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Small Bets
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Researched profile. Starter Story's AI research system compiled this page from 72 public sources — the founder didn't write it. Automated research can misread or misattribute a source, so treat figures as best-effort. How this works →
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How Small Bets Grew

Online community for aspiring small-time entrepreneurs.

How did Small Bets grow?

Summary of the sourced claims below

Small Bets initially grew primarily through Daniel's Twitter audience, which expanded from around 77,000 to over 160,000 followers, serving as the main source of new members. More recently, word of mouth has become a significant growth channel, with members signing up who do not follow Daniel, and the company focusing on providing value to encourage sharing within networks. A smaller portion of growth has come from an affiliate program offering a 20% referral fee to a few affiliates.

Channels

15 channels · grouped by how Small Bets grows

  • Affiliate program

    · 4 mentions · 4 sources
    “Secondly, he has been clever in using the Gumroad affiliates system. Gumroad is awesome as it has a really flexible affiliates feature open to anyone on the platform. ... So with affiliates he has people like me speading the word about his courses and making money for him passively. It also helps...”
    medium
    Show 3 more quotes
    “And launch day was amazing as well. It was number one on front page on Hacker News, number one on Product Hunt.”
    medium
    “Another small part of their growth has come from affiliates. It’s just a few folks, but they get a 20% referral fee for new members.”
    medium
    “Another small part of their growth has come from affiliates. It’s just a few folks, but they get a 20% referral fee for new members.”
    medium

  • Word of mouth

    · 4 mentions · 4 sources
    “I'd rather have a thousand customers paying $100 than have 10 customers paying $1,000, even though it's the same revenue, usually because the hundred customers generates more word of mouth, more testimonials, more reviews, more energy, and so on and so forth. And I really think it's an underrated...”
    high
    Show 3 more quotes
    “And as word spread of his course, he got more followers! ... Word spread quickly in tech circles that it was a quality course. ... No tweets, no paid ads — just word of mouth.”
    high
    “However, the word of mouth engine has begun to kick in. For the first time, they see members sign up who don’t follow Daniel at all sign up. Word of mouth is the main channel they’re focused on driving, trying to offer so much value that members feel compelled to share it with their network.”
    high
    “Of late though, the word of mouth engine has begun to kick in. For the first time, they see members sign up who don’t follow Daniel at all sign up. Word of mouth is the main channel they’re focused on driving, trying to offer so much value that members feel compelled to share it with their network.”
    medium

  • Organic social media

    · 3 mentions · 3 sources
    “I found many as well from X. There's probably the most too sometimes introductions from people I trust, but usually I would say, yeah, I discover people from the community or from social media.”
    high
    Show 2 more quotes
    “Along the way he started to pick up a following on Twitter and made a video course on how to build an audience. ... Because if you see someone selling a course on getting more Twitter followers and they themselves have an audience which keeps growing, naturally you are attracted to their product.”
    medium
    “Today, he has close to 60K followers on Twitter(he calls it his market research arm). So what happened, how did he grow his audience? Well, he went viral!”
    medium

  • Email marketing

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “Yeah, because I went on Twitter, and I sent an email to everyone who had bought something from me in the past and said, hey, because previously, you didn't get immediate access... So my announcement was, from now on, you can get immediate access to the small bus community.”
    high
    Show 1 more quote
    “They’ve done some experimentation with ads. Daniel estimates he has spent around $5,000 across Twitter, Reddit, and newsletters, but with mixed results.”
    medium

  • LinkedIn ads

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “Twitter has been the main source of members for the Small Bets community.”
    high
    Show 1 more quote
    “Twitter has been the main source of members for the Small Bets community. When it launched, Daniel had around 77,000 followers and is now at 160,000+. Daniel says that until around May 2022, most of the people who joined came from his audience.”
    medium

  • Testimonials

    · 1 mention
    “Firstly, he used social proof and early buyers generated a lot of positive reviews. I should know as I bought a copy after seeing that Randall Kanna had seen her following shoot up after taking the course.”
    medium

  • Reddit

    · 1 mention
    “He wrote a blog post. It was called Only Intrinsic Motivation Lasts: Why I Left a $500k Job to Work for Myself.. And posted it to the usual channels, IH, HN, Reddit.”
    medium

  • Hacker News

    · 1 mention
    “He wrote a blog post. It was called Only Intrinsic Motivation Lasts: Why I Left a $500k Job to Work for Myself.. And posted it to the usual channels, IH, HN, Reddit.”
    medium

  • Content marketing

    · 1 mention
    “He wrote a blog post. It was called Only Intrinsic Motivation Lasts: Why I Left a $500k Job to Work for Myself.. And posted it to the usual channels, IH, HN, Reddit. And it blew up. He got more than 1500 Twitter followers and hundreds of DMs and emails after that.”
    medium

  • Publicity stunts

    · 1 mention
    “They’ve done some experimentation with ads. Daniel estimates he has spent around $5,000 across Twitter, Reddit, and newsletters, but with mixed results.”
    medium

  • Twitter

    · 1 mention
    “Today, he has close to 60K followers on Twitter(he calls it his market research arm). So what happened, how did he grow his audience? Well, he went viral!”
    medium

  • Press

    · 1 mention
    “So my announcement was, from now on, you can get immediate access to the small bus community. That's how I positioned it. And I think this created a bit of FOMO, like, oh, I want to check what this thing is. One-time payment, again, like nothing recurring, and people were curious. And it was, aga...”
    high

  • Online Community

    · 1 mention
    “So SmallBets today, it's in its current form. So it's changed a lot over time. So it started two years ago, like September 2021. And I can sort of describe a little bit how it started and how it evolved. But in the present form, it's a place where people interested in self-employment and side pro...”
    high

  • Webinars

    · 1 mention
    “The main product, at least right now, is we host these regular live Zoom classes hosted by people with a particular expertise and a particular topic, say internet marketing or advertising or YouTube creation or podcasting or self-publishing books, things of those nature.”
    high

  • LinkedIn

    · 1 mention
    “Today, he has close to 60K followers on Twitter(he calls it his market research arm). So what happened, how did he grow his audience? Well, he went viral!”
    medium

How 2,739 businesses grow

Of businesses with mapped growth channels, the share using each — Small Bets’s highlighted.
  • Referral/Word-of-mouth
    68% ◀
  • Social media
    60% ◀
  • Search/SEO
    57%
  • Email
    48% ◀
  • Community
    35% ◀
  • Content/Inbound
    33% ◀
  • Partnerships
    32% ◀
  • Paid ads
    24%
  • Events
    24% ◀
  • Press/PR
    17% ◀
  • Outbound/Sales
    17%
  • Marketplaces/App stores
    10%
  • Product expansion
    2%
  • Influencer partnerships
    2%
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