# SubmitMap — full content > Every launch platform record and guide on SubmitMap, in one document. > Dataset as JSON: https://submitmap.com/api/platforms.json # Platforms ## AppSumo A marketplace of deal-hunting buyers. Real revenue, on their terms. - URL: https://sell.appsumo.com - Page: https://submitmap.com/platform/appsumo/ - Categories: saas, marketplace - Pricing: paid (Rev share) - Approval time: 2–8 weeks (~42 days) - Dofollow link: yes - Requires backlink to it: no - Domain rating: 88 ### Who AppSumo accepts - Established SaaS - Web apps - B2B tools - Marketplace listings **You need:** - Must offer a lifetime / one-time payment tier - Infrastructure that survives a thousand signups in a week - A support process, because deal reviews are public and brutal - Existing paying customers and a stable product **You will be rejected if:** - Subscription-only pricing is rejected - Products that can't be licensed perpetually, such as thin API resellers - Pre-launch products with no customers ### How to submit 1. **Apply as a partner** — Submit the product, your metrics and a proposed deal structure through sell.appsumo.com. Expect a call before anything is agreed. 2. **Design the lifetime tiers** — Usually three tiers with escalating limits. Price so a one-time payment still covers years of hosting for that user, not just the first month. 3. **Negotiate the split and the window** — Ask about the revenue share, the length of the deal window, and whether you can run the same offer elsewhere afterwards. 4. **Staff support before launch** — Write the docs, clear the inbox, and set roadmap expectations in the listing itself. Reviews land in the first two weeks and stay forever. ### Requirements - Lifetime pricing tier - Paying customers - Support capacity - Deal video, copy and screenshots ### Gotchas - Lifetime buyers are your loudest reviewers and your least profitable users. Price for that. - Refund windows are generous, so gross revenue in week one is not revenue yet. ### What you actually get A listed deal commonly does $10k–$100k gross in its first months, minus AppSumo's share. You also inherit hundreds of demanding lifetime users who will file feature requests forever. ### Agent prompt Fill the {PLACEHOLDERS} with the product being submitted, then execute: ``` You are preparing an AppSumo partner application. Product: {NAME} ({URL}) Current pricing: {PRICING} Metrics: {MRR}, {CUSTOMERS}, {CHURN} 1. Design three lifetime deal tiers with limits and prices, showing the per-user cost assumption behind each. 2. Write the deal page headline and a 400-character description. 3. List the questions I must ask about revenue share, exclusivity and refund window. 4. Flag any part of my current pricing that disqualifies the application. Return as plain text, ready to paste. ``` ## Product Hunt The default launch stage. High traffic for one day, a permanent backlink after. - URL: https://www.producthunt.com - Page: https://submitmap.com/platform/product-hunt/ - Categories: ai, saas, dev-tools - Pricing: free - Approval time: Same day (~1 days) - Dofollow link: yes - Requires backlink to it: no - Domain rating: 91 ### Who Product Hunt accepts - Web apps - Mobile apps - AI tools - Dev tools - Free tools **You need:** - A live product anyone can try without a sales call - A 240×240 logo and three gallery images or a short demo video **You will be rejected if:** - Waitlists and landing pages with no working product - Reposting the same product within six months ### How to submit 1. **Schedule for 12:01am PT** — The leaderboard resets at midnight Pacific. Launching mid-day costs you voting hours you can't get back. 2. **Write the tagline as a benefit** — 60 characters, no company name. Say what it does for one specific person. 3. **Post the maker comment first** — Publish it within minutes of going live, then reply to everything for six hours. ### Requirements - Working product URL - 240×240 logo - 3+ gallery images ### Gotchas - Asking for upvotes in public gets the launch penalised. Share the link, never the ask. ### What you actually get A top-five finish usually means 800–3,000 visitors on launch day and a handful of paying users. Below tenth place it's mostly a backlink and a badge. ### Agent prompt Fill the {PLACEHOLDERS} with the product being submitted, then execute: ``` You are submitting my product to Product Hunt. Product: {NAME} ({URL}) 1. Draft a 60-character tagline stating a concrete benefit. 2. Draft a 260-character description in plain language. 3. Draft the maker's first comment: why I built it, what it doesn't do yet, one question for the community. Return as plain text. ``` ## Show HN The most technical audience you can reach for free, and the least forgiving. - URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/show - Page: https://submitmap.com/platform/show-hn/ - Categories: dev-tools, ai, saas - Pricing: free - Approval time: Instant (~0 days) - Dofollow link: no - Requires backlink to it: no - Domain rating: 92 ### Who Show HN accepts - Web apps - Dev tools - Open source - Free tools - Hardware **You need:** - Something people can try right now without signing up - A title in the form 'Show HN: ' **You will be rejected if:** - Landing pages, waitlists and email-gated demos - Vote solicitation anywhere, which gets detected and the post buried ### How to submit 1. **Title it plainly** — 'Show HN: A CLI that diffs two Postgres schemas.' No adjectives, no launch language. 2. **Post the text comment** — Two short paragraphs: what it does, and what you learned building it. 3. **Answer every reply fast** — Conceding a limitation reliably earns upvotes. Defensiveness does the opposite. ### Requirements - Working demo or repo - No signup wall - Show HN title format ### Gotchas - A demo that requires an account is the fastest route to a hostile thread. ### What you actually get Front page means 5,000–40,000 visitors in a day and genuinely useful criticism. Most Show HNs get 2–15 points and a hundred visitors, which is still worth twenty minutes. ### Agent prompt Fill the {PLACEHOLDERS} with the product being submitted, then execute: ``` You are preparing a Show HN post. Product: {NAME} ({URL}) 1. Write three candidate titles in the form 'Show HN: ...', plain and specific. 2. Write the comment: two paragraphs under 150 words, including one honest technical limitation. 