I hate doing calls.

However I noticed lots of users wanted an onboarding call to try my app.

- They're in a traditional industry
- They're not tech-savvy
- They still use Fax

I improved the onboarding a LOT, but I feel it's still not enough for them

So, as much as I hate it, I'm going to test onboarding calls to see if it makes a difference

"fAcEbOoK AdS dOeSn'T wOrK fOr b2B"

Just noticed one of my old projects has been getting tons of traffic from Google 😲 I published a few articles 2 years ago and it keeps growing since then. The website is super old and buggy, so might be time to revive it while I wait for ads to get data on my main projects

Taiwan was nice! Couldn’t visit much because I arrived during typhoon but really like what I visited (Thanks @jovvvian for the recommendations 😄) Now back to building!

@joelpickin Give a shot to t.co/XCWUNQ1C5F, it’s free :)

I really picked the worst time to go to Taiwan didn’t I 💀

We are so back Results working 2 months non-stop on new projects: $200 MRR ➡️ B2B app - Facebook ads $9.97 MRR ➡️ t.co/csrgIZo733 - Twitter launch and directories (+ $100 of one-time purchase) Taking some vacations then switching to marketer mode. Going to work full time on those

Tried to take a day off last time but ended up working anyway So instead I’m taking 4 days vacations after 2 months without full day off Direction Taipei! ✈️

Nice 💀

As a general rule, your headline should be “explain what the product does to your mom” If it’s too hard, people won’t read If it’s unclear, people won’t read But if you make it clear what your product is and/or how it can help them, they will read

Don’t get me wrong, ProductHunt did change my life and I would be forever grateful for that When I launched MakeLogo there, it blew up and I wouldn’t be there without that It just makes sad to see what it’s becoming. And from the comments and reposts, many people share the same feelings I used to go every few days to check for new cool products, but not anymore, because I know it will be filled with products upvoted by bots (saw that a lot with crypto projects) I made the post to hopefully make them react. I doubt it will happen. But one can hope

