What a Listing Has to Do
A launch listing has one job: get the right person to click through to your site. Not to impress other makers, not to rank on a keyword, not to explain every feature. Someone scrolling a board gives each row about two seconds. In that time they need to understand what your product is, decide whether it's for them, and trust that it's real.
That gives you three questions to answer, in this order:
- What is it? In plain words, not a slogan.
- Who is it for? The narrower and more specific, the better the click.
- Is it real? Real screenshots, a live site, a person behind it.
Everything below is about answering those three questions faster. It applies to any launch board or directory, including Hauntboard, where the listing you write becomes a permanent page that Google and AI search can find, so it keeps working long after launch week.
Name and Tagline
Your name is already decided, so the tagline does the heavy lifting. Most taglines fail the same way: they describe a feeling instead of a product.
| Vague (skipped) | Clear (clicked) |
|---|---|
| Supercharge your workflow | Turn meeting notes into tasks with owners and due dates |
| The future of invoicing | Invoices for freelancers that chase late payers for you |
| AI-powered productivity | Summaries of long Slack threads, sent to you every morning |
A formula that works almost every time: what it does + for whom or in what situation. "Bookkeeping for solo founders who hate spreadsheets" tells a reader in one glance whether to keep reading.
A few rules worth keeping:
- Keep it under 60 characters. Longer taglines get cut off in lists, search results and share cards.
- Use the words your users use. If your customers say "invoice", don't write "billing orchestration".
- Skip the superlatives. "Best", "ultimate" and "revolutionary" make readers trust you less, not more.
- Don't repeat the name. "Notely: notes app" wastes the space.
The Description
The description is for the reader who's interested and wants to know more before clicking. Aim for 150 to 300 words. Under 150, there isn't enough to judge the product; over 400, people skim. A structure that reads well:
- The problem, in one or two sentences. Specific enough that the right reader thinks "that's me". "Freelancers lose hours every month chasing invoices that are 30 days late."
- What the product does about it. The core thing, not every feature. "It sends polite reminders on a schedule you set and stops the moment the client pays."
- Two or three details that make it different. Only the ones a user would actually notice: works offline, no account needed, exports to CSV, free while in beta.
- Who it's for, and who it isn't for. Saying "not built for agencies with 50 clients" earns trust from the people it is built for.
- Where it stands. In beta, at 1.0, free during launch week, open source. Readers forgive rough edges when you tell them up front.
Write it yourself, in your own voice. A description that reads like generic AI copy ("seamlessly streamline your workflow with cutting-edge features") gets skipped by readers and is one of the most common reasons reviewers ask for a rewrite. If you use AI to draft, rewrite every sentence until it sounds like you explaining it to a friend.
Screenshots and Logo
Screenshots are the "is it real?" answer. A reader who sees the actual interface believes the product exists; a reader who sees a stock photo or a mockup of a phone on a marble desk does not.
- Show the real product, in use. A screen with real-looking data beats an empty state every time.
- Put your best screen first. Many readers only see the first image. Make it the moment your product does its main job.
- Use a wide format. Around 16:10 works well on most boards and launch pages.
- Crop out the noise. Browser bookmarks bars, notifications and personal tabs distract and sometimes leak things you didn't mean to share.
- Three to five is plenty. One for the main job, one or two for the details that make it different, and one showing the result.
For the logo, use a square image that still reads at 40 pixels. Thin wordmarks and detailed illustrations turn into grey smudges in a list. A bold symbol or a single letter on a solid colour holds up far better.
If you're launching on several platforms, check how your page previews when shared: our free meta tag and share previewer shows what Google, X and Slack will display.
The Founder Note
The founder note is the part most makers skip and readers often remember. It's two to four sentences, in first person, about why you built this. People back people, especially on a board full of independent makers.
A template that keeps it short and honest:
I built [product] because [the moment you hit the problem yourself]. It's for [who], and right now it's [where it stands]. I'd love feedback on [one specific thing].
For example: "I built this after losing a week of notes when a sync service shut down. It's for writers who want their files on their own machine, and it's in public beta. I'd love feedback on the export options."
Ending with one specific question gives readers an easy way to start a conversation, and conversations turn into users far more often than upvotes do.
What Gets a Launch Rejected
Boards that review launches by hand, Hauntboard included, turn listings down for a short list of reasons. Knowing them saves you a wasted week:
- A thin description. One line of marketing copy doesn't tell a reviewer, or a reader, what the product does.
- A broken site. If the link doesn't load, times out or lands on a parked domain, nobody can try it. Check it from a phone on mobile data before you submit.
- A duplicate. The same product listed twice, or a site already listed recently.
- Not a working product yet. A waitlist page with nothing behind it isn't a launch. Launch when someone can actually use it.
- Spam. Fake reviews, keyword-stuffed descriptions or a product that isn't what it claims to be.
On Hauntboard you see the exact reason, and you can fix the listing and resubmit it once (anything rejected as spam can't be resubmitted). Our post on how we review every launch explains what reviewers check.
A Five-Minute Checklist
Before you press submit anywhere, run through this:
- Does the tagline say what it does and for whom, in under 60 characters?
- Could a stranger explain your product after reading the description once?
- Is the first screenshot the real product doing its main job?
- Does the logo still read when it's tiny?
- Is there a founder note with one specific question?
- Does the link work on a phone, on mobile data, in a private window?
- Is there anything in the listing you'd be embarrassed to defend in a reply?
When it all checks out, submit your launch. On Hauntboard, paste your link and the name, tagline, description and logo fill themselves in from your site, so you only need to sharpen them. Then read what to do after launch day, because the listing is only the start.