3. List five likely critical questions with a one-line honest answer each. Return as plain text. ``` ## Chrome Web Store Distribution for extensions, with a review process that reads your permissions closely. - URL: https://chromewebstore.google.com - Page: https://submitmap.com/platform/chrome-web-store/ - Categories: dev-tools, marketplace - Pricing: paid ($5 one-time) - Approval time: 1–14 days (~14 days) - Dofollow link: no - Requires backlink to it: no - Domain rating: 96 ### Who Chrome Web Store accepts - Browser extensions - Marketplace listings **You need:** - A packaged extension with a manifest and a privacy policy URL - A written justification for every permission requested **You will be rejected if:** - Broad host permissions with no stated reason - Undisclosed data collection or affiliate link injection ### How to submit 1. **Register and verify** — One-time $5 fee, then verify your publisher identity. Unverified publishers get a warning banner. 2. **Write the permission justifications** — One specific sentence per permission. Vague answers are the main cause of long reviews. 3. **Prepare store assets** — 128×128 icon, 1280×800 screenshots, and a short description opening with your target search term. ### Requirements - Packaged extension - Privacy policy URL - Permission justifications - 128×128 icon ### Gotchas - Adding a permission in an update can trigger a fresh full review and pause distribution. ### What you actually get Organic install traffic that compounds for years if you rank for a search term. A first-week install count in the low hundreds is normal without outside promotion. ### Agent prompt Fill the {PLACEHOLDERS} with the product being submitted, then execute: ``` You are preparing a Chrome Web Store submission. Extension: {NAME} Permissions: {PERMISSIONS} 1. Write a one-sentence justification per permission, tied to the feature that needs it. 2. Write the 132-character short description opening with the main search term, plus the full description. 3. Flag any permission likely to slow review and suggest a narrower alternative. Return as plain text. ``` ## G2 Buyer-intent reviews. Slow, bureaucratic, and where B2B software gets compared. - URL: https://www.g2.com - Page: https://submitmap.com/platform/g2/ - Categories: saas, marketplace - Pricing: freemium (Paid for lead data) - Approval time: 1–3 weeks (~21 days) - Dofollow link: no - Requires backlink to it: no - Domain rating: 92 ### Who G2 accepts - B2B tools - Established SaaS - Marketplace listings **You need:** - A business-facing product with customers willing to review it - A verifiable company identity and domain email **You will be rejected if:** - Consumer apps and personal tools - Incentivised or employee-written reviews, which get stripped ### How to submit 1. **Claim the profile** — Verify with a company domain email, then complete categories, pricing and screenshots. 2. **Collect the first ten reviews** — Ask customers directly with G2's review link. Below ten reviews the profile barely surfaces. 3. **Fight for the right category** — Category choice decides which comparison pages you appear on. ### Requirements - Company domain email - B2B product - Customers who will review ### Gotchas - Free profiles have limited control over what appears on them. ### What you actually get Little traffic until you have roughly ten reviews, then steady comparison-page visitors with high purchase intent. A quarters-long play, not a launch. ### Agent prompt Fill the {PLACEHOLDERS} with the product being submitted, then execute: ``` You are setting up a G2 profile. Product: {NAME} ({URL}) Segment: {SEGMENT} 1. Pick the primary and two secondary categories, with reasoning. 2. Write the profile description in 500 characters. 3. Draft a review request email that complies with G2's no-incentive rules. Return as plain text. ``` ## BetaList Early-stage startups shown to an audience that expects rough edges. - URL: https://betalist.com - Page: https://submitmap.com/platform/betalist/ - Categories: saas, ai - Pricing: freemium ($129 skips the queue) - Approval time: 2–8 weeks (~42 days) - Dofollow link: yes - Requires backlink to it: no - Domain rating: 78 ### Who BetaList accepts - Pre-launch startups - Web apps - AI tools **You need:** - A product that is genuinely early, since finished products get rejected as not newsworthy - A clean landing page with signup or email capture **You will be rejected if:** - Established products with years of public history - Agencies, courses and consultancies ### How to submit 1. **Submit the startup** — Name, URL, one-sentence pitch and a category. Short form, manual review. 2. **Upload a 3:2 screenshot** — They crop to a wide card. Show the product, not a hero headline. 3. **Decide on the queue** — Free waits weeks with no guarantee; paid review publishes in days. ### Requirements - Landing page with signup - 3:2 screenshot - One-sentence pitch ### Gotchas - Being 'too finished' is the most common rejection reason. ### What you actually get Roughly 100–400 visitors over a week and a trickle of newsletter signups. Its real value is the durable backlink and being scraped by other directories. ### Agent prompt Fill the {PLACEHOLDERS} with the product being submitted, then execute: ``` You are submitting my early-stage startup to BetaList. Product: {NAME} ({URL}) 1. Write a one-sentence pitch under 140 characters that makes clear the product is early. 2. Write a 300-character third-person description. 3. Pick the closest category and describe the ideal 3:2 screenshot. Return as plain text. ``` ## Indie Hackers A community that rewards revenue numbers and post-mortems, not launches. - URL: https://www.indiehackers.com - Page: https://submitmap.com/platform/indie-hackers/ - Categories: saas, ai, dev-tools - Pricing: free - Approval time: Instant (~0 days) - Dofollow link: no - Requires backlink to it: no - Domain rating: 83 ### Who Indie Hackers accepts - Side projects - Web apps - Established SaaS - Free tools **You need:** - A story with specifics: MRR, churn, what you tried that failed - A claimed product page under your own URL **You will be rejected if:** - Announcement-only posts with no lesson or numbers - Funded startups pitching without disclosing funding ### How to submit 1. **Create the product page** — Claim your product and connect revenue if you're comfortable. Product pages accumulate followers. 2. **Post as a milestone** — Lead with the number or the lesson. The title should be a fact, not a pitch. 3. **Stay in the thread for two days** — Discussion keeps posts alive far longer than upvotes do. ### Requirements - Product page - A specific number or lesson ### Gotchas - 'I just launched X' is the lowest-performing title format on the site. ### What you actually get A good milestone post gets 300–1,500 visitors and real conversations with other founders. Pure launch announcements get almost nothing. ### Agent prompt Fill the {PLACEHOLDERS} with the product being submitted, then execute: ``` You are drafting an Indie Hackers post. Product: {NAME} ({URL}) Numbers: {METRICS} 1. Write three titles that lead with a number or a lesson, never with 'I launched'. 