How much time do you spend on a product launch, and what items take the longest to prepare?

Today I received a question about proper launch preparation:

“Nika, how long should this take us?”

And I didn’t have a clear answer.

Because I remember people who built a landing page five days before launch and made it into the top five.

And I also know people who prepare strategically and build their community at least six months in advance.

When I was preparing the relaunch of the iOS version of Minimalist Phone, I spent around 53 hours on everything related to Product Hunt engagement on the launch day (I tracked it). Out of that, about 7–10 hours were on launch day itself. So roughly 43–45 hours of preparation. Those hours were spread over about 1.5 months.

And that’s with the fact that I’ve been building the community for three years. The product already has some launch history on the platform.

The biggest time investment was for us personally (in this exact order):

• Creating visuals (for Product Hunt, social media, and newsletter campaigns)

• Video production – but we already had a video that we edited; otherwise, this one would be the most time-consuming item

• Engagement (DMs)

• Copywriting

Do you keep internal records of how much time you’ve invested in a single launch?

I would be curious to compare.