unicorn2000
Newbie
- Feb 1, 2026
- 8
- 2
I've decided to use this forum as a journal mostly for myself to keep track of my progress in ecom and to remember the things I've learned thus far. TLDR: I quit my corporate job to pursue entrepreneurship and am starting out with ecom. I'm 3 months in right now and I'll share things I've learned to hopefully help anyone if I can. I am not a course seller, just someone who probably shares the same dream as most of us on here do.
ETD: $5,900+
Starting from the beginning:
1. Sourced products from China, first I ordered samples before placing a larger order. I ordered about 2000 units and store everything at home. (yes living room is a mess) I decided to go with a product that I was passionate about and had some social proof from my own social media.
2. I repackaged everything in generic packaging and the only branding I got was on my exterior packaging to save on costs.
3. While waiting for products to land, I paid someone on Fiverr to build my website for me for $400. Registered my business and did all the legal things. I advise using a registered agent so your LLC address is not your home address, changing it later on is a headache.
4. Took product pictures and used Nano banana to make them look professional.
5. Applied to become a TikTok Shop Seller and synced Shopify listing.
6. Marketed products by making videos myself and selling the products on TikTok Live.
7. Started running GMV Max campaigns which is just ads on TikTok Shop videos. ROI set at 4.0
8. Currently testing Meta Ads. I'm 2 days in. (More details below)
What I would do differently if I were to start over:
1. The product I chose has several SKUs which is annoying af so I would've started with one product and one SKU.
2. Honestly, I got really lucky with the fact that my product is not absolute shit but if I were starting over I would NOT have ordered inventory without product testing. I would product test by dropshipping the product first to see if people would actually buy or like the product. (I can explain more in another post here if anyone's curious it was easier than I thought to set up and is lower risk to start this way)
3. I wish I did spend the extra $ to customize the packaging because fulfilling orders takes so long (I wouldn't do this until I verify product performs well if you start dropshipping it first) I'm not planning on using a 3PL until I'm getting consistent 10+ orders a day but once I hit that threshold, I'd have to repackage all my shit because my product packaging is just really annoying this might be unique to me though
4. I realized I could've done all this if I had a remote corporate job so if you have a remote job that doesn't eat up a lot of your time, you can definitely do this on the side. My last 9-5 was super demanding and I genuinely hated life so I left. I have no regrets about quitting but I'm actually not opposed to looking for a remote job because healthcare in the US sucks. What I'm trying to say is you do not need to "full send" it and quit your job to do this.
What I'm working on and hope to achieve:
Selling on TikTok Live was definitely a great way to generate organic sales but it was dependent on me showing up. I am not tryna do that shit. It's not scalable so I stopped doing that. Instead, I've decided to focus on creating more videos for TikTok and for Meta ads. My TikTok GMV Max campaign is performing pretty well, I set the ROI at 4.0 and it's profitable thank god so not many changes there besides pumping out 1-2x vids a day.
I want to shift more focus on Meta ads and I started running my first campaign on a new Meta ads account.
At first, my sales campaign was not spending for 3 DAYS. I was losing my shit here. Turns out, it was because they didn't have any history on customer behavior so to jumpstart it, I had to create a traffic campaign and optimized the event for landing page views. As soon as I did that, my sales campaign started spending so I turned off my traffic campaign.
Now my Meta ads campaign has been running for a 2 days and I'm going to let it run for at least a week before tweaking anything so that Meta can gather more insights on customer behavior on my ads. By the way I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. I'm just trying to learn as I go and watching Youtube videos to help make judgement calls so feel free to give me advice here.
So far, the CTR is good, which indicates my creatives are strong. ATC rate is healthy, which means people are clicking my ad and the product is resonating with them but I'm losing conversions from ATC to purchase. This tells me something is causing friction and preventing people from pulling the trigger to buy the product. So I went back to the product page to add signs of social proof by importing reviews, adding trust badges, and clear indicators of shipping speed and free shipping threshold. Hopefully, that will help with conversions over the next few days. The data pool is still really small so I'm just gonna eat the costs so that Meta can learn and find my audience. In the meantime, I'm going to study other top performing meta ads. I'm not just looking at my competitors but just top performers overall to focus on the structure of their creatives and make more so I can switch out the creatives where necessary.
I'll keep sharing what I learn along the way. If anyone has any tips or advice, I'd love to hear and learn more. If anyone has any questions, I'm happy to elaborate more. I honestly felt really alone trying to figure out how to do any of this and obviously scared too because I was taking a huge risk so for anyone in a similar position, I'm happy to share all that I can. I don't know if what I'm doing is right and I am not a professional but just want to help if I can.