2. Write a 400-word post: what I tried, the numbers, what I'd do differently. 3. End with one open question for other founders. Return as plain text. ``` ## There's An AI For That The largest AI tool index. Heavy search traffic, paid submission. - URL: https://theresanaiforthat.com - Page: https://submitmap.com/platform/theres-an-ai-for-that/ - Categories: ai - Pricing: paid (Paid tiers only) - Approval time: 2–10 days (~10 days) - Dofollow link: yes - Requires backlink to it: no - Domain rating: 80 ### Who There's An AI For That accepts - AI tools - Web apps - AI agents **You need:** - A product with a genuine AI component - A clear task that matches one of their task pages **You will be rejected if:** - Non-AI tools with AI in the marketing copy - Dead or waitlist-only links ### How to submit 1. **Find your task page** — Search their taxonomy for the task you want to rank on. That page, not the homepage, is where the traffic comes from. 2. **Pay for the tier** — Tiers differ in review speed and placement. The cheapest paid tier is usually enough. 3. **Write for the task** — Repeat the task language a buyer would type into search. ### Requirements - Live AI product - Logo - Task category match ### Gotchas - A crowded task page means you rank on page four and see nothing. ### What you actually get 300–2,000 visitors a month if you rank on a task page people actually search. Conversion is low but the volume is real and it doesn't decay like a launch. ### Agent prompt Fill the {PLACEHOLDERS} with the product being submitted, then execute: ``` You are submitting my AI tool to There's An AI For That. Product: {NAME} ({URL}) 1. Identify three task categories, ranked by likely traffic versus competition. 2. Write a 300-character description in the task language buyers search for. 3. List the tags to apply. Return as plain text. ``` ## Peerlist A professional network for builders with a weekly project spotlight. - URL: https://peerlist.io/scroll/projects - Page: https://submitmap.com/platform/peerlist/ - Categories: dev-tools, design, saas - Pricing: free - Approval time: 1–3 days (~3 days) - Dofollow link: yes - Requires backlink to it: no - Domain rating: 72 ### Who Peerlist accepts - Side projects - Design work - Open source - Dev tools **You need:** - A completed Peerlist profile, since projects from empty profiles get ignored - A cover image and a working project link **You will be rejected if:** - Anonymous submissions with no maker profile - Affiliate sites and content farms ### How to submit 1. **Fill the profile first** — The spotlight is curated by humans who look at who's submitting. 2. **Add the project** — Title, tagline, stack tags, cover image, live link and repo. 3. **Enter the weekly spotlight** — Entries close mid-week and results publish Friday. ### Requirements - Complete profile - Cover image - Live project link ### Gotchas - Stack tags drive most of the internal discovery, so fill them all in. ### What you actually get 200–800 visitors if you place in the weekly spotlight, plus a project page that ranks for your product name. ### Agent prompt Fill the {PLACEHOLDERS} with the product being submitted, then execute: ``` You are submitting my project to Peerlist's spotlight. Product: {NAME} ({URL}) Stack: {STACK} 1. Write a project title and a 100-character tagline. 2. Write a 400-character description aimed at other developers. 3. List the stack tags and describe the cover image. Return as plain text. ``` ## Uneed A small, well-run tools directory with a daily and weekly leaderboard. - URL: https://www.uneed.best - Page: https://submitmap.com/platform/uneed/ - Categories: ai, saas, no-code - Pricing: freemium (Paid placement) - Approval time: 3–7 days (~7 days) - Dofollow link: yes - Requires backlink to it: no - Domain rating: 60 ### Who Uneed accepts - AI tools - Web apps - No-code tools - Free tools **You need:** - A live product with a clear pricing page - A logo and at least one screenshot **You will be rejected if:** - Broken or parked links - Products already listed, since duplicates get removed ### How to submit 1. **Submit the tool** — Name, URL, tagline, category and pricing model. Five minutes. 2. **Pick a launch day** — You choose the day you appear on the leaderboard. Mondays are the most contested. 3. **Share the leaderboard link** — Votes are open all day; the top three get the newsletter mention. ### Requirements - Logo - Screenshot - Pricing page ### Gotchas - Free listings can be scheduled weeks out, so check the calendar first. ### What you actually get 100–300 visitors around the day you're featured, and a dofollow link from a directory that isn't obviously spam, which is rarer than it should be. ### Agent prompt Fill the {PLACEHOLDERS} with the product being submitted, then execute: ``` You are submitting my tool to Uneed. Product: {NAME} ({URL}) 1. Write a 90-character tagline. 2. Write a 250-character description. 3. Pick the best-fitting category and pricing tag. Return as plain text. ``` ## DevHunt A weekly leaderboard for developer tools only, run by the community. - URL: https://devhunt.org - Page: https://submitmap.com/platform/devhunt/ - Categories: dev-tools - Pricing: free - Approval time: 1–5 days (~5 days) - Dofollow link: yes - Requires backlink to it: no - Domain rating: 55 ### Who DevHunt accepts - Dev tools - Open source - Free tools **You need:** - A tool aimed at developers, with docs or a README - A public GitHub repository **You will be rejected if:** - Consumer apps and general SaaS - Tools with no documentation ### How to submit 1. **Submit with the repo** — URL, repo, one-liner and category. Reviewed by maintainers. 2. **Pick your week** — The leaderboard runs Monday to Sunday against roughly ten other tools. 3. **Post where developers follow you** — Most votes come from the maker's own network in the first hours. ### Requirements - Public repo - Docs or README - Developer-facing tool ### Gotchas - A missing README is the most common rejection. ### What you actually get 150–600 developer visitors during your week, and a link from a site that lists nothing but dev tools, so the relevance is high. ### Agent prompt Fill the {PLACEHOLDERS} with the product being submitted, then execute: ``` You are submitting my developer tool to DevHunt. Tool: {NAME} ({URL}) Repo: {REPO} 1. Write a one-liner under 80 characters aimed at developers. 2. Write a 300-character description naming the language and the problem solved. 