Since this is on front page, here's a little rant about spamming sites with your product:
Don't.
Yes, discoverability is broken. But that doesn't justify spamming, or other "growth hacking" that the Product Hunt culture has made socially acceptable (in fact, there has been a rise in clever voting manipulation tactics on Hacker News because such tactics have been normalized on PH: https://twitter.com/jiyinyiyong/status/855661997169364993).
Spamming won't magically make you go viral. And if you don't go viral, that's ok. Improve and try again.
if you look at most product startup they all have started with shady growth tactics (stealing contacts or propagating trought fake invites to your contacts or pretending you to be on a network to lure your friends)
of course once they did it they where quick to plug the hole and denounce it as unhetical
spamming of course isn't a cost effective solution to reach people needing a product, but social network propagation trough referral still is highly effective
you can also buy targeted mailing addresses from selected companies, but the big, accurate lists are costly to come by - but those give you an incredibly focused group
> look at most product startup they all have started
Now, maybe, I don't know what you mean by "product startup", or even the word "most", but having burned a fair amount of shoe leather in my time, and having been associated with startups that have done nigh on a billion (USD) in sales by talking to customers, in their shops, and showing them goods, and signing contracts for delivery and SLAs, I surely would like you to back up this assertion.
Posting your product indiscriminately, as is the premise of the OP, is spam.
Promoting your product via Twitter or your friends is fine. (promoting a submission on Hacker News [i.e. highlighting the submission itself in an attempt to vote manipulate] is against the site rules, which is not spam but still bad)
But it's not necessarily indiscriminate. Many of these are sites that want submissions. Even Hacker News is OK if you're doing something relevant to the audience.
Getting exposure helps. How it's done is a different question. Posting your startup to directories/curated collections or blog is perfectly fine. Spam begins when it's unsolicited.
a) I'm releasing a Mac app for casual DJs. Mac sites are probably underviewed by my demographic and I only have a few DJ sites I can directly target.
b) I don't have to promote to all 125 sites, I can be more targeted.
c) You're automatically treating growth hacking as spam. Growth Hacking is a common promotion process - the issue is how it is accomplished. Promoting on lists - good. Making fake websites with fake articles / reviews - not so good. Paying bots to upvote - bad.
Spamming is an integral part of growth hacking. As is the contact info acraping and harvesting. Pinning a cool name on these activities doesn't make them any more acceptable.
Quora is probably one of the better resources on that list because rather that listing your product on the shelf next to 1000 others, it allows you to discover people looking for solutions just like yours.
For example, say you're building an Android weather widget (for some reason). Build a profile where you're an 'Android', 'Widget', 'Weather' expert and Quora will surface this question for you to answer* : https://www.quora.com/Android-Application-Which-is-the-best-...
This targeted approach is much more valuable for your product, your time, and for the person asking the question.
*Of course it helps to actually have the best weather widget.
Totally disagree from the user's perspective. Every time I try and use Quora for technical reasons, the answers are almost always people selling their product and not offering a constructive solution to the problem asked.
Sure, if the problem is unsolved then it is appropriate. But more often than not, this kind of advertising drowns out actually useful answers. Not least because their 'walk the dinosaur' narrative construction disguises that they are ads until you've read the whole thing.
Totally agree. I have an app and I tried doing this in Quora a couple of times. I have stopped doing this. The only way you can win in quora is to answer questions that are related to your product with a simple bio against your name.
ProTip: Since these forums are predominately internet-savvy, you're likely to hit more people who are testing the waters rather than trying something that solves their problem. Just don't forget to add "pay me" button. It would sound risky but it's worth it. There is nothing worse than building something that no one is willing to pay for. Trimming down early makes sure that you're building a solution that genuinely solves a problem.
At the nascent stages, you don't need to add numbers, only people who are delighted to use your product and are willing to pay for it.
How many of those will actually bring in meaningful traffic? It would be nice to see a list from people who have successfully launched a product on multiple platforms and have traffic numbers to backup their suggestions.
Don't.
Yes, discoverability is broken. But that doesn't justify spamming, or other "growth hacking" that the Product Hunt culture has made socially acceptable (in fact, there has been a rise in clever voting manipulation tactics on Hacker News because such tactics have been normalized on PH: https://twitter.com/jiyinyiyong/status/855661997169364993).
Spamming won't magically make you go viral. And if you don't go viral, that's ok. Improve and try again.