Fuck you @ProductHunt 💩🖕 I will probably get banned from there because of this post, but fuck it, it's time to stop lying to your users First, @iamjasonlevin showed how it was on the inside (imagine the CTO not knowing the #1 person in the audience. Still not sure if it was all a joke or not tbh) And today, like many other makers, they purposely did not feature a new tool I launched... ❌ While featuring apps that had nothing to do here according to THEIR OWN criteria. I'll share my 2 theories on why they do that at the end, but first... 👉 Let's see the featured competition After all, maybe my project was just too basic compared to others, no? Their 4 main criteria are: - 💡Useful - 🎁 Novel - 🔨High Craft - 🎨Creative I won't judge my own app, but let's look at some of the top featured products at the time of writing this post instead: 1️⃣ A course platform to learn to code - ❌ Courses/Infoproducts are not supposed to be featured according to them - ❌ The landing page is almost empty, no social links no contact info - ❌ The hero section is just a headline with a flashy green background Useful maybe. Novel, High Craft and Creative? I have doubts. 2️⃣ A white noise app - ❌ No landing page or websites, the PH link sends straight to the app store (and it's paid) - ❌ The main feature is that it shows a cassette video on your iPhone when playing the noises - ❌That's it. It's literally what the app does Creative? No. Novel? No Useful? Maybe High-craft? Can't judge without buying 3️⃣ AI Reel generator - ❌ No landing page, just a signup form - ❌Same as the 100th of other tools launched - ❌No demo, no landing page, just a signup form Creative? No. Novel? No. Useful? Somewhat. High craft? Landing page don't show 4️⃣ I don't even know what this app is - ❌Website says "Fast creation of websites and mobile applications for food delivery" - ❌So I guess a boilerplate to make food delivery apps? Boilerplates are not allowed - ❌Takes +5 seconds to load page - ❌ Text looks straight out of Google Translate I could keep going and find more examples but... There is no way a 100% functional FREE app, that took 100 hours to build and people use AND like... (based on feedback I received) ...is less “Useful, Novel, Creative and High Craft” than this: You’re lying. I don’t know what this is about, but certainly not those criteria. No fking way. Especially since apps similar to the one I was launching got approved in the past few months. ==================== 👉 So now, let’s speculate on WHY they do that ==================== Context: If you didn’t know, they laid off 60% of their staff last year (t.co/o5ahwbIHaa). Not only that, but according to href, they went from 2 million per month in organic traffic in 2023 to barely 800k in 2024 Imo that sounds like financial trouble. Financial trouble = Need money fast to survive. I’m only sharing theories here, it might be totally wrong. But imo there some reasons that would justify everything happening lately: 1️⃣ VC-backed startups This one is pretty obvious. VC-backed startups have money to throw on ads, and ProductHunt offers exactly that. Their ad service starts at $5000. According to what they quoted me last year, it costs around $55 to show your ad to 1000 persons (called “CPM”, for Cost per mile). This is NOT clicks, just your ad being shown to people, no matter if they look at it or click. The quote seemed to imply there is no targeting options, and a worldwide audience (they might have added options since then?) As comparison: 👉 Facebook Ads CPM is usually from $10 to $50 for a well targeted audiences in countries like US-UK-CA-AUS-EU (sometimes more expensive if competition) 👉Reddit Ads CPM on specific subreddits starts at $2 based on my tests 👉 Twitter ads CPM are around the same as Reddit So, definitely on the expensive side. Imo this is an advertising strategy suited for Awareness ads = Ads that don’t generate sales immediately. Agencies and platforms love this because it’s very hard to measure the impact of awareness 🥲 But what does it have to do with getting approved?🤔🤔 Simple! You don’t want to offend your best customers. If a VC-backed startup launch and does not get their “Product of the day” badge, they will not be happy. And since the ad platform is not that great, it’s easy to ditch them (this is only my opinion, as someone who managed over $1,000,000 in ads and has worked in the advertising field for 7 years. Yes, this is not much but enough to get an opinion) But why the badge? 🤔🤔 When I was selling MakeLogo AI, my first startup, that got "Product of the day", I talked with a potential buyer working with VCs. He offered me to work for him to launch startups, get “Product of the day”, then pass them over to his team. 👉 According to him, the award is a massive social proof for investors. So, for a startup with a few hundred thousands in funding, $5,000 to get a badge who could potentially unlock a million of funding is nothing. Especially if they can justify it under “advertising expense” I doubt there is any formal agreement, they probably just check if a startup is VC-backed as criteria to feature them or not. And maybe, maaaaaybe be more strict with other competing products who could have a chance of winning that day 🙃 Again, this is pure speculation, I might be completely wrong. But since PH team never comment about that, we can only make speculations. The only thing that’s sure here: - 👉The badge is valuable to VC startups - 👉 They need money - 👉 They have purposely vague criteria. Make your own opinion 2️⃣ FOMO operation Not from me and seems unlikely because doing it would be a big fat middle finger to their users, but could interesting one still. @raj_raj88 suggested they could be doing that to make people scared of not being featured then add some kind of premium verification that guarantee to be featured at launch. Tons of directories have popped up in the last 3 years, and lots of them ask to pay a fee to be listed (There Is An AI For That is now $300 !!!). But it works! Startup pays. You get some exposure, and a backlink in most cases. But what does it have to do with featuring? 🤔 👉 If everyone sees posts of makers not being featured on PH, and they add a paid verification to be featured, everyone buys because they don’t want to risk not being featured Too big to be true IMO, I really hope they won't do that. Again, just sharing speculations/theories ================= 👉 CONCLUSION 👈 ================== There might be more, especially with all the spam services offering to pay to get upvotes and the weird upvotes graphs It's fine if they only want to feature VC-backed startup, but be clear about it. Don't lie to your audience. I'm sure most people would be fine to pay $$ to get their app listed. But imo, they ruined what used to be the best platform to launch and discover new products The main takeaway: 👉 Don’t waste hours on your ProductHunt launch and bring your own audience there. Just list your app and move on. Hopefully, we’ll get another alternative soon. The maker community deserve better (pls link if you're working on one) , I would love to get proven wrong on everything here, or at least get an explanation for what’s happening. What are the exact criteria to be listed?

