hunt newsletter and will also be shown on the home page the next day as "Yesterday's top products".
Even though the race is over for me, maybe supporting my product still helps, so if this helped you, please support: https://www.producthunt.com/products/conote-io-the-company-logbook
(I will update this when I learn more during my launch)