Product Hunt launch: a launch-day checklist, and how to catch every mention

A Product Hunt launch is one day of attention. The launch page gets the votes, but most of the conversation happens somewhere else: a thread on Reddit asking whether anyone has tried it, a post on X from someone who hit a bug in the signup, a LinkedIn post from a user who likes it. Answer those within the hour and the launch keeps moving. Find them three days later and the moment is gone.

Here is a checklist in three parts: the week before, launch day, and the week after.

The week before

Finish the listing early. Name, tagline, gallery images, a short video or demo, and the first comment written in advance. Rewriting the tagline at midnight is how typos ship.
Write the maker comment as a story, not an ad. Why you built it, who it is for, what it does not do yet. People reply to honest first comments.
Line up the people who already use it. Tell them the date. Ask them to try it and leave a comment if they have something to say, not to upvote: asking for votes is against Product Hunt's rules and comments carry more weight anyway.
Pick the day. The Product Hunt day starts at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, so a launch posted then gets the full 24 hours.
Prepare short answers for the questions you know are coming: pricing, data handling, how it compares to the obvious alternative.

Launch day

Post at the start of the day and pin your first comment.
Reply to every comment on the launch page. Fast, specific, and thankful. Keep that tab open all day.
Share it where your users already are: your newsletter, your X and LinkedIn accounts, the communities you are an active member of. Link to the launch, explain why it matters to that audience.
Watch everywhere else too. This is the part most makers miss. People who see the launch talk about it on their own channels, and those posts do not show up in your Product Hunt notifications.

Catch every mention, not just the launch page

Searching X, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube and Hacker News by hand every hour on launch day does not work; you will be busy answering comments. This is what Overhear is for.

Add your product name as a keyword on the Keywords tab. Add the launch phrase too if it is distinctive, for example "acme launch".
Set every source to hourly: X, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, Hacker News and the web. Each keyword has one select per source, so you choose the pace.
Click Scan now when the launch goes live, so the first results arrive right away instead of at the next full hour.
Turn on email alerts for the project. After each scan you get an email with the mentions that need you.

Overhear sorts what it finds into complaints, bug reports, questions, praise and the rest, so on a busy day you can answer the bug reports and questions first. Save the kind posts as testimonials with one click; they make good social proof for the launch page and your landing page.

Two honest limits: Overhear does not read the comments on your Product Hunt page itself, so keep that tab open. And Hacker News is not a source of its own; threads there only show up when the web search finds them.

What a launch week costs

Every source hourly for one keyword costs 240 credits a day, about $0.40 at the $10 pack rate. A whole launch week is 1,680 credits, about $2.80. The 1,000 free credits every new account gets cover the first four days.

There is no subscription to cancel afterwards. You pay for the scans that run, nothing else.

The week after

Slow down instead of switching off. Set the sources back to daily and keep the keyword: posts about a launch keep coming for weeks, just less often. Or remove the keyword if you are done.
Answer the late posts too. A thoughtful reply to a review written five days later is often worth more than one more comment on launch day.
Write down what people asked. The questions from launch week are your next FAQ, your next landing-page section and your next feature.

A launch is one day. The conversation about it is not. Start with 1,000 free credits and see who is talking about yours.