3. Suggest the category and three tags. Return as plain text. ``` ## MicroLaunch Daily launches for small products, with far less competition than the big boards. - URL: https://microlaunch.net - Page: https://submitmap.com/platform/microlaunch/ - Categories: saas, ai, no-code - Pricing: freemium (Paid featured spot) - Approval time: 1–4 days (~4 days) - Dofollow link: yes - Requires backlink to it: no - Domain rating: 48 ### Who MicroLaunch accepts - Side projects - AI tools - No-code tools - Web apps **You need:** - A live product page - A logo and one screenshot **You will be rejected if:** - Waitlists - Duplicate submissions ### How to submit 1. **Reserve a launch date** — The calendar shows how crowded each day is. Pick a thin one. 2. **Fill the launch page** — Logo, screenshots, tagline, description, links. 3. **Rally on launch morning** — Fifteen to twenty votes is often enough to lead the day. ### Requirements - Logo - Screenshot - Live product ### Gotchas - Traffic is small enough that this is a backlink play more than a launch. ### What you actually get 50–250 visitors on launch day. Small, but the top spot is genuinely reachable with a modest audience. ### Agent prompt Fill the {PLACEHOLDERS} with the product being submitted, then execute: ``` You are submitting my product to MicroLaunch. Product: {NAME} ({URL}) 1. Write an 80-character tagline. 2. Write a 250-character description. 3. Suggest the least contested launch day this month and why. Return as plain text. ``` # Guides ## Write the one-line description that gets you accepted Directories ask for the same sentence in four different lengths. Write it once, properly, and you stop rewriting it under a character counter at midnight. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/one-line-description/ - Outcome: One sentence that survives every character limit a directory throws at it. - Time: ~20 minutes; difficulty: easy 1. **Say what it is, not what it means to you** — Start with the category noun: a scheduling tool, a Chrome extension, an API. Reviewers scan for the noun first; if they cannot place your product in five words they move on. 2. **Name who it is for** — One qualifier is enough: for freelance designers, for Postgres teams, for parents of young kids. It narrows the promise and makes the sentence concrete. 3. **End on the outcome, in plain words** — What is true after using it that was not true before. Avoid "streamline", "empower" and "supercharge". They read as filler and get edited out by moderators anyway. 4. **Cut it to four lengths** — 60, 100, 160 and 280 characters. Every submission form you will meet fits one of those. Keep them in the same note so you paste rather than rewrite. **Watch out for:** - If your sentence works equally well for a competitor, it is not describing your product. - Do not open with your company name, since most forms print it above the description already. ## Screenshots, OG image and demo video: the specs every directory asks for Nearly every directory asks for the same handful of images at slightly different sizes. Export the set once and submissions stop being an afternoon each. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/assets-specs/ - Outcome: One export set that fits every submission form without redoing it each time. - Time: ~45 minutes; difficulty: medium 1. **Take screenshots at 2x on a clean window** — No personal data, no half-loaded states, no browser bookmarks bar. Crop to the interface, not the desktop. 2. **Produce the four sizes that cover everything** — 1280x800 for the standard gallery, 1600x900 for wide heroes, 1200x630 for OG, and a 512x512 square icon on a solid background. 3. **Write the OG image as a caption, not a poster** — Product name, one line of promise, one screenshot fragment. It gets rendered at thumbnail size in a feed. 4. **Record 45 seconds of the product doing its job** — No intro slide, no music, no face. Start inside the interface on the first frame, because most viewers leave by second ten. **Watch out for:** - Directories that reject an image rarely tell you why; matching the stated pixel size exactly avoids most of it. - Keep the source files. You will re-export when the UI changes, which is sooner than you think. ## Landing page checks before you send anyone to it A listing sends people to your page once. These are the things reviewers and visitors reject a page for, and all of them are an afternoon's work. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/landing-checks/ - Outcome: The eight things reviewers reject listings for, fixed in an afternoon. - Time: ~30 minutes; difficulty: easy 1. **Make the first screen answer what and for whom** — Above the fold, without scrolling, on a phone. This is the single most common reason a submission is bounced back. 2. **Give it one primary action** — One button, repeated down the page if needed. Two competing calls to action halve both. 3. **Check it on a real phone** — Not a resized browser. Tap targets, keyboard behaviour on forms, and the actual load time on mobile data. 4. **Add the trust minimums** — A real contact route, a privacy page if you collect anything, and a working footer. Several directories check for these before listing. **Watch out for:** - Autoplaying video with sound is an instant close for most visitors. - If your demo needs an account to see anything, expect most of the traffic to leave at the signup wall. ## Analytics and an email capture that takes ten minutes If you cannot tell which listing sent the traffic, you cannot tell which of the next thirty are worth doing. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/analytics-capture/ - Outcome: You can tell which listing sent the traffic, and keep the people it sent. - Time: ~25 minutes; difficulty: easy 1. **Install one lightweight analytics tool** — Anything that records referrer and page. You need source attribution, not a funnel suite. 2. **Tag every submission link** — Add a UTM source per platform when the form allows a custom URL. Where it does not, the referrer will carry it. 3. **Put an email capture on the page** — One field. Say what people get and how often. This is the only channel from a launch that you keep. 4. **Write down your baseline** — Sessions, signups and email subscribers for the week before you submit anywhere. Without it, no later number means anything. **Watch out for:** - Do not gate the product behind the email capture at this stage; you will lose more than you collect. - Referrer data is often stripped on mobile apps and in some browsers, so the UTM tag is what survives. ## The directories with no review queue A large group of directories publish listings immediately or within a day, with no editorial queue. This is the fastest available block of permanent listings. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/no-review-queue/ - Outcome: Roughly thirty listings live inside a single afternoon. - Time: ~120 minutes; difficulty: easy 1. **Work from the directory filtered to instant approval** — Sort by approval time and start at the top. Do them in one sitting while your blurbs are in the clipboard. 2. **Fill the fields in a fixed order** — Name, one-liner, long description, category, screenshots, link. Doing them in the same order every time makes thirty submissions mechanical. 3. **Keep a submission log** — Platform, date, URL of the live listing, login used. You will need it to update listings later and to avoid duplicate submissions. 4. **Check each listing went live** — Instant approval is not the same as instant indexing. Confirm the page exists and your link on it is correct. **Watch out for:** - Some sites are directories in name only, with no traffic and no link value. Check whether their listings appear in search before spending time. - Use a dedicated email alias for submissions. The volume of follow-up mail is real. ## Write one submission blurb, reuse it thirty times Every form wants a different length of the same paragraph. Write three, in one place, and submissions become copy-paste. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/reusable-blurb/ - Outcome: Three length variants that cover every form field you will meet. - Time: ~25 minutes; difficulty: easy 1. **Write the 280-character version first** — Two sentences: what it is and who it is for, then the outcome. Everything shorter is a cut of this. 2. **Cut to 160 and 60** — The 160 loses the second sentence. The 60 is the category noun plus the qualifier. 3. **Write one long version of about 120 words** — Used by directories with a description box. Three short paragraphs: problem, what the product does, who it suits. 4. **Keep them with your links and assets** — One note with blurbs, image files, category tags and your submission log. This is the kit you open for every listing. **Watch out for:** - Do not vary the wording per site for SEO reasons; consistent description text across listings reads as a real product, not a spam run. - Update all three when the product changes, or your listings slowly stop matching your landing page. ## Dofollow vs nofollow: which listings actually move SEO Some listings pass search authority to your site and some do not. Knowing which is which decides where the hours go. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/dofollow-nofollow/ - Outcome: You stop spending hours on links that pass nothing. - Time: ~15 minutes; difficulty: easy 1. **Understand what the two mean** — A dofollow link passes ranking signal. A nofollow link tells search engines not to pass it. Both can send you human traffic; only one helps you rank. 2. **Check before you submit** — Open an existing listing, inspect the outbound link, and look for rel="nofollow" or rel="ugc". The directory listing in SubmitMap records this where known. 3. **Prioritise, do not exclude** — A high-traffic nofollow listing is still worth the twenty minutes. A dead dofollow directory is not. 4. **Re-check after approval** — Some sites strip the attribute for paid tiers only, or change policy. What was dofollow last year may not be now. **Watch out for:** - Sites promising "guaranteed DR 90 backlinks" for a fee are the ones search engines discount hardest. - Link value follows the site's real traffic more closely than any published metric. ## Hand the form-filling to your AI agent The repetitive submissions are a good use of an AI agent, provided you give it the exact field text and review the result. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/agent-form-filling/ - Outcome: A prompt that fills the repetitive submissions while you review the output. - Time: ~30 minutes; difficulty: medium 1. **Assemble the source of truth** — Name, URL, all four blurb lengths, categories, image file paths, contact email, pricing line. The agent should never invent any of these. 2. **Write the brief once** — State the platform, the fields it asks for, and the rule that no field may be improvised. If the value is missing, it stops and asks. Every platform page here has a copy-paste version. 3. **Run it on one low-stakes directory first** — Check the live listing against your source of truth before letting it work through the list. 4. **Review every submission before it sends** — Category choice and pricing fields are where agents most often guess wrong, and both are hard to correct after approval. **Watch out for:** - Never let an agent create accounts with an email you do not control. - Sites with captchas or manual review are faster done by hand than by fighting the automation. ## Should you launch on Product Hunt at all? Most guides in this category are called 'How to rank #1 on Product Hunt'. That is the wrong first question. The leaderboard is now routinely topped by companies that need no promotion, the old hunter boost has been retired, and the ranking weighs discussion depth over raw upvote count. So the real question is whether the day is worth your month. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/should-you-launch-ph/ - Outcome: A straight answer for your product instead of a month spent preparing for the wrong day. - Time: ~20 minutes; difficulty: easy 1. **Check whether your product demos in one image** — The first gallery image carries the entire pitch. If your product only makes sense after a five-minute explanation, the format is working against you. 2. **Count the real users you can brief** — You need eight to twelve people who will write specific comments about their own use case on the day. Not friends posting congratulations. If you cannot name them, you are not ready. 3. **Decide what you actually want from it** — The badge and the dofollow link from a high-authority domain last forever. The traffic spike lasts a day. If you want the former, launch. If you are counting on the latter, temper it. 4. **Skip it if you are pre-launch or deeply B2B** — No working product, no community, or a niche buyer who has never opened the site: those launches land flat and burn the one first launch you get. The weekly leaderboards are a better first move. **Watch out for:** - Numbers vary wildly and everything published is directional. A strong day for B2B SaaS is somewhere around 50 to 300 signups; most launches see considerably less. - Treating Product Hunt as the launch, rather than one day inside a longer route, is the most common way founders end up disappointed. ## Product Hunt: the ten days before Almost all of the outcome is decided before launch day. Ten days is enough if you spend them on the gallery and the comment plan rather than on the countdown. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/ph-ten-days-before/ - Outcome: Gallery, tagline and a briefed group of real commenters, ready before you pick a date. - Time: ~240 minutes; difficulty: involved 1. **Build the gallery in order of importance** — The first image is the pitch. Following images show the product doing one job each. A 60-second demo video sits after them, not before. 2. **Write the tagline under 60 characters** — It is displayed truncated in most places. Say the category and the outcome; leave the cleverness out. 3. **Brief eight to twelve real users** — Ask for a specific comment about what they use it for, with a number in it where possible. Vague praise now reads as a negative signal, so tell them plainly not to write 'great product'. 4. **Choose the day as a trade-off** — Tuesday to Thursday carries the most traffic and the deepest field. Weekends have thinner competition and a more achievable Product of the Day. Monday and Friday sit in between. **Watch out for:** - Asking for upvotes, anywhere, and joining vote-exchange groups both break the rules and are detectable. It is the fastest way to have a launch buried. - Do not leave the video to the last two days. It is the asset most likely to need a second take. ## Product Hunt: launch day, hour by hour The day itself is mostly discipline. Everything you can control happens in the first four hours and in the comment thread. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/ph-launch-day/ - Outcome: You know what to do at 12:01am and what to ignore for the next sixteen hours. - Time: ongoing; difficulty: involved 1. **Post at 12:01am PT** — Placement is heavily influenced by the first few hours. Launching later in the day leaves you competing against products with a head start you cannot recover. 2. **Write your maker comment first** — The story of why you built it, what it does not do yet, and one specific question you want feedback on. It sets the tone for every comment under it. 3. **Reply within minutes, all day** — Reply depth is ranked. A thread with real back-and-forth outperforms one with more upvotes and no conversation. 4. **Close the day properly** — Claim the badge, add it to your site, and update your other listings with it. That is the asset that outlives the traffic. **Watch out for:** - Share the link, never the ask. Posting 'upvote us' in any channel is what gets a launch penalised. - Do not spend the day watching the ranking. The comment thread is the only part you can still influence. ## Show HN: posting without getting flagged The Show HN rules are published, so this is one of the few launch channels where you can be certain what is allowed. Most removals are people who did not read them. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/show-hn/ - Outcome: A post that fits the published rules, so the outcome is luck rather than a removal. - Time: ~60 minutes; difficulty: medium 1. **Confirm your product qualifies** — Show HN is for something people can try. Not a landing page, a sign-up page, a newsletter, a blog post or a list. It must be non-trivial and made by you. 2. **Remove the wall** — It should be easy to try without a signup or an email gate. This is the single most common reason a Show HN gets no traction. 3. **Title it plainly** — Show HN: followed by a plain description of what it is. No adjectives, no exclamation marks, no pitch. 4. **Write the first comment as the technical story** — What you built, what it runs on, what was hard, and the specific feedback you want. Then stay in the thread and answer everything. **Watch out for:** - Asking friends to upvote is explicitly against the rules and is enforced. - The front page is substantially luck. On it, expect thousands of visits; off it, a few hundred. The comments are usually worth more than either. ## The weekly leaderboards: Peerlist, Uneed, MicroLaunch, DevHunt Peerlist, Uneed, MicroLaunch and DevHunt run weekly cycles with far smaller fields. This is where a solo maker can realistically place first, and where the same launch material gets four more uses. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/weekly-leaderboards/ - Outcome: Four smaller launches where placing first is realistic, spread across four weeks. - Time: ~150 minutes; difficulty: medium 1. **Check each one's queue before picking a week** — Free slots are often scheduled weeks out. Look at the upcoming list and choose a week that is not already crowded. 2. **Stagger them across separate weeks** — Firing all four at once wastes the material. One a week means four rounds of sharing from a single launch. 3. **Reuse the Product Hunt assets** — The gallery, tagline and demo all transfer. Adjust the length of the description and nothing else. 4. **Complete your profile first on Peerlist** — Projects posted from empty profiles get ignored there. Fill it in before you submit anything. **Watch out for:** - The audiences are small. Placing first on a weekly leaderboard is a good backlink and a modest traffic day, not a growth event. - Check whether each platform allows a product that has already launched elsewhere; a few restrict to new releases. ## Reddit: finding the six subreddits that will actually allow you Reddit is not one channel, it is several hundred with incompatible rules. The work is research, and it is worth doing properly once. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/reddit-finding-subs/ - Outcome: A shortlist of six subs with each one's self-promotion policy written down. - Time: ~90 minutes; difficulty: medium 1. **Search where your category is already discussed** — Use a site search on reddit.com with a competitor's name. The threads that come back tell you which subs actually talk about tools like yours. 2. **Read each sub's self-promotion rule** — They differ completely: outright ban, a ratio requirement, a designated day, or a required flair. The rule is in the sidebar and it is enforced. 3. **Check the account gates** — Age and karma thresholds silently filter most new accounts. If you fail them, that sub is a month away, not today. 4. **Write the shortlist down** — Six subs, each with policy, allowed format, best day and how strict the mods are. This becomes the plan for the next guide. **Watch out for:** - Maker subs give you peers, user subs give you users. Feedback on maker subs feels good and converts badly. - A sub with a million members and no comments on recent posts is dead. Judge by activity, not size. ## Reddit: the post that doesn't get removed The format that survives moderation is not a launch announcement. It is a story about the problem, with the product mentioned late. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/reddit-the-post/ - Outcome: A format that survives moderation, and the week of groundwork that earns it. - Time: ~60 minutes; difficulty: medium 1. **Spend a week answering questions first** — Ten useful replies in the sub before you post anything of your own. Mods and regulars both notice. 