My FREE tool is live on @ProductHunt 🥳 👉 t.co/urKFHtlXKs Just enter your website, and get detailed insights on your landing page copy, design, and more! It covers your landing page as a whole, but also each section individually, and even Open Graph! 📈 It's like Google Pagespeed but for your landing page! And it's 100% free to use! No signup required You can try my little free tool and support me directly from the ProductHunt page! Let me know below how you like it 😄

Ready to launch my little free tool on ProductHunt Sunday! (Even added a dark/light mode toggle to procrastinate more) I'm also removing the one-time purchase option for t.co/csrgIZo733 tomorrow! If you want to stock up on events for later without subscriptions, now is the time 👀

Ended up buying a wide monitor, less portable than a portable monitor but so much better for coding 🤤

POV: You procrastinate instead of shipping

I made an AI tool that roasts landing pages! It goes on the landing page, look at it and give improvement points for: - Copy & clarity - Overall structure - Conversion rate optimization - Design - Other points to mention I haven't published it, not sure I will, it's just a small project that took me an hour or so to setup

t.co/csrgIZo733's Twitter launch might have flopped, but it's not the end ! ❌ Launching is not a marketing strategy, just an event Going to try a few things to drive traffic: - 1) SEO Content - 2) Free tools - 3) Directories - 4) Ads - 5) Cold emails Today I focused on the blog and landing page a bit I cloned the code from previous projects so took a few minutes, now I just have to write content in markdown formats Also need to improve my landing page. Made the mistake of trying to appeal to multiple audiences. Better to do one landing per audience instead.

I'm launching my new app t.co/csrgIZo733 🥳🥳 💸 It helps you improve your conversion rate in just a few clicks! Test It is the first A/B testing tool that's BOTH super easy to use AND affordable. It’s been over a year since Google Optimize was shut down, and since there is no decent alternative, I decided to re-create my own version. - 👍 No-code Visual Editor to create experiments fast without coding - 💾 …and also server-side experiments for full control - 📈 Easy Insights to help you understand your results - 💸 Revenue tracking to optimize revenue per visitor - 👵🏻 Super easy to setup, even your grandma could do it You can get started in just 5 minutes. I saw lots of makers who wanted to optimize their landing page but had to rely on gut feeling or doing “before/after” (I’m also guilty of this 😬) But neither is reliable and can end up in lowering your conversion rate ‼️ The only way to know for sure if something converts better is to Test It properly and calculate statistical relevance 📊 👉 So, if you want to improve your conversion rate and revenues, go to t.co/csrgIZo733 🏗️ Behind the scenes 🚧 That’s the most polished project I’ve released so far. I’ve been working on it non-stop for over a month now to make sure everything works 🫡 I didn’t want to delay any longer, so I decided to launch in early access after beta testers approved the app. - 😬 Con: The app is working, but features are still basic. I will add more based on feedback - 🤩 Pro: You can get special offers with no subscription and choose the next features For server-side experiments, the most popular frameworks are supported, but I will keep adding more based on requests. I’m really excited about this app and want to try lots of things to grow it, so I hope you will like it 😄

❌ Your #1 metric should NOT be conversion rate It should be $ per visitor If you raise your prices and your conversion rate drops by 10% but your revenues increase by 20%, it means more $$ and less support 💸 Better to have less customers who pay more than the opposite

How to make sure no ones support your ProductHunt launch:

I have to use NextJS to make a package for my app This got to be easily one of the worst thing I've tried in my life. The code is messy, nothing makes sense Really wonder why people use that over Nuxt, it does the same but 100x easier 🥲

@marc_louvion Indeed, only costed 27€ to replace 😂 Right now I'm living on my $ reserves so, not the best feeling, but I learned to not let my emotions control me thanks to Stoic philosophy, so I can 100% focus on building

First day off in a month 🥱

40K ! Thanks, everyone 😲 Hopefully, after the next launch, I'll have more interesting content again!

Been working on my new project almost non-stop for a month now It’s a “boring” project - No AI features - Not a new concept - Not a niche audience Just taking something that exists and offering something better and more convenient Launch soon 😎

I noticed something with the GitHub graph The periods where I'm depressed are the periods where I don't ship Being busy = Happiness

My previous startup (t.co/0grIWOylwl) started to grow revenues when I removed the free version and asked to pay directly on the landing page I had a super limited demo embedded ON the landing page so they could test the main feature, but that’s it ❌ Free Plan ✅ Free limited demo

I'm finally starting the landing page for my new app, meaning launch soon 🤩 I started working on it over a month ago. That's the longest I've spent on any new product

When I was starting out, my goal was to go from shipping completely useless ideas to barely decent You don’t need perfect, you need decent