$15,000 spent and only 20 sales. PLEASE HELP!

I am a new direct to consumer e-commerce business. I made a custom supplement and the product and packaging really is incredible.

I spent $15,000 and only got 20 sales, about $1,000 in sales. I only need about a 1x ROAS. My creative is good, landing page conversion rate is amazing so the website is good, also CTR is good. I think the main issue is that the CPM is around $250. CPM stays high no matter what I do. I have created many campaigns to test different angles.

What do you suggest I should try next?

It feels like I am stuck in the learning phase and can't get out. I am scared if this keeps stating like this I may need to close my business which I worked on for over a year to get here. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Have you tried organic traffic? At least to supplement your paid ads traffic.

As @AuxWritzau told you, have you tried organic traffic? when i was working with e-commerce i got a bunch of sales without investing in ads or any other paid traffic source just using organic traffic with Instagram.

For something like this to work you need social proof / endorsements, for people to believe your concept actually works.

You would be better off working with micro-influencers to get this proof of concept.

can I see your website?

niro33 said:

My creative is good, landing page conversion rate is amazing so the website is good

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Lets be real. If all of these where good or amazing, you would have better results.

If its none of these, its your targeting or platform that is faulty.

can we see the website

Herregud, your ad targeting sucks.

Hire an actual marketing agency / ad campaign manager.

If you’re new to paid adverts, what made you think that it would be wise to spend $15k by yourself.
A 15-minute YouTube course?

Just hire a marketing agency, for the love of yourself.

15k wouldve went a very long way for influencer marketing. The most powerful ads you can have. Especially for your niche.

This is a lot, the thing is you dont know anything about paid traffic, accept it because the one who knows will never spend their budget more than $500 if it has a low ROI.

niro33 said:

I am a new direct to consumer e-commerce business. I made a custom supplement and the product and packaging really is incredible.

I spent $15,000 and only got 20 sales, about $1,000 in sales. I only need about a 1x ROAS. My creative is good, landing page conversion rate is amazing so the website is good, also CTR is good. I think the main issue is that the CPM is around $250. CPM stays high no matter what I do. I have created many campaigns to test different angles.

What do you suggest I should try next?

It feels like I am stuck in the learning phase and can't get out. I am scared if this keeps stating like this I may need to close my business which I worked on for over a year to get here. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Click to expand...

mate , you invested much but 20 clicks start with always lower budgets

Can I see your website?

niro33 said:

I am a new direct to consumer e-commerce business. I made a custom supplement and the product and packaging really is incredible.

I spent $15,000 and only got 20 sales, about $1,000 in sales. I only need about a 1x ROAS. My creative is good, landing page conversion rate is amazing so the website is good, also CTR is good. I think the main issue is that the CPM is around $250. CPM stays high no matter what I do. I have created many campaigns to test different angles.

What do you suggest I should try next?

It feels like I am stuck in the learning phase and can't get out. I am scared if this keeps stating like this I may need to close my business which I worked on for over a year to get here. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Click to expand...

That's a whole ton of clicks! Let's assume in the worst case your clicks are say $3, you had 5,000 clicks on your ads but less than a 1% conversion rate. So, there are various potential points of failure in your sales journey that you can investigate to understand where the issue is:

1) Targeting.

Is the traffic you are driving coming in from the correct market, check your traffic location, check that if you click an ad the product the user see's matches what they would expect, check your search terms and negative anything that doesn't specifically match your type of product. I've seen furniture ecom sites where users were searching for "5 draw chest of drawers" but they only sold 3 draw variants. Check for material type searches etc.

2) Technical Issues

Are your sales all coming from mobile/desktop? Is your performance different on either of those channels? If so optimise your landing experience accordingly.
Install something like HotJar and monitor user journeys to see if people are finding an error in the journey, perhaps the add to cart function isn't working, or something is failing particularly on mobile.

3) Funnel Issues

What is happening to all those clicks once they hit the product page?

If they all leave straight away, something about the product is not what they expect. Perhaps it's expensive, perhaps the design is poor, pictures are poor. Or again perhaps the ads/targeting weren't right and the product just isn't what they were expecting to see.

If you are getting some add to carts but the users aren't checking out, is it a technical issue?

If people are clicking checkout, but not checking out. Is it a technical issue? Are they at this point seeing your delivery options and seeing that delivery will take like 30 days (chinese drop ship etc)?


If you can drop $15k on ads, you can afford a reasonably skilled Google Ads professional. Find a reputable freelancer or agency around the $1k per month price point and get them to do a pitch based on your account and results so far. A good professional should be able to tell you exactly what the problem is, and how they would run it differently. Give them a budget of at least $5k and 30 days to prove it.

Hi Mate , I will tell you a method here which might bring the CPM.

1. Keep the targeting broad.
2. Change the Goal from Purchase to "Add to cart" or "Initiate Checkout" - This might do the needful i guess.