2. **Lead with the problem, not the product** — Post the outcome you got and how, not the launch you did. The tool belongs at the end or in a comment. 3. **Keep the link out of the title** — Titles with links read as promotion and get removed on sight in most subs. 4. **If removed, modmail once** — Politely, once, asking what the issue was. Never repost. Reposting after removal is what gets accounts banned. **Watch out for:** - Copy-pasting the same post across six subs on the same day is detected and removed across all of them. - Answer every comment on your own post. An unattended post reads as a drive-by and gets treated as one. ## Showing up before you need them: Indie Hackers, Discord, Slack Indie Hackers, Discord and Slack communities pay off only if you were there before you needed them. Thirty days of showing up is the price of admission. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/showing-up-early/ - Outcome: Three places where people know your name before you have anything to announce. - Time: ongoing; difficulty: easy 1. **Find communities by activity, not member count** — Judge a Discord by messages per day in its main channels. A server with 20,000 members and forty messages a week is empty. 2. **Give it thirty days before you mention your product** — Answer questions in your area of competence. This is the whole mechanism; there is no shortcut version of it. 3. **Contribute what you have** — Even pre-launch you know something specific. Post the thing you learned this week, not an introduction thread. 4. **Keep it to three places** — Three communities you are genuinely present in beat fifteen you lurk in. Presence is the asset. **Watch out for:** - Dropping a link on day one gets you muted, and community moderators talk to each other. - This channel never produces a traffic spike. Its return is people who mention you when someone asks for a recommendation. ## X: building in public with no audience With no audience, posting is shouting into a void. Replies are the only mechanism that works from zero, and the timescale is months. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/x-building-in-public/ - Outcome: A reply-first routine that builds a small audience over months, not days. - Time: ongoing; difficulty: medium 1. **Reply twenty times a day** — Thoughtful replies to mid-sized accounts in your niche. This is what puts your name in front of the audience you want. 2. **Post numbers, screenshots and failures** — Those get shared. Announcements and milestones do not, unless the number is unusual. 3. **Structure the launch thread** — What it is, the problem, one demo clip, what you learned building it, the link last. One thread, not a series. 4. **Judge it on months** — Three to six months before this channel does anything measurable. Plan it as background work alongside the rest of the route. **Watch out for:** - Buying followers or engagement is visible in your reply ratios and kills the credibility this channel runs on. - This will do nothing for your launch week. If you need traffic in seven days, spend the time in Phase 01 instead. ## A Chrome Web Store listing that passes review The Chrome Web Store review criteria are documented, so rejections are predictable. Nearly all of them come down to permissions. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/chrome-web-store/ - Outcome: A submission that clears review first time instead of bouncing on permissions. - Time: ~180 minutes; difficulty: involved 1. **Ship the narrowest permission set that works** — Broad host permissions covering all URLs invite scrutiny. Request the minimum, and expand in a later version when you can justify it. 2. **Justify every sensitive permission in the form** — There is a per-permission justification field. It must describe the feature that uses it, and the feature must exist in the build you submit. 3. **Prepare the listing assets exactly** — 1280x800 screenshots, a 440x280 tile, a 128px icon, and a privacy policy URL. The privacy policy is not optional if you touch user data. 4. **Submit unobfuscated code** — Minified is fine, obfuscated is not. Code a reviewer cannot read is rejected on that basis alone. **Watch out for:** - Review usually takes a few days but can run to weeks, and new developers get more scrutiny. Contact developer support only past three weeks. - A permission you added for a feature you later removed will still be checked. Audit the manifest before every submission. ## Notion, Figma, Slack and Shopify app directories Notion, Figma, Slack and Shopify all work the same way and return wildly different amounts. The decision is which one your product genuinely belongs in. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/app-directories/ - Outcome: You know which of the four is worth your week and which is a vanity listing. - Time: ~120 minutes; difficulty: medium 1. **Match the platform to where your users already work** — A Figma plugin listing does nothing if your buyer has never opened Figma. This is the whole decision. 2. **Budget for the review** — All four have real review processes measured in weeks, with functional requirements beyond the listing itself. 3. **Write the listing page as a landing page** — These directories rank in their own search and in Google. The description is a marketing page, not a changelog. 4. **Consider template marketplaces instead** — If you are not shipping code, Notion and Figma template marketplaces are a much lower-effort route into the same audience. **Watch out for:** - Shopify has the highest revenue potential and by far the heaviest requirements. Do not start here unless commerce is your market. - A listing in a marketplace you cannot support properly generates support load you did not budget for. ## AI-specific: GPT Store, MCP registries, AI tool indexes This is the least saturated segment on the route, and the one changing fastest. Most AI indexes are backlink-only, which is fine as long as you know that going in. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/ai-registries/ - Outcome: Listings in the least saturated segment, sorted by which ones send real people. - Time: ~150 minutes; difficulty: medium 1. **Separate the two kinds of index** — Some send real traffic, most only pass a link. Sort your list before spending evenings on it, and do the traffic ones first. 2. **List the free tier everywhere first** — Many AI directories have both. The paid tier is rarely worth it until you know the free listing sent someone. 