AI Tool Hits $3.2m Revenue in 18 Months Using 7 Growth Tactics (Copy!)
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Do you want $270,000 of month in revenue as a new founder? Well, you're about to meet Ricardo at Betterpick, a tool that enables you to create headshots and other content just from images of your headshot. He scaled from zero to $3.2 million, totally bootstrapped. He's kept full control, but here's the secret. He did this all using three specific growth channels.

SEO, affiliates, and free tools. And I said, Ricardo, I want my audience to learn all of this. Tell me how you did it. That's what you're about to learn over the next 20 minutes. Stick around for an unbearable advantage. And let's find out how Ricardo added so much revenue so quickly.

Yes, sir.

All right. Is everything I said true? These headshots are the best they can find anywhere online? Oh, that's what we aim for, I would say. But yes, I would say yes. Oh, look at these beauties. Take us through the product. What's the most popular feature here, use case-wise?

The use case, the biggest use case we've seen is people using them for their CVs. So anything that they're applying for jobs, that would be the biggest use case right now. Second one is social media. So that's where they use it the second most. So LinkedIn, anything related to like, you know, showcasing in public. And third use case is the what we call the about us sections. So if you're building up a new website or you want to showcase your face on a website, that would be the third biggest use case.

Interesting. And you guys are seeing the use cases here on their site. This is their pricing today. Ricardo, let's not bury the lead. What's revenue today? So this, we're about 270K per month so far in April 2025. Okay. And what does that look like in terms of growth rate? So if you're 275K today, where were you like a month or a year ago?

So a year ago, I can actually quickly pull up the numbers. So a year ago, we would be doing about $3K per month, somewhere around that. That would be where we were at about a year ago in that sense. A lot of growth. What is driven? Let's start from the beginning, right? So in 2024, around April, you're getting your first $5K, $10K, $20K a month in revenue. Where did that original traffic and customers come from?

Yeah, I think the first original was we were testing a few channels, but they were too expensive. Google Ads, we've tried, but it's too much money. I think from the beginning, we did invest a lot in SEO. So from the get-go, so when we started in December 2023, we set SEO first because with the average order value that we have, which is about $44, we needed to be SEO first because otherwise we would never get to profitability. So that's basically where we- Let's look at that. Yes.

Let's look at that here. So we're seeing the metrics from Ahrefs, right? So basically nothing in 2023, pretty explosive growth, domain rating, you know, grew pretty darn quick up to 57. What are you optimizing for right now? Backlinks, domain rating, site traffic, top pages, where are you focusing?

So I think there's a couple of things. So we're doing a lot of backlinking. We're even buying backlinking. So that is one of the strategies. We're doing a lot of PR at the moment as well. That's what we're focusing on in this quarter as well. And before it was still a lot of blogging in that sense. I think we hit like five to 10 blogs per week. That's basically what we're pushing out right now.

Who are you? How are you buying? A lot of people say we've tried to buy backlinks. They're always crappy backlinks. How are you buying backlinks? Did you hire an agency to do it or are you doing it yourself? Yeah, we got a couple of them. So we have an agency that suggests some backlinks. We will say yes or no, depending on our research in that sense. We have like three agencies supporting us on that side. It's like a pay-as-you-go model. If we don't pay, they don't get paid. So that helps as well. And then of course, on the free PR things, that's mostly what we do more of the

or we go on podcasts and stuff like that. I love it. Stunts. We'll get into stunts here in a second. Are you comfortable sharing maybe one or two of those agencies that you think give good backlinks? Yeah, but I would need to dig them up, I would say, because that's the SEO manager that is responsible for that. I'm a big believer of outsourcing where I don't have the knowledge, so I just trust the team.

What is the team size today? So we're at, you know, Betterpick itself is about 13 people. And then the new company, Betterstudio, is around four. So in total, 17 people. What's the, hold on, I didn't know about the new company. What's the URL? Betterstudio.io. Okay, tell me about this. This is your second, this is officially your second product? That's the second product, basically, that we're launching. We're using the same technology we know at Betterpick. We're applying that to the fashion market, which is, you know, more recurring and a much larger market in that sense. Okay.

