Launch week fails for boring reasons. The assets are not ready, the accounts are too new to post, and everything gets fired off on the same morning so nothing compounds.
This is a schedule that fixes the sequencing. It assumes one person, a product that already works, and about two hours a day.
What this is not. It is not a promise of a number. Nobody selling you a launch plan controls whether your product resonates. What a good sequence does is remove the self-inflicted failures, so the result reflects the product rather than the logistics.
Before you schedule anything: the venue types
Of the 151 directories indexed on this site, three groups behave completely differently at launch, and mixing them up is the most common mistake.
- Launch platforms (19 in the index). Time-boxed and competitive. You get one day, votes decide visibility, and the day you pick matters.
- Directories and review sites (about 100 of the index). Evergreen. A human reviews your submission and it either gets published or it does not. Timing is irrelevant; the quality of what you submit is everything.
- Communities (10 in the index). Governed by moderators and account history, not editors. Posting rights are earned before launch week, not during it.
Only the first group is a “launch day”. Treating the other two as launch day is why people burn a week and see nothing.
Day minus 7: prepare the assets once
Almost every submission asks for the same things. Write them once, keep them in one file, and stop rewriting them at midnight.
- Name, exactly as you want it to appear everywhere.
- Tagline, under 60 characters. Most directories truncate at roughly that.
- Three descriptions: about 50 words, about 100, about 250. Directories ask for wildly different lengths and a truncated description looks careless.
- Logo, square, transparent PNG or SVG, at least 512 px.
- Screenshots, 1280×800, showing the product doing something rather than an empty dashboard.
- Categories, your best three, since most directories cap you there.
- Pricing, stated plainly. “Free tier, paid from $9/month” beats “flexible pricing”.
Write the descriptions for a stranger who has never heard of the problem you solve. The most common rejection reason is not quality, it is that an editor could not tell what the product does.
Day minus 7 to minus 3: earn your posting rights
Community accounts need history. Reddit’s own guidance discourages accounts that only ever post their own links, and moderators enforce it far more strictly than the written rules suggest. A brand-new account posting a product on day one gets removed almost everywhere.
So in the week before: comment on other people’s posts, answer questions in your area, and do it honestly rather than as a chore. Ten useful comments is enough to stop looking like a drive-by.
This is also when you claim handles, set up the accounts the 60 directories that require one will ask for, and verify the email addresses. Doing that on launch morning costs you the morning.
Day minus 2: submit to the evergreen directories
Start here, not on launch day, because these take time to be reviewed and their timing does not matter. Submitting early means some are already live and linking to you when your launch-platform day arrives.
Work down your shortlist, free ones first. Paste from your assets file. Do not rush the description field: on a reviewed directory, that paragraph is the whole submission.
Expect a spread. Some publish in hours, many take a week, and on this site’s index the recorded turnaround is genuinely unknown for a large share of directories, because most do not publish one.
Launch day: one platform, early
Pick one launch platform. Running two on the same day splits the only audience you have, which is the people you personally tell.
- Go early in the platform’s own day, not yours. Most run on a fixed 24-hour cycle in a fixed timezone; starting late gives away hours you cannot recover.
- Post a real first comment. Why you built it, what it does not do yet, what you want feedback on. Founder comments are consistently the most-read thing on a launch page.
- Tell your existing people directly: email list, previous users, anyone who asked to be told. Direct messages to individuals beat a broadcast post.
- Do not buy votes. Every platform detects it, and the penalty is losing the day entirely.
- Answer every comment for the whole day. This is the actual work of launch day.
Day plus 1 to plus 3: communities, one at a time
Now use the account history you built. Post to one community per day, not five in an hour, and write each post for that community instead of pasting the same text.
What works in maker communities is a specific story with numbers or a lesson, and the product as the thing the story is about. What gets removed is a link and a slogan. The difference is roughly twenty minutes of writing.
Day plus 7: the part everyone skips
- Check what actually published. Some submissions will have been rejected silently. Fix and resubmit where it is worth it.
- Check your links. View source on each new listing and confirm the URL is right and the
relattribute is what you were told to expect. - Record what sent people. Your analytics referrer report is the only honest scoreboard, and it usually disagrees with which listing you assumed mattered.
- Write down the rejections. The reasons repeat, and they are the cheapest product feedback you will get all quarter.
A realistic week, in one table
| Day | Task | Time |
|---|---|---|
| −7 | Write assets: names, three descriptions, logo, screenshots | 2 to 3 hours |
| −7 to −3 | Participate in communities; create and verify accounts | 20 min/day |
| −2 | Submit to evergreen directories from your shortlist | 2 hours |
| 0 | One launch platform, early, plus a founder comment | Most of the day |
| +1 to +3 | One community post per day, written for that community | 45 min/day |
| +7 | Audit what published, check links, read the referrer report | 1 hour |
Common questions
Which day of the week is best to launch?
Mid-week is conventional wisdom because weekends are quiet and Mondays are crowded. It matters far less than being ready. A prepared Thursday beats an unprepared Tuesday.
Can I submit to every directory on the same day?
You can, and the submissions will be worse. The reason to spread them is that you will write better descriptions across two sessions than one, and reviewed directories care about exactly that.
What if my launch platform day goes badly?
It is one day on one site. The evergreen listings you submitted two days earlier keep sending people for months, which is why the sequence puts them first.
Should I relaunch later?
Most platforms allow it after a significant change, and a real second version with new functionality is a legitimate second launch. Re-posting the same product with a new screenshot is not, and regulars notice.
Start by building your shortlist from the index of 151 directories, or read how we filter it down to ten.