3. **Submit to MCP registries if you ship developer tooling** — This is the genuinely new channel and the field is still thin. Very few products have done it properly yet. 4. **Write the description for a non-technical reader** — These indexes are browsed by people comparing tools, not by engineers reading your docs. **Watch out for:** - A large share of AI directories exist purely to sell paid placement. If its own listings do not appear in search, neither will yours. - Category tags drive all the internal discovery on these sites. Fill in every one that genuinely applies. ## Alternatives and comparison pages that rank A page targeting a competitor's name plus the word alternatives is the highest-intent search a small product can realistically win. It only works if it is honest. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/alternatives-pages/ - Outcome: One honest page per competitor, aimed at the highest-intent search a small product can win. - Time: ongoing; difficulty: involved 1. **Write one page per competitor** — Not a single comparison table page. Each competitor gets its own URL targeting its own search. 2. **Say when the competitor is the better choice** — Plainly, in its own section. This is what makes the page rank and what makes it convert; a page that claims you win at everything does neither. 3. **Compare on things a buyer decides with** — Pricing model, the specific feature that differs, migration effort, support. Not a checkbox grid of forty rows. 4. **Link them together** — Each alternatives page links to the others and to your pricing. That internal structure is half the ranking. **Watch out for:** - Do not misstate a competitor's pricing or features. It gets corrected publicly and the page becomes a liability. - This is a months-long play. Publish early in the route so the pages have time to age. ## Getting into the best-tools roundups The best-tools lists ranking for your category already exist. Getting added to one is an email, not a campaign. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/roundups/ - Outcome: A short outreach routine that puts you in lists already ranking for your term. - Time: ongoing; difficulty: medium 1. **Find the roundups already ranking** — Search your category term and note every list on the first two pages. Those are the only ones worth contacting. 2. **Email the author, not the company** — One specific reason your tool belongs in that list, referencing what the list is actually about. Two sentences. 3. **Offer access, never money** — A free lifetime account for review is normal and disclosed. Paying for a slot in an editorial list is a different thing and it eventually surfaces. 4. **Follow up once, after two weeks** — Then leave it. Authors update these lists on their own schedule, usually quarterly. **Watch out for:** - Set expectations at six to twelve weeks between the email and the update going live. - A mass-sent template is obvious and gets you filtered. Ten specific emails beat two hundred generic ones. ## Turning listings into backlinks that count By this point you have dozens of listings. Some pass authority, some are not even indexed. An afternoon of checking tells you where the remaining time should go. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/listings-into-links/ - Outcome: You know which of your listings pass authority and which were a waste of an evening. - Time: ~90 minutes; difficulty: medium 1. **Check which listings are indexed** — Search the listing URL directly. If the page is not in the index, the link on it does nothing for you. 2. **Check the link attribute on each** — Inspect your outbound link on the live listing for a nofollow or ugc attribute. Record it next to the entry in your submission log. 3. **Fix the ones worth fixing** — Some directories only make the link dofollow once the listing is complete or claimed. Those are quick wins. 4. **Stop maintaining the dead ones** — A directory with no index presence and no traffic does not deserve another update when your product changes. **Watch out for:** - Buying link packages costs more than it returns; the sites selling them are the ones search engines discount hardest. - Do not delete listings that are nofollow but send visitors. Human traffic is worth more than the attribute. ## Buying UGC: briefs, pricing, what actually converts Paid creator video works when there is something to retain the people it sends. Before that, it buys a faster churn rate. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/buying-ugc/ - Outcome: A brief and a budget that buys usable video instead of a folder of unusable clips. - Time: ~120 minutes; difficulty: involved 1. **Confirm you have retention first** — If users leave in week one, more of them leaving faster is not progress. Fix the product before you buy attention. 2. **Brief it as problem, demo, one call to action** — Thirty to forty-five seconds. The demo has to be the actual product on screen, not a talking head describing it. 3. **Agree usage rights in writing** — Whether you can run it as an ad, on which platforms, and for how long. This is where founders get burned, and it costs nothing to settle upfront. 4. **Test small across several creators** — Three cheap videos from three creators tell you more than one expensive one. Then spend behind whichever performs. **Watch out for:** - Whitelisting, where you run ads from the creator's handle, costs extra and must be agreed before filming. - Creator rates vary enormously for similar output. Ask what a comparable brand paid before accepting a first quote. ## Newsletter sponsorships and paid directory tiers Newsletter and paid directory placements are the only channels here that can be evaluated before you buy. Do that evaluation. - Page: https://submitmap.com/guides/sponsorships/ - Outcome: A way to judge a placement before you pay, and a number that stops you. - Time: ~90 minutes; difficulty: medium 1. **Ignore the claimed open rate** — Ask two past sponsors what they got per thousand subscribers. That number is the only one that predicts your result. 2. **Ask for the last three sponsor slots** — A newsletter that will not tell you who sponsored recently is not one you should buy from. 3. **Write down a kill number first** — What result makes this worth repeating, and what result means you stop. Decide it before any money moves. 4. **Skip most paid directory tiers** — Queue-skipping upgrades rarely return the fee. The exceptions are the handful of directories that genuinely send traffic, which you identified in the backlinks guide. **Watch out for:** - A sponsorship into an audience that does not match your buyer fails no matter how good the newsletter is. - One placement is a test, not a channel. Judge it against your kill number and move on either way.