How to choose the best day to launch your product on Product Hunt?

Set your goals

Okay, before starting this post and explaining the strategy on how to choose the best day for your launch, I have to ask you a few questions (and just imagine you are talking to me) because everything depends on these two answers. I am just building the pressure here. 😀

What do you want to achieve with your Product Hunt launch?

1. Do you want to be the #1 Product of the Day and show a fancy badge on your website as social proof of what you've built?
2. Or do you want users and money?

Let me explain this to you. Product Hunt is a very interesting place; it can be a starting point for your product's success but it can also be very disappointing if you don't know what you want to achieve with your launch.

Winning the badge or winning the fight?

Let's start with the first one: getting the badge.

If your goal is only to get the badge, you need to determine which are the days on Product Hunt with the least upvotes, and then seeing that average number would mean you're building your strategy for it. If the average number of the day you choose is 400 upvotes, that means that you need to have at least 30% of people you can count on to come and support your launch in the first wave (if you're not sure what waves I am talking about, that means you didn't read our "How to Win on Product Hunt" strategy).

Now, this will definitely take you to the top 5, but pushing it even further is just Sandra's way of doing things. Anyhow, choosing or preparing your Product Hunt launch for only the badge and not the madness of 24h marketing doesn't mean it will not bring you sales; it definitely will bring you sales if you prepare for Product Hunt. So, make sure to read on how to win on Product Hunt because I have told you the most important things there.

Now let's get to business and explain how to choose the best day for winning the badge.

1. Open Hunted.Space calendar

2. Let's analyze the calendar for the last month (Feb 2024). Here, we will be able to see all the top products from the previous month and check their upvotes:

But you know, we're cool people who actually like cool people like you, and we would never let you waste your time on calculations, so we did this for you. If you check February 2024 stats, you will find by each month an average number of upvotes per day in a month. Pretty cool, right? I agree.

You can see that the numbers are pretty high, but now you need to calculate the average number of upvotes for each day, for the top 5 products:

This carries over to winning product of the day too:

As you can see the day with the lowest number is Saturday, which means you would need 30% of 362 upvotes to make sure you are in top 5. This means you need to prepare your sheets of people you can count on to be in the top 5, meaning at least 109 people.

We explain how to prepare & win on Product Hunt in this complete guide How to Win on Product Hunt. Plus a checklist so you don't forget anything! 🙌

These people should not be friends and family but actually your target group you have contacted before launching. We have written a great piece on how to prepare for Product Hunt and how to target your audience and engage with them before the launch.

But if you want users and money, then Tuesday is your day, but you need again to prepare, and I am talking about 5 weeks of preparation. So, please read our last blog on how to launch a successful campaign and strategy to win Product of the Day.

Summing up

So, this is the end. Let's make sure you understood the task, choose what you want to achieve: a badge or a fight.

If it's a badge, analyze the Hunted Space calendar, choose the lowest activity day, and prepare the people. If you are ready to fight and run a 24h campaign, analyze the calendar for the highest upvotes and set your strategy straight.

And good luck!