The SaaS Launch Checklist: Your First 30 Days

Founders obsess over launch day. They should not. Launch day is one of 30 that matter, and often not the most important one. What determines whether your launch converts to real users is the boring preparation work done in the week before and the compounding distribution work done in the three weeks after.

This checklist assumes you have a product that works. If you do not, close this tab and go finish shipping.

Day 0: Asset preparation

Do this the week before you launch anything publicly. Nothing goes live until every asset is ready.

• Landing page with a clear tagline, three benefit sections, pricing, and a working signup flow.
• Product screenshots at 1920x1080. At least six.
• Product logo in SVG, plus 512x512 and 128x128 PNGs.
• OG image sized 1200x630 for social previews.
• A 60-second product demo video. Loom is fine. No polish required.
• Two-sentence tagline. One-sentence description. 300-character description. 100-word description. You will use all of these across different submissions.
• A working analytics setup. Plausible or Fathom is fine.
• Sitemap.xml submitted to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Day 1: Soft launch to your network

Do not blast the product publicly on day one. Send it to 20 friends, ex-colleagues, and warm contacts first. Ask two things: does the signup flow work, and what confused you.

Fix the top three issues before you go wider. There will always be top three issues.

Week 1: Directories and communities

Now open the taps. Submit to the directories that give you permanent indexed listings and dofollow backlinks. These compound for years, so prioritise them.

• Submit to Launchstag for the weekly hunt. Permanent listing, dofollow badge.
• Submit to tools.cafe if you have a tool angle. Badge-for-backlink, curated audience.
• Enter LaunchBuff for the fortnightly bracket competition. 16 products, 4 rounds, 14 days, permanent listing.
• Submit to 15 niche directories in your category. Space them across the week.
• Post an Indie Hackers milestone about your launch.
• Post in two relevant subreddits following their self-promotion rules.

Do not post to Hacker News yet unless your product is genuinely technical and you have a Show HN worth showing. HN traffic is unforgiving of half-baked products.

Week 2: SEO baseline

Publish your first three bottom-of-funnel blog posts. Target buying intent keywords in your category. Not "what is X" but "best X for Y under Z dollars."

• Set up robots.txt, sitemap.xml, and canonical tags.
• Add Schema.org markup for SoftwareApplication and Organization.
• Write meta descriptions for every core page.
• Publish three long-form posts (1500+ words each) targeting bottom-of-funnel searches.
• Internal linking between the posts and your product pages.

Week 3: Cold outreach and partnerships

By now you have a handful of signups. Time to reach further.

• Send 20 cold emails a day, Monday to Thursday. Personalised, three sentences.
• Identify 10 tools you integrate with or complement. Email them about a listing on their partner page.
• Sign up for HARO. Respond to 5 queries.
• Reach out to 5 newsletter operators in your niche about a swap or a mention.

Week 4: Big launch platforms

Now you go to Product Hunt, if you go at all. Not before. You need warm-up traffic, a working funnel, and social proof from the first three weeks.

• Schedule Product Hunt for a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.
• Line up 5 to 10 hunters and supporters ahead of time.
• Publish a Show HN if your product warrants it.
• Do a Twitter/X launch thread with real screenshots, not a founder selfie.

Ongoing: what compounds

After day 30, the only three things that matter are: shipping features users request, publishing one solid blog post a week, and answering support fast enough that early users become referrers.

Everything else is noise.

Submit your product to Launchstag and check the first big item off this list.