How much, so forgive the sort of direct question here, but a lot of times, like I'm not a technologist. So when someone tells me we're using fancy technology to do this stuff, I can't tell if they're a really deep technologist and there really is a moat there or if it's like a fancy wrapper on an LM or something else. What are you? Are you a fancy wrapper or is there like deep proprietary tech? There is deep proprietary tech in that sense. And we don't rely on any wrapper. Our base model is still Flux. It's about 30% of our core model in that sense. But the rest is the model that we've created in that sense.

Okay. So you've built your own, is it like a rag database with a frontier model in front of it or a chat interface in front of it? What's, what's the actual tech stack look like there? The proprietary data set. Yeah. There's a lot about processing data. So how we, how we get pictures in, how we transform them, how we put them onto models. Like there's different data sets. I would say for better pick and better pick, it's mostly about how we rank pictures, how we upload pictures, how we guide you to that. Then it's how we, you know, label them, how we rank them, how we, um,

use data of people that like pictures and dislike pictures in order to generate new batches. So I think that's more of the wrapper, I would say, that you put on top. But I think that's a good picture as well. So that's actually a growth, yes. Yeah, this is the money slide here. Okay, so again, you're telling us about what you did about a year ago to drive growth. These early months, it looks like it was heavy SEO focused. What else were you doing in the early days, growth-wise? Yeah.

Yeah, growth-wise, we were doing a lot of affiliate marketing. That is also where I think this last month we did about 77K true affiliate marketing, 100K projected this month. So we're doing a lot of affiliate marketing. The reason why is because most affiliate managers, they are used to like conversion rates of 0.5% to 1%. Our program actually allows you to go from 9% to 12%. Our best performer is about 12%, but we take an average of 9%.

So just to be clear, when you say in April, quote, we're going to do $77,000 of affiliate marketing, that's the new MRR or the new ARR, like the new annual contract, like just the dollar value of that affiliate? That's in months, basically. So the affiliates drove 77K of a revenue in total in that month. Oh, wow. Okay. So of the $275,000 you did in MRR last month, April 2025, 77,000 of that, or almost 30% was affiliates. Yes. Wow. Okay. That's pretty impressive. How many affiliates drove that 77K? Yeah.

I can quickly pull that up. But that would be, I think in affiliate marketing, you mostly have like at anything you have like the top 10% and then you have the 90%. So I would say 10% is actually driven by the, you know, 100%, like 90% of the revenue is driven by 10% of the performers basically. Which how many is that on a number for you? What is 10% of your affiliates? Is that five affiliates, 30 affiliates, 39 affiliates?

I think the top 10, I would say yes. I would say even seven in that sense. Seven of them drove all that revenue. Wow. So let me ask you a question. I would obviously ask you to share your screen. Are you open to sharing your screen and showing me your affiliate backend at Coaches there? Or is that something you don't want to share?

No, we were quite comfortable with sharing pretty much everything. So I can quickly share if you want. People struggle this Ricardo's like, as you guys are listening to this, a lot of you guys, when you try to launch your affiliate program, you'll ask me questions like, well, Nathan, what commission structure do we set? How do we go recruit affiliates? Where do we get them from? So Ricardo, you're doing it. You're doing it. I mean, it's working. Teach us.

Yeah, so we got a dashboard here. This is just for this month so far. So give you an ID, but that's basically how we track. We kind of see what the revenue is coming in, what the average order value is, what the purchases, what the weekly sales are. So that's basically what we're tracking. And that's why I say like we keep track of like the top 10% because those are mostly what drive up all the revenue basically.

And so what can we dive into the red one here, Anang Shah Al-Minyan? Who is that? Are they a YouTube influencer? Or they have a big email list? Are they a podcaster? What is that? So this is actually funny enough. So she's a big YouTuber in that sense, but she also has a big Medium following. So when she posts something on Medium, it actually ranks up because Medium has a big authority. Basically, if you type in like Pasty Eye Hedgehog Generators, in most countries, you will find her blog. She's the one back linking to us.

