Understanding Steemhunt and How to Craft a Good Hunt

The key to becoming a successful hunter on Steemhunt is obviously to understand what Steemhunt exactly is.

While we continue our endless fight against ranking manipulation and comment upvote abuse, a certain number of hunters have started to find their groove, while others have struggled to find producs to hunt. The latter has resulted in some members who have become slightly less active, as well as others who tried to bend the posting guidelines a little in order to facilitate the task of finding hunts.

A task which sometimes can be complicated because hunters may not always fully understand what Steemhunt is and thus they may possibly have a wrong expectation both from the platform and themselves.

What is Steemhunt

Steemhunt is a daily ranking board highlighting the coolest products decided by the community.

Steemhunt is about product discovery. Every day a new collection of awesome products. No duplicate entries allowed.

The whole focus of Steemhunt is to be a community ranked product Google so to say. Hunters submit awesome products, complete with a compelling description and the community discovers those products, visits their site, and orders or installs them if they find them awesome enough.

The best hunts, i.e. the hunts with the most awesome products, are upvoted by the Steemhunt community, by the Steemhunt curators.

The Origin X arcade by @teamhumble.

Attentive visitors will notice that Steemhunt’s website, its design is optimized to send traffic out.
As can be seen in above screenshot:

1. Title
2. Short description
3. Check it out link
4. Product photo

Awesome products need no description, no additional pitch. In teamhumble’s Origin X arcade hunt everything could have ended there.

An awesome product, a self-explanatory title, a matching short description, and a photo showing it all.

Product.discovered.

Done and dusted.

What is Steemhunt Not?

One of the questions I often encounter in our Discord channel is whether hunters should include a review of the product.

While sometimes it can be interesting to add own opinion, and especially understanding and knowledge of the product to a hunt, it isn’t required.

On Steemhunt, the hunt is a hunt in every sense of the word: for the hunter, for the curators, and for the site visitors.

Porsche Mission E, expected 2019. source

For the hunter the hunt is about finding the most amazing or important hunt of the day. Soon the next iPhone will be announced and the race will be on for the hunter who can submit the iPhone fastest. Same with the next Samsung Galaxy, the next TESLA car model, and the first e-Porsche when made available.

All those products are perfect hunts, yet while it is possible that hunters will have additional commentary (f.e. that the next iPhone will still not be able to make a bacon and egg breakfast), none of those products will have been available to be tested and reviewed.

And that’s fine. That’s fine because Steemhunt is about discovering new and great products.

Steemhunt is not a review site. Steemhunt is about product discovery. Every day a new batch of awesome products, upvoted and ranked by the community.

Steemhunt isn’t about whether one can write a better hunt about the same product than the already submitted hunt. Steemhunt is not a (re)writing platform.

Steemhunt is about discovering awesome products, no duplication allowed.

How to Write a Great Hunt

Obviously, the most important to every hunt is the product. As we saw above with the Origin X arcade, the product is what it is all about. Great products, unique products stand a good chance to do well on Steemhunt.

But there is an art about writing a good hunt too.

What are Hunts?

Hunts are pitches for products. The hunter describes in the most compelling way the product they hunted and should make the product’s description enticing enough for the visitor to [scroll up again] check it out.

Yes, I did say pitch. But I did not say viral writing with linkbait, bokay? Keep that art at home, for Gawker [RIP Gawker] Business Insider, TechCrunch and their ilk, or for affiliate revenue websites.

How to Write a Good Product Pitch

One of the most common, and sound, methods to write a compelling pitch consists of three parts:

1. Problem/itch
2. Solution
3. Describe product

Let’s have a quick look at those 3 elements, also by looking at two sample hunts:

1. Problem/Itch

Introduce your hunt with a problem or an itch people can relate to. This is your introduction, your catch phrase.

Remember that in this era of short attention spans and constant dopamine kicks you only have few seconds to get my interest, to catch my interest. Don’t expect me or anyone to read through 150 or more hunts every day.

You have one paragraph. Can I relate to your itch?

Summer is here. Are you ready to spend some quality time outdoors in the nature, go hiking, and plan camping trips? Camping is one of fun activities to have, spending good time with loved ones and make new wonderful memories. If you are planning on going camping this summer season, please see if Tree Tent Hammocks by Tentsile are something you would love to have.
Source: Stingray Tree Tent by @geekgirl

Or a more succinct approach:

Ever wondered what music people listened to in India in the 80s? Or in Brazil in the 50s? Maybe you would like to know what people listened to in the 20s in Belgium?
Source: Radiooooo by @dashroom

2. Solution

Introduce the product you are hunting very briefly. One line is enough.

