The short version
- A week runs Monday to Sunday in UTC. Every week has its own board and its own final results page.
- Each week takes up to 30 launches. When a week is full, you book one of the following weeks.
- A week gives people in every time zone, and people who only check in once or twice, a fair chance to see you.
- The cost is pace: there is no launch-day spike, and a full week means waiting for the next one.
How a week works
A week starts on Monday at 00:00 UTC and ends on Sunday. Products on that week’s board are ordered by votes. If two products have the same number of votes, the one submitted first ranks higher. Anyone signed in can vote once per product, only during that product’s launch week, and never for their own product.
When the week ends, voting closes. The order is kept on that week’s results page and doesn’t change afterwards. Your product page stays up after the week is over; only the voting stops. The full rules are on the how it works page.
Why a week and not a day
A daily board resets every 24 hours. That makes the launch an event, and it also decides a lot by clock. Whoever is awake and online when the day starts gets a head start, and a maker on the other side of the world launches while their own friends and users are asleep. A product that goes up late in the day has only a few hours before it scrolls away.
A week changes three things:
- Time zones matter less. Seven days cover everyone’s working hours several times over.
- You don’t have to be online all day. Most makers launch around a job or a family. You can answer comments in the evening and still be in the running on Thursday.
- Casual visitors count. Someone who opens the board once a week still sees the whole week’s launches, so votes come from people browsing, and less from whoever was rallied in the first hour.
Why there is a cap
Each week takes up to 30 launches. The reason is simple: a visitor will look through a list of that length, and won’t look through three hundred. On an uncapped board most products sit below the point where anyone scrolls, and the listing does little for them.
The cap also keeps moderation honest. A first launch goes on the board as soon as it’s submitted, and the launch week is the window for catching spam. That only works if the week’s list is short enough for a person to read.
You can book the current week or any of the next 5. If the week you wanted is full, the submit form shows how many spots each of the other weeks has left.
What this costs
- No spike. A daily board concentrates attention into one day. Here it’s spread across seven, so no single day looks dramatic in your analytics.
- You may have to wait. A full week means launching a week or more later than you planned.
- One launch per site. A website launches once. It can ask to relaunch 13 weeks after its last launch, with a note on what’s new, and those requests are reviewed by hand. See when and how to relaunch.
- Early submissions win ties. Ties go to the product submitted first, which favours booking early.
Choosing your week
- Pick a week when you can reply to comments on most days. You don’t need to be there all day, but you do need to show up.
- Book before your site is perfect, then use the time. The launch readiness checker and the launch checklist cover what to fix first.
- Don’t stack every launch into the same seven days. Spreading them out, as described in where to launch, lets you fix what the first one taught you.
- Tell your own users on Monday or Tuesday, so their votes and comments are visible to everyone who browses later in the week.