Every day, after launching, makers are contacted on LinkedIn and X by people offering to sell votes. As the Product Hunt team, we are very much aware of this and really hate it. We have systems in place to neutralize this type of gaming. Every vote counts for a different number of points on Product Hunt. A couple examples:
An account with a recently created gmail address and no history of quality contributions on Product Hunt: this vote will count for 0 points. Yes, this might be a well intentioned user, but we take a conservative approach to protect the community. If the account has a company email or applies for verification on Product Hunt, that's a different story.
An account with a company email address linked to a legitimate LinkedIn account with a history of meaningful contributions on Product Hunt: this vote carries significant weight.
A couple questions for the community:
Are there specific accounts on Product Hunt that you suspect participate in vote selling? You can reply here or email report@producthunt.co
What would you want to see us do differently here?
I've heard and read both "users ignore it completely" and "it's the most useful signal we have". Seems like the difference is mostly about when and how you ask.
Just launched PulseAhead on PH today - lifecycle surveys for SaaS teams. Would love to hear real experiences from people who've been through this.
PulseAhead is a purpose-built lifecycle survey pack for SaaS teams. Quick to setup, it captures user profiles, first-touch attribution, helps understand onboarding friction, measures activation confidence and product-market fit, tracks loyalty with Net Promoter Score (NPS), and captures reasons for churn at the moment users cancel, with everything flowing into one real-time dashboard.
