Having built the Swell Diary surf video website and launched it without doing any marketing for two months, it's now time to get the word out there.
To get started I've launched on a couple of the usual suspects, Hacker News and Product Hunt. I've also added a link on a YouTube Channel.
Launching without preparation or fan fare
If you google how to launch on Hacker News or how to do a Product Hunt launch you'll get elaborate launch strategies. You can spend weeks following those plans, and they might work.
But I didn't bother. I am more interested in acquiring backlinks, maybe getting feedback and just getting the ball rolling.
So my launches have been very fast with minimal preparation put in to them.
Hacker News Announcement
The first place I mention Swell Diary as on Hacker News on the 3rd of October. You can see the initial post here: Show HN: I curated 500 YouTube daily surfing videos, organised by date and break
It's just a simple introduction comment prefixed with Show HN, the recommended way to announce a launch. The post response was pretty subdued but in line with expectations.
It got 5 upvotes and stayed on page one of the Show HN section for at least part of the day.
Product Hunt Launch
I did a scheduled launch on Product Hunt, adding the site about 5 days before launch. I then left it and actually forgot the day it would go live. It went live on 7th October.
My last launch was for Shotstack and I spent the day harassing people for upvotes. It still never made it to page one so this time I just let it be.
The Swell Diary launch also didn't get featured. It got 5 upvotes and two comments. Here's the Swell Diary Product Hunt launch .
Paid for Product Hunt upvotes
Product Hunt has been getting a bad rap recently, being accused of favouring companies that will pay for advertising, and their head of growth quitting because the CTO didn't know who Pieter Levels is.
Shortly after scheduling the Swell Diary launch I got messages on LinkedIn from people offering to promote the website to their audience. Some even guaranteeing between 50 and 70 upvotes with prices ranging from $130 to $150 USD.
I declined, but it would be interesting to know how effective these would be - I suspect you'd get upvotes but not much else of value. You might also get banned.
Product Hunt comments generated by ChatGPT?
Also the comments I received on the launch sound a bit suspicious. I think ChatGPT might be involved here, or maybe I'm just skeptical.
They both sound similar, follow a similar structure and length and more or less re-iterate what I say in my own comment.
What do you think?
YouTube Channel link
I have a Swell Diary YouTube Channel, which I haven't done much with yet, but I use it to subscribe to all the surf channels I curate from. I simply added a link to the Channel description.
Traffic boost
So what was the impact on web site visitors based on these two launches? Heres the results:
you can see the spike from the Hacker News post on 3rd October and more of a bump from Product Hunt which launched on the 7th of October.
Google Analytics shows 23 users came direct from Hacker News, although direct traffic also spiked. Only 4 users came from Product Hunt but likely there were a few more recorded as direct. Still, not earth shattering.
Traffic has settled back down to where it was before the launches.
Backlinks and domain authority
The biggest boost came in the shape of backlinks. A bunch of other websites picked up on the launches and added them to their listings. Referring domains went from 4 to 30 from 126 backlinks.
While domain authority didn't move, these backlinks should eventually add up and start pushing it up.