Interesting. Interesting. Now, what did you build your affiliate program on top of? You used Rewardful? Yes. And so why aren't you screen sharing your Rewardful dashboard right now? Why do you feel like you have to go customize it in DataBox? Because we basically have all our data in there. So we have all our data coming in. So affiliate performance, revenue split per source. So we kind of like centralize everything there. I don't like to go back and forth to do like different tools in that sense. So we kind of like have everything in DataBox.

I see. Really interesting. What is global revenue split in that chart? Is that an important chart that you look at every day, the first one? This one? Not really. I think more we have the source, so we kind of see where is the money coming from, where is the attribution coming from. So that's mostly what it is. Mostly my marketing manager actually looks at this. I kind of look at it from a global perspective, so we kind of have our financial models.

I kind of more look at it from a general perspective where I think this is basically for reporting. So we kind of see like what's the user growth, what's the gross revenue, net revenue, average customer spent. From a product perspective, I look at the refund rate, process to download rate. For us, it's important because there's a moment you process the images and then you actually download them, which is the aha moment, which is you drive value from the product. Wait, Ricardo, you have to dive deeper on that. You have to say that one more time because there's a lot of founders, again, that we work with where –

they don't understand why churn's bad or they don't understand how to price on their pricing page on what utilization metric. And it's always about finding the aha moment. What is the dopamine hit? You just like said that. So go deeper on that. How did you define the aha moment and point to the chart here? Which of these squares measures that aha moment?

Yeah, that is for us this one, basically. So we look at the process to download rate on a monthly basis, meaning the download or the process is like you're processing your AI headshots. That's like you press the button. It's like, I want to do this. And then the download is like I've actually driven value from the download.

It has two flip sides. One is because once you download something, it means you're satisfied most of the time. Second thing is also we have a policy in place that once you download them, we only refund you 10% of it. Otherwise, it's 90%. So that is also something we play around with. And it's important for us because we know how high the metric is. Well, the last refunds are going to take place.

Wild. Let's talk about you. You know, we've talked a little bit about growth. We've talked about the technology bit, but what about you as a Warren Buffett, as a capital allocator, when you have 50,000 a month in profits, you have to start deciding, Hmm, where do we reinvest this money? How do you think about that?

Yeah, I think there's two things basically. So we're moving into space for now. We're having a deal with Amazon and we're also reducing our cost of goods. You can see it. It's like 82% right now. We're moving that to 97% in the coming weeks, basically. So we're going to have huge amount of cash that is coming free in order to generate. So that is one thing. So on the marketing side, I push them to say, spend more. I want you to spend a lot more and make strategic investments. That is more like a long-term game.

Like, I want you to start buying up blogs. I want you to start doing these crazy things that we have the cash for right now. So that's like one part. Second thing is now we're launching Better Studio. You know, we don't even have revenue yet, but we have already a team of four to five people that are walking in, building this next big thing. So I look at it from what's the next big thing that I have to use this cash for.

Interesting. But Better Pick and Better Studio both feed up to the same parent company. Exactly. That's actually what we're raising capital for right now. So we're bootstrapped until now, but we're raising capital probably in the coming four weeks. How much are you looking to raise? So we're doing a first 500K angel investment ticket. Very small. We already have a commitment of 310K. And then the rest is going to be 2 million in September and then another 10 million the year after. We're going to structure it in a nice way in that sense.

Interesting. So a question for you, you have enough revenue where, I guess, what's the dilution you think you're going to take on the 500K you're raising? That's going to be about 5%. We're doing a pre-safe 9.5 mil, so that's going to be about 5%. Okay, 5%, 9 mil cap. If there was a way to get the 500K without having to give up 5%, is that something you'd look at?

Definitely open. I think there's two ways of doing it. One is the small rounds we're doing is more for strategic investors, angel tickets that we appreciate. So that's one part. The rest is definitely open for negotiation.