I don't believe the OP has spent anything and maybe it's some sales hook or something because I have never heard of someone with money making such decisions, but maybe that's someone who "got money by an accident" and a rare event. Anyways, that message sounds like an exception to me and people reading that post should know that if you know how to get $15k to spend on ads, you rather know what you're doing as having that type of money to spend usually means you already know something about money.

If you can't control money, that's best to ask a professional for help. Consult a doctor cause it's perhaps a mental health thing rather than skill related. Tell them explicitly "I spent $15k on something I didn't understand and I thought it's going to work". They'll teach you how to plan it better, so you don't do something like that next time without validation.

Don't buy any agency services. Guys who posted in this thread are just businessmen trying to sell you their services. You don't even know if they're real and honest, and if it isn't just fake persona they've created to "impress people". Consult someone face to face and start with a counselor cause you're on the verge of bankruptcy if anything you said is true. But I really doubt it and it looks like some advertising of agency sellers and might be just gaming the forum.

reaaski said:

I don't believe the OP has spent anything and maybe it's some sales hook or something because I have never heard of someone with money making such decisions, but maybe that's someone who "got money by an accident" and a rare event. Anyways, that message sounds like an exception to me and people reading that post should know that if you know how to get $15k to spend on ads, you rather know what you're doing as having that type of money to spend usually means you already know something about money.

If you can't control money, that's best to ask a professional for help. Consult a doctor cause it's perhaps a mental health thing rather than skill related. Tell them explicitly "I spent $15k on something I didn't understand and I thought it's going to work". They'll teach you how to plan it better, so you don't do something like that next time without validation.

Don't buy any agency services. Guys who posted in this thread are just businessmen trying to sell you their services. You don't even know if they're real and honest, and if it isn't just fake persona they've created to "impress people". Consult someone face to face and start with a counselor cause you're on the verge of bankruptcy if anything you said is true. But I really doubt it and it looks like some advertising of agency sellers and might be just gaming the forum.

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Banned?!

reaaski said:

I don't believe the OP has spent anything and maybe it's some sales hook or something because I have never heard of someone with money making such decisions, but maybe that's someone who "got money by an accident" and a rare event. Anyways, that message sounds like an exception to me and people reading that post should know that if you know how to get $15k to spend on ads, you rather know what you're doing as having that type of money to spend usually means you already know something about money.

If you can't control money, that's best to ask a professional for help. Consult a doctor cause it's perhaps a mental health thing rather than skill related. Tell them explicitly "I spent $15k on something I didn't understand and I thought it's going to work". They'll teach you how to plan it better, so you don't do something like that next time without validation.

Don't buy any agency services. Guys who posted in this thread are just businessmen trying to sell you their services. You don't even know if they're real and honest, and if it isn't just fake persona they've created to "impress people". Consult someone face to face and start with a counselor cause you're on the verge of bankruptcy if anything you said is true. But I really doubt it and it looks like some advertising of agency sellers and might be just gaming the forum.

Click to expand...

Haha ironic that in the 44 minutes since this post his account was banned xD

niro33 said:

I am a new direct to consumer e-commerce business. I made a custom supplement and the product and packaging really is incredible.

I spent $15,000 and only got 20 sales, about $1,000 in sales. I only need about a 1x ROAS. My creative is good, landing page conversion rate is amazing so the website is good, also CTR is good. I think the main issue is that the CPM is around $250. CPM stays high no matter what I do. I have created many campaigns to test different angles.

What do you suggest I should try next?

It feels like I am stuck in the learning phase and can't get out. I am scared if this keeps stating like this I may need to close my business which I worked on for over a year to get here. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Click to expand...

@niro33 I would have long left the "purchased traffic" with "organic traffic" for better results.

Even though I haven't seen the specifics of your business, wiith 1/3 of that money spent you could have easily gotten more than what you spent on advertising only on sales figures.

There are many avenues of organic traffic, and you should start exploring them if you want to reap profits.

I'm sure he knows that organic traffic exists guys. Perhaps he doesn't have 6-12 months to start making an ROI with SEO, or the time to spend manually generating social traffic.

@OP I don't know which geo you are selling in. I would just suggest you to try Insta and TikTok ads with a minimum daily spend and set target demographics until you get hold of what work, if you are doing it all by yourself and give sometime to yourself to learn these things.

I think your website would be mobile friendly so, anyone from those ads can make a purchase directly. Do check an issue with your checkout process after product is added in cart.

If your landing pages are so good and have the kind of CTR as you mentioned, conversion should be good or there is some issue which you haven't discovered yet.

IMO, stop doing web ads and stick to social media platforms(80%) and YT(20%) unless you start getting returns.

Apart from having good LP and Funnel, check the issues like payment page, cart abandonment, discount codes if any etc.

Stop spending unnecessarily on platforms which you don't understand, try to make small budget campaigns like $50-$100 and see how the campaigns are performing and then analyze your design, keywords, flow, budget etc and keep improving it.