In our previous example, @geekgirl introduced the solution, the Stingray Tree Tent at the end of her attention catcher already.

In the Radiooooo hunt, the solution part is longer, and has its stand-alone paragraph:

Wonder no longer and head over to Radiooooo, an interactive website which lets people listen to the charts in most nations across history.

3. Describe the Product

This is the time to give a longer description of the product. Additional details, features the user may be interested by or explain something about the product and its history.

Radiooooo lets you discover what music might have been played in clubs or on the radio in different countries all the way back to 1900. Users have the opportunity to search by mood (fast, easy, weird). The website also has two islands for those who want to discover newly added music (Discovery Island) and a type of shuffle play (Lazy Island).

Initially funded by an IndieGogo campaign in 2013 to test the waters, Radiooooo has survived ever since and its users have contributed a majority of the music found, and played, on the site.

Or:

Tentsile has multiple different tree tents and their pricing are also vary and range between $200 and $950. This particular model, Stringray Tent, is a three-person model and designed to be unique, comfortable outdoor shelter that keeps you above the a ground. Stringray Tree Tent is spacious and has triple hammock interior to keep campers separated and comfortable. Price for this model is $650.

Some of the features:

• Tent can be accessed via floor hatch in the center and large front door.
• Tent can be suspended between trees, trucks, etc.
• Tent has a removable rain fly for unbeatable views and > * superior protection.
• This model is for three people. However it can also become a multi-story camping base for six by setting up Trillium underneath the tent.

Bonus: 4. Tell Me Where to Go

The smartest hunters close their hunt by sending the reader, the curator to the product. They include an outgoing link just above the upvote button position on Steemhunt.

We’ve seen hunters use App Store buttons, others like myself just include text links.

Radiooooo is available for desktop in web browser mode but also as iOS app and Android app.

Bonus Tip: Do NOT Do This

What you should NOT do at the end of your hunt is include a whole footer. While you may do that on/for Steemit, as a curator you force me to make a choice between scrolling that wall of text and sidebar buttons so I can upvote you or to scroll up to find the link to the product.

One viewport column full of buttons... please, don’t

You are free to use your own footers, but think about the expectation you force upon the curators. If you do use a footer, keep it short. Make sure they aren’t a nuisance, a nuisance which may result in losing upvotes.

The Narrative Hunt

So far we looked at a short pitch style for hunts. But there’s other methods as well. Remember the Origin X arcade?

The one I linked above, the hunt I said which could function perfectly without any further description?

It wasn’t description-less hunt. In fact, @teamhumble wrote a narrative about the wall-mounted arcade. Guess what?

The narrative follows the same structure!

• Introduction background story.
• The product intro (a video)
• Product description
• Outgoing link to the product (photo credit link)

Don’t believe me? Go check it out yourself

Tales from the HuntCave

Last week when I wrote about how we review hunts, I also mentioned that we so far accepted way too many apps, and even some products types.

I would like to use this section to remind Steemhunters of that, by some more thinking flows to keep in mind when submitting especially apps (or smart locks):

• If the “Similar Apps” section on the Play store is longer than anyone wishes to scroll pre-coffee... it’s most likely a generic app category and may be rejected.
• If an app has 50,000 reviews already, and more than 10 million installs, on the Play store... it’s difficult to still call the app new and/or cool and your hunt may be rejected (unless the app just saw a major version number update).
• If more than 10 or 15 similar hunts have been submitted to Steemhunt and the moderator thinks Yet Another [product name]... it’s not cool anymore and your app may be rejected.
• If an app similar to the app you hunted was already introduced in 2009... it doesn’t matter that yours is released in 2018, the app category is old already and thus your hunted app is not new nor cool.

Always remember that the Steemhunt moderators see new and cool products every day. And generic hunt submissions too.

The Hunt is Always On

The blacklist continues to be one of the most active channels in our Discord community. People continue to promote their Steemhunt links everywhere. We also still have to cope with mass commenters who try to increase their chances to have comments upvoted because of sheer volume rather than actual comment quality.

In the last 3 days we also saw a new phenomenon, new for Steemhunt.

Spread over three days we spotted and de-listed 71 hunts, all of low quality and submitted by multiple accounts from the same IP or IP blocks. We have to congratulate the submitter for having switched to a VPN strategy today, yet the lazy writing was still recognizable. Especially because 19 hunts.

The hunt is on and stays on.