Interesting. Look, I'm obviously operating out of our fund. It's a $200 million fund, but it's all debt, right? So because you're already doing $275,000 a month, we could do an extra $200K there really easily and let you pay it back over three years. We would take no equity. But let me... I have to prove myself to you first. You have to believe that I can become one of your largest affiliates, I think, before you give me a spot in your round. But I'm loving... I mean...

The focus on metrics, the bootstrapping, 13 people with $275,000 a month. What is that? So $3 million divided by 13. What is that? $230,000 revenue per employee. You're hiring a little ahead of growth though, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, also think about it from a perspective that we have for on customer success, depending on how you put that into perspective. But the core team is about eight to nine in that sense.

Eight to nine. Yeah, I know. It makes a ton of sense. Okay, got it. So bootstrap to this point, you've basically gone from zero to 3 million of revenue over the past 12 months. You're 13 people. We talked about backlinks. We talked about affiliates. We talked about what you measure and what you care about. Let's go back to that revenue graph, if you don't mind, the EBITDA one. Yeah, sure. This one, right? Yeah, exactly. Yep. Okay, so 255. Jan to Feb was pretty flat, and then Feb to March really spiked. Why is that?

I think there's two parts. There's a few couple of parts. One is that FEPP actually has more days. So it has actually, FEPP has less days. So those three days actually make a big difference for us in that sense, even though the salaries remain the same. So this three days actually does count. Second is we had a huge affiliate post coming in. So our affiliate marketing is like kicking in. SEO also grew a big time. So I think the funny thing is that we don't have like one channel that is performing better in that sense. It's just like all of them are like

coming together in that sense. I think we have like seven channels right now and they're all compounding against each other. No, that makes a ton of sense. I'm going to, I'm going to steal the screen back here really quick. Share screen. If we look at,

If we look at your data here, because you mentioned SEO drives a lot of traffic. I see you guys have used free tools and that generates about 8,000 clicks per month to your website. Which is your most successful free tool? And was that an intentional strategy? Do you go look up the term and then go build the free tool or was this all by accident?

We looked at the term and we reverse engineered where we were supposed to go, basically. So profile picture editor is just an SEO play. That is basically something we build overnight. Actually works pretty nicely as well, but gives like, you know, a way, a tool to help you actually.

So that was more of an SEO play. The real play was like the free AI Hedgehog generator. You won't find it actually on the website. You actually have to really find a true SEO. We don't even link to it to the website. And that's basically our way to capture data. We have about four to five hundred people doing this. Yes, we have about four to five hundred people doing this every single day, basically. So that's the crazy part. Interesting.

And so this also allows us to upsell. So some people, because if you get there, there's going to be a waiting list of about, I think it's three months right now. If you want it faster, you can do it like at a discounted price. Oh, I see. So you do it, you give them the result and say, Hey, there's a delay. If you want it immediately pay, what's the conversion rate free to pay on that? I looked at it two days ago. It was not super high, but we did make, I think last month about seven extra K because of that.

That's awesome. And how much, walk me through the SEO strategy on this page. The H1 title is obviously important, but is this like an FAQ schema? Do you think this plays well with the LLMs and take us through that strategy? Exactly. So we're ranking really high when it comes to free AI Hedgehog generator, which is also the case. The goal is really for us to be seen for Google and the LLMs as AI Hedgehog generator. That is basically the main term that we're going for. Oh, interesting. I haven't actually seen it on cloud yet.

Yeah. I always like doing this. I just have a saved browser with all of them open just to see what happens. But you've optimized for this, is what you're saying? Yes. Not for this specific keyword and the LLMs, but for SEO, yes, we've optimized a lot. Canvas is basically going to always be the first, which I think is great because... Oh, there you go. There you go.

So that's number five. So that's pretty cool. And Conva is number one, and I think it's great because they're actually driving us the most B2B revenue is coming from Conva. People use it, they hate it, and then they come to us. Interesting. Interesting. Argon, Magic, Canva. Oh, you're here too. Better pick. They say you don't have a free version. Interesting. Well...