Tools I use:
Canva Pro (paid)
Google AI Pro for Gemini (paid)
Meta Ads Library (free)
Claude (free)
ETD: $5,900+
Starting from the beginning:
1. Sourced products from China, first I ordered samples before placing a larger order. I ordered about 2000 units and store everything at home. (yes living room is a mess) I decided to go with a product that I was passionate about and had some social proof from my own social media.
2. I repackaged everything in generic packaging and the only branding I got was on my exterior packaging to save on costs.
3. While waiting for products to land, I paid someone on Fiverr to build my website for me for $400. Registered my business and did all the legal things. I advise using a registered agent so your LLC address is not your home address, changing it later on is a headache.
4. Took product pictures and used Nano banana to make them look professional.
5. Applied to become a TikTok Shop Seller and synced Shopify listing.
6. Marketed products by making videos myself and selling the products on TikTok Live.
7. Started running GMV Max campaigns which is just ads on TikTok Shop videos. ROI set at 4.0
8. Currently testing Meta Ads. I'm 2 days in. (More details below)
What I would do differently if I were to start over:
1. The product I chose has several SKUs which is annoying af so I would've started with one product and one SKU.
2. Honestly, I got really lucky with the fact that my product is not absolute shit but if I were starting over I would NOT have ordered inventory without product testing. I would product test by dropshipping the product first to see if people would actually buy or like the product. (I can explain more in another post here if anyone's curious it was easier than I thought to set up and is lower risk to start this way)
3. I wish I did spend the extra $ to customize the packaging because fulfilling orders takes so long (I wouldn't do this until I verify product performs well if you start dropshipping it first) I'm not planning on using a 3PL until I'm getting consistent 10+ orders a day but once I hit that threshold, I'd have to repackage all my shit because my product packaging is just really annoying this might be unique to me though
4. I realized I could've done all this if I had a remote corporate job so if you have a remote job that doesn't eat up a lot of your time, you can definitely do this on the side. My last 9-5 was super demanding and I genuinely hated life so I left. I have no regrets about quitting but I'm actually not opposed to looking for a remote job because healthcare in the US sucks. What I'm trying to say is you do not need to "full send" it and quit your job to do this.
What I'm working on and hope to achieve:
Selling on TikTok Live was definitely a great way to generate organic sales but it was dependent on me showing up. I am not tryna do that shit. It's not scalable so I stopped doing that. Instead, I've decided to focus on creating more videos for TikTok and for Meta ads. My TikTok GMV Max campaign is performing pretty well, I set the ROI at 4.0 and it's profitable thank god so not many changes there besides pumping out 1-2x vids a day.
I want to shift more focus on Meta ads and I started running my first campaign on a new Meta ads account.
At first, my sales campaign was not spending for 3 DAYS. I was losing my shit here. Turns out, it was because they didn't have any history on customer behavior so to jumpstart it, I had to create a traffic campaign and optimized the event for landing page views. As soon as I did that, my sales campaign started spending so I turned off my traffic campaign.
Now my Meta ads campaign has been running for a 2 days and I'm going to let it run for at least a week before tweaking anything so that Meta can gather more insights on customer behavior on my ads. By the way I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. I'm just trying to learn as I go and watching Youtube videos to help make judgement calls so feel free to give me advice here.
So far, the CTR is good, which indicates my creatives are strong. ATC rate is healthy, which means people are clicking my ad and the product is resonating with them but I'm losing conversions from ATC to purchase. This tells me something is causing friction and preventing people from pulling the trigger to buy the product. So I went back to the product page to add signs of social proof by importing reviews, adding trust badges, and clear indicators of shipping speed and free shipping threshold. Hopefully, that will help with conversions over the next few days. The data pool is still really small so I'm just gonna eat the costs so that Meta can learn and find my audience. In the meantime, I'm going to study other top performing meta ads. I'm not just looking at my competitors but just top performers overall to focus on the structure of their creatives and make more so I can switch out the creatives where necessary.
I'll keep sharing what I learn along the way. If anyone has any tips or advice, I'd love to hear and learn more. If anyone has any questions, I'm happy to elaborate more. I honestly felt really alone trying to figure out how to do any of this and obviously scared too because I was taking a huge risk so for anyone in a similar position, I'm happy to share all that I can. I don't know if what I'm doing is right and I am not a professional but just want to help if I can.
Tools I use:
Canva Pro (paid)
Google AI Pro for Gemini (paid)
Meta Ads Library (free)
Claude (free)
