this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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Hey!

Long time lurker and learner on this sub, inspired by all the many great stories I've come across. Often when I'm feeling least motivated I revist this sub and always leave feeling inspired - so I'm hoping this post can do the same for some people.

No, I'm not a millionaire, and yes, this could all come crashing down tomorrow, but I seem to have figured out something that works consistently - and most importantly - can scale.

There's quite an interesting backstory about how this business came around, but I'll share that another time if anyone is interested.

So, let me share you what I was doing to make around 2k per month, and not even breakeven.

Firstly, I was selling exclusively on google ads, with a ROAS of around 1.7. I could only achieve this by selling our products at a razor thin margin, so I was actually losing a bit of money during this time. This went on for about 6 months, from January 23 until July 23. Throughout this time I'd dabbled with ads on Meta but nothing ever really took off - because I didn't understand the importance of creatives. An image of your product alone is rarely going to work.

In June, I tried a new method. I created a video showing off our best selling product. It was a simple video, but highlighted all of it's key features. It wasn't super professional, I mean I was literally on my bed with holding the product and showing it off becuase the bedsheet was the only semi-decent background I could find.

Anyway, the day after I ran this video on Facebook and Instagram, I hit £290 in a single day, with an AOV of £72. The whole WEEK before this I only managed to do £300 with an AOV of £27

I didn't change anything, and the next day, I did £469 - my best ever day before this was £300 but I was generally happy if we managed £100 in a day, so this was mindboggling.

The next day - £816!!! Each of these days I was only spending £40 on ads, so to get back £816 was truly amazing and more than double our previous best day by some margin! The best part was, we hit that figure by about 2pm, and then hit our facebook daily spend limit - otherwise who knows much we could've done in one day! For a few days the ROAS was around 10-15. Months later, I still sit around a 3-5 ROAS each month which is very profitable for us, and way better than the 1.7 we used to get via google.

This all started all in July 2023, and I managed to hit nearly 12k for the month. My previous best month was 3.8k - and I broke-even. Because this 12k was our best selling product that had a healthy margin, I netted about 4k that month.

I fully sold out of stock in July, and had to wait a month for new stock. I was 'open' for only about 5 days in August - but still managed around 4.5k - my second best ever month.

Since then, we've had continuous struggles with maintaining stock because the lead time is 60 days, and I simply haven't got the working capital to buy enough of the stuff.

That said, here are the numbers by month since my new advertising strategy in July:

- July - £11,937.10 - AOV 45.06

- August - £4335.85 - AOV 44.18

- September - £20,567.70 AOV - 46.76

- October - £25,053.33 - AOV £47.40

- November (MTD 24th Nov) - £35,557.62 - AOV 48.39

We're on track to do about 45k in November which to me is faily mindblowing! My goal is 100k revenue per month consistently which will be around 30k net per month. I come from a low-income background so this would be pure insanity to me.

All of this was only possible because of my advertising strategy on Meta. I watched countless videos and tried different things for MONTHS, but when I found what worked, I simply repeated the process and increased the daily budget. It's not complicated and I'm 100% confident you can do this too, you just need to find what works and then scale it.

I'm confident I can continue to scale this because every time I increase the advertising budget, the revenue follows. We're simply bottle necked by stock levels. A pretty good problem to have if you ask me.

Anyway, I hope this shares a little of what is possible. Our business isn't anything particularly new, it just uses a new advertising angle. If you want me to go into more detail on anything then I'll do my best to reply in the comments. For obvious reasons, I will not be sharing our products on website here.

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Congratulations on your success! How would you recommend a newbie to select a product or category of products for starting an e-commerce business?

[–] Flat_Ad_1534@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Congratulations on your hard earned success! Thats amazing. How much did you spend on ads in total before you found success with it and started becoming profitable?

[–] maxmilner@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m not sure but probably around £500 before i got any sales lol. These were mostly product picture carousels which probably only work for established brands tbh.

[–] Flat_Ad_1534@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Awesome work man, what kind of ads do you find work for you?

[–] imsalim@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

What is your niche and what type of ads work best for store? I mean in particular video or image ads?

Do you sell multiple products or just one product and how many employees do you have currently?

[–] trevorturtle@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Any recommendations for videos for advertising via meta?

[–] UprisingOverLosers@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Why do you want to get competitors!

[–] user-io@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Hey, congrats! Have you also considered to discuss and agree with an influencer etc for advertisement? Maybe it could be beneficial as well.

How do you recommend finding the right product before bulk buying tons of items?

Any tips on not wasting a bunch of money starting this up?

Did you design the product yourself (or would you recommend designing something new yourself?)

Thanks!!!

[–] Sweet-Helicopter3285@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What do you mean by ROAS and AOV? Thanks!

[–] maxmilner@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

ROAS - Return on Ad Spend. It means for every £1 you spend, you get £5 back (that would be a 5 ROAS)

AOV = Average Order Value

[–] winaniwai@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Congratulations! From the countless videos you watched, any specific videos that really helped? What payment processor are you using to cut down on processing fees?

[–] maxmilner@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I linked one in the comments somewhere!

[–] winaniwai@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks, saw that! Any insight on the the second question? Cheers!

[–] keep_flow@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

How do you manage inventory!? Where and how do you deliver product to customer ? Any agent ? And how do you find retailer or wholesaler ? From where do you buy product and how much for initial?

[–] OnewordTTV@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Great job! Thanks for the post! How did you decide on what product to sell? How many products are you selling?

Hey,

Congrats man. I know how exiting is to make things happen after months of testing you finally get things work with Meta. Frustrating, but rewarding.

But I do think that 90% of the Meta success strategy is...the product you're selling.

Also, right now in UE we see all those small ecommerce businesses threatened by Temu and Shein. So if you are now on the wave just profit as much as possible.

https://www.wired.com/story/temu-is-burning-cash-to-challenge-shein-and-amazon-on-black-friday/?fbclid=IwAR34s19wnt_qL3-dUk1FDQk_RWevsnsFLFv1LpOrnzWagedybjScvE8zrFU

PS: please check DM, I'll be happy to chat a little bit.

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