We don't, if you look at it from that perspective, but yes. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's just fun. Like, look, no one really has the answer yet to like how to show up in these LM results. People will say, well, it's all about like keyword clustering and semantic search and blah, blah, blah. No one really knows, but it's cool to see. I mean, look, the numbers don't lie, right? You're getting 20. I mean, you're getting a lot, thousands of clicks per month into your free tools. Is there anything else we missed before I let you go? We, I mean, we talked a lot about different things of growth. Anything I should be asking you about that I just completely missed?

I would say I'm just looking at the metrics in that sense.

No, I think that's most of the metric. I have a lot of metric. I think what helps with sharing metrics is that one, you draw a lot of attention, but also our team also has a very deep insight into what's happening, how much revenue we're making, where is it spending, and allows them to operate at scale without me being there. And I think that's what people misunderstand when you're sharing in the open. It's not just open towards the world, but it's also to your team, which allows them to operate at scale. And I think that's the beauty of building in the open, I would say.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, you guys, and obviously it's a good content marketing strategy for you guys as well. All your stuff gets tons of engagement. So this is great. And I didn't ask, um, 275,000 a month in revenue. How many total customers is that? That's about, uh, five, 6,000, I would say, uh, that would be it. So let me pull that exact number up for right now. We got, uh, 5,974. Okay. Do you guys have, I mean, what's the monthly logo turn look like? The monthly what?

Oh, we don't have churn because it's a one-time purchase basically. Oh, interesting. Oh, gosh. I didn't even realize that. No worries. Because you kind of just need a hedge at one time. If you want to add some fluffy things, yes, you can probably do that recurring. But for the hedge hot, you mostly just need it once. So we bank a lot on that.

I see. Oh yeah, of course. It's right here on your pricing page. Now that being said, you can use the same technology and you start selling it to like businesses, right? So these are a once per person, but better studio. I bet you, you have recurring pricing here. Yeah, there we go.

Got it. So this is the SaaS play. That's the SaaS play. So we're using that cash of the bootstrap business, which is actually quite nice to generate cash. It allows us to build the recurring business. We've got a lot more coming up for this one. We are building a Chrome extension for consumers as well to go shopping, to kind of like just upload an image of themselves, click on a picture that they want to kind of see on them and allows them to try before they buy basically. So that's also the B2C playbook we're playing for these guys.

It's wild to see just the blending of B2C and B2B. I mean, your technologies basically can be used on both and sort of this idea of, okay, it starts off as B2C, then maybe morphs into B2B, but then goes back to B2C with a Chrome extension. It's sort of interesting.

Yes. I mean, the technology is there, right? The underlying technology is there. We have a competitive advantage. I mean, we have a whole slide on us comparing to OpenAI, the biggest competitors on how we're better. We have that. It's crazy to see. And now that we have the technology, we can just build crazy things with it and why just limit ourselves to one thing? Yeah. No, it makes a ton of sense. Well, look, this is awesome. I appreciate you coming on being so transparent. If people want to learn more about your Try the Tool Out, where can they find you online?

Yeah, betterpick.io, I would say. My LinkedIn is where I post most of the things. I have a personal website, but I haven't looked at it for a while. So I think LinkedIn is like the best case, I would say.

Guys, there you have it. Betterpick.io launched, called in 2024. They had about like no revenue exactly 12 months ago. Now they're at $275,000 a month in April of 2025. Over 5,900 customers paid. They're 13 people full-time with four new folks working on their new sort of SaaS product. What's crazy about their growth, they started off with a lot of SEO. $77,000 of their revenue last month came from affiliates, specifically seven affiliates.

of their top 10 affiliates drove that revenue. Their bootstraps so far, now fundraising, targeting 500,000 bucks, 9 million cap, giving up about 5% of the business. We'll see what happens next, but Ricardo, thanks for taking us to the top. No worries. Thanks for having me.