How to win a launch leaderboard week honestly
Launchelion runs a weekly launch cycle where signed-in accounts vote once per day and each week's top tools are kept in a permanent winners archive. This guide explains how the cycle works, when to submit, what actually moves a listing up, and which tactics get a listing removed.
By the Launchelion team
A leaderboard week is a different game from a 24-hour feed. The window is longer, the voting rule is one account and one vote per day, and the ranking rewards sustained interest rather than a single coordinated hour. That changes what works: a burst of votes from people who never return matters less than a listing that keeps earning attention across several days.
How does the weekly cycle work?
Submission is free. Your listing goes live once the badge on your own site is detected, which is how the platform verifies that the listing belongs to you. It then competes in the current week's cycle, and when the week closes, the top placements are recorded in the winners archive at a permanent URL rather than being deleted.
Launch dates are real and are not reset. A listing shows the date it actually went live, which is the point of a launch leaderboard: the record is only useful if the dates in it are true.
When in the week should you submit?
Early. A listing that goes live on the first day of the cycle is eligible for every voting day in that week; one that arrives on the last day is competing on a fraction of the available time. Verify the badge before you announce anything, because verification is the step that decides when your listing is visible.
If your product is not ready, wait for the next cycle. There is no penalty for waiting and there is a real cost to spending your only launch window on a half-finished page.
What actually moves a listing up?
None of that is a trick. The leaderboard is a ranking of what people signed in and voted for, so the work is getting the listing in front of people who would genuinely vote for it.
- A complete listing: logo, a real screenshot set, a long description, and a category that matches what the tool does.
- A tagline a stranger understands in one read, since most people decide from the feed row alone.
- Telling the people who already use your product that the week is running, and telling them once rather than five times.
- Answering questions on the listing during the week, because an unattended listing looks abandoned.
- Connecting Stripe if you have revenue, since a verified revenue figure is a claim readers can trust and an unverified one is a claim they discount.
What gets a listing removed?
Vote manipulation of any kind: multiple accounts, purchased votes, or coordinated vote-trading rings. The one account, one vote, one day rule exists so that a position on this board means something, and a board that tolerates manufactured votes is worth nothing to the makers who win it fairly.
The same applies to fabricated numbers in a listing. Revenue that is claimed rather than verified is labeled as claimed, and inflated user counts that contradict a public pricing page are the fastest way to lose the benefit of the listing entirely.
What is a leaderboard week worth after it ends?
The week ends; the listing does not. It stays as an indexable page linking to your site, in a category page that people browse, in an archive that records what launched when. That residual value is the reason to fill the listing properly even if you finish fourth.