How to promote your website for free after launch

How to promote your website for free when nobody knows it yet

The short answer: free promotion is paid in hours instead of dollars, so spend those hours where a new product is expected. Launch platforms, Show HN and directories in your category exist to show new things to people who came to look. Communities, email and free tools come next, each with its own tracked link and a review date.

The pages that rank for this question list twenty, thirty or fifty ways to promote a website, all on the same level, mostly for a business that already has customers and years to build an audience. A maker in launch week has a product nobody has seen, a few days of attention, and no way to tell yet which channel sends people who use the product.

So the useful question is not “which channels are free?” Almost all of them are. It is “which free channels can I measure, and which can I stop?” A channel you cannot measure becomes a habit you keep out of hope. A channel you cannot stop, such as a daily posting schedule, keeps charging you hours long after launch week.

Rank free channels by what you can measure and stop

Score each channel with three questions before you give it an hour. Is it built for new products, so people there expect something they have never heard of? Can you measure it, with a tagged link or a referrer, down to one action in your product, such as a first real use? Can you stop it cleanly, because it is one post or one listing rather than an ongoing commitment?

Three yes answers go first; one or two come after, with a review date. The table is the order we would follow from where we sit, running a launch platform: a starting point, not a benchmark.

MegaLaunch’s order for a product in its first two weeks, written October 31, 2026. The rules of each third-party platform are linked and dated in the sections below.

Give each channel its own UTM link

A UTM link is your URL with labels added: where the visit came from, what kind of channel it was and which campaign it belongs to. Google Analytics says to always set utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, treats the values as case sensitive and recommends lowercase (Google Analytics help, checked October 31, 2026).

Decide the vocabulary before launch day. A workable set: utm_source names the site (megalaunch, producthunt, reddit, newsletter), utm_medium stays generic (referral for listings and community posts, email, social for your own posts) and utm_campaign names the launch (launch-2026-11). The free UTM builder makes one tagged link per channel, or one per directory in bulk, in lowercase.

Two caveats. Where the link is the post itself, as on Show HN or a Reddit thread, a long tracked URL looks out of place: use the clean URL and read the referrer report instead. And some visits arrive with no referrer or with their parameters stripped, so keep a row for “unknown” rather than crediting the channel you hope worked. The guide to measuring referral traffic has a worksheet for this.

Then write a stop rule for each channel before you post: a date and a minimum, such as “if this sends no visitor who finishes a first project by the 14th, I stop posting here.” The minimum is yours. What matters is choosing it while you are calm, not at midnight on launch day.

Sites to promote your website in launch week

The best free sites for a new product are those whose visitors came to see new products. Launch week belongs to them.

A MegaLaunch Free listing is the channel we know from the inside. It goes live automatically 48 hours after your submission, once we have checked your link back to MegaLaunch, and that link is checked again every week while the listing is published. Launch days run on UTC. Your dashboard shows the listing’s page views, website clicks and upvotes, to set beside the visits your analytics records from megalaun.ch. If you would rather not add a link back, the paid option is on the pricing page, and the launch guide walks through both.

Show HN is free and made for this, with strict rules. It is for something you made that people can try, ideally without a sign-up. Sign-up pages, landing pages, newsletters and blog posts are off topic, you must be around to discuss the project, and you should not ask friends to upvote or comment. The general guidelines add that Hacker News should not be used primarily for promotion (Show HN rules and HN guidelines, checked October 31, 2026). If your product sits behind a sign-up form, fix that first or skip Show HN. Our Show HN guide covers the title and the first comment.

Product Hunt is free to use and suggests launching at 12:01 am Pacific Time; its one stated rule is that you cannot ask people directly to upvote (launch guide, checked October 31, 2026). Newly created accounts wait one week before posting a product, and Product Hunt recommends joining three months or more ahead (before launch, same date). Read how to launch on Product Hunt for the day itself, and the Product Hunt alternatives for the free options and queues of other launch platforms. The free launch time planner shows when a Product Hunt or MegaLaunch launch day starts in your time zone.

Then add three to five directories that list products like yours, chosen by category rather than by reach: where to submit your SaaS explains how to build that shortlist. This article is about visitors. If your goal is links for search, read free backlinks for your website instead: the two goals often point to different sites.

Communities: answer first, link second

Once launch week ends, launch platforms move on to newer products. What stays free is conversation: subreddits, forums, Slack and Discord groups where your future users describe the problem you solve.

Reddit’s platform rules ask you to follow each community’s rules, take part authentically in communities you have a personal interest in, and not spam (Reddit Rules, rule 2, checked October 31, 2026). Each subreddit, forum and group then sets its own rules on self-promotion. Read them before your first post, not after a removal.

A method that fits a maker’s week: pick two communities where your users already ask the question, answer without a link at first, and link to the product only when it answers the question asked and the rules allow it. Track replies as well as visits: a thread where three people ask how to try the product tells you more than a spike from a post nobody discussed. Stop when your answers no longer get replies, or when you catch yourself writing posts for the link.

The free best time to post planner finds windows when you and your audience are both available across time zones, so you can answer the first replies yourself.

Promote your website for free with email, posts and tools

Email reaches people who asked to hear from you: beta testers, a waitlist, users of something you built before. It does not reach new people, hence its place in the table, but the launch day email should still go out, tagged utm_medium=email. The product launch email templates cover the sequence.

Your own social accounts are free and measurable when every post carries its own UTM link. They are hard to stop, though: a posting schedule becomes a commitment. Put the product link in your profiles, post when there is real news, and run the tagline through the free headline and tagline analyzer first to catch vague words and lengths over your limits.

Free tools and search pages are the long game. Pick one question your users type into a search engine and answer it with a page, or with a small free version of your product. Google Search Console is a free Google service that shows which queries bring users to your site, with impressions, clicks and position (About Search Console and overview, checked October 31, 2026). Review it monthly, not during launch week. MegaLaunch’s own free tools follow that idea: each answers one launch question, such as when a launch day starts in your time zone, and none needs an account.

What free advertising platforms fit a new product?

Search for free advertising sites and you find long lists of business directories, social networks, bookmarking sites and classified ads, leaning toward local and small businesses (for example, Wix’s list of 50 free advertising sites, checked October 31, 2026). For a software product, the free placements that fit are the ones above: launch platforms, Show HN, directories in your category and communities where your users ask questions.

Before adding any other free site, ask the three questions from the table. If you cannot measure it, or would not notice if you stopped, it is not worth an hour of launch week. Skip the free tactics that cost more than they look: vote exchanges, asking for upvotes where the rules forbid it, the same link posted in every community, and mass submissions to sites your users never visit. Some break the rules quoted above, and all of them produce numbers you cannot learn from.

A two-week plan to promote your website for free

The same order as a calendar. Move the days to fit your launch, but space the big moments so you can answer every thread and read each channel’s numbers apart.

• Two days before: submit your MegaLaunch Free listing at least 48 hours ahead, with the link back in place. Prepare one UTM link per channel and write your stop rules.
• Launch day: send the launch email, update your profiles, post once at a time you can reply, and answer every comment on your listing.
• Days 2 to 4: post on Show HN if people can try the product without signing up, and stay in the thread. Keep Product Hunt for a day when your account is ready and you can give it the whole day.
• Days 5 to 7: submit to three to five directories that list products like yours.
• Days 8 to 13: answer questions in two communities, linking only where it helps and the rules allow it.
• Day 14: compare each source’s visits with the one action that matters and the hours it took. Keep, improve or stop each channel.

• Prepare your listing with the launch guide
• Compare the Free and Premium launch options