New DTC Sellers Can't Make Ads Profitable
New direct-to-consumer (DTC) business owners are facing significant challenges in acquiring customers and achieving profitability. They're grappling with high advertising costs, low engagement, inconsistent sales, and issues like comment spam impacting ad performance. Many are seeking advice and validation on their strategies.
SOURCES (60)
“I'm pretty new on Etsy (about 2 months) and I've made 7 sales and they were all from people I know in real life. I get an ok amount of traffic I think, between 10-30 visits per day. Is this normal for Etsy ads? To…”
“Hey yall, after spending weeks on meta ads I've finally gotten a good bit of views on my site. But my issue is that the atc and checkout rate are straight garbage. Does anybody have any ideas on why so? If y'all need any more info please ask! Thanks! My site is PandaPCs — Hand-Built Gaming PCs, Made in Texas mtd stats https://imgur.com/a/AOK3Jak submitted by /u/According_Chip_5355 [link] [comments]”
“I run a small business mostly sells come from Facebook message campaign. Recent one month I have been seeing sales drop in half. I run CBO campaign. On ad set level Using no targetting and platform only Facebook and on ads level I am using 3 videos with all the AI recommendation on . Am I doing anything wrong? submitted by /u/Big_Investigator5279 [link] [comments]”
Thank you for the feedback man, I’ll definetly improve those aspects!
“Your minimum is your minimum. It doesn’t do you any favors to go below it UNLESS you are just donating or doing some kind of promotion. Other than that, you need what you need to make a profit.”
“Yea good part form that, but also organic content (insta reels getting 20/30k views)”
“Not validating demand before spending, same as a few people said. I built the whole thing out assuming orders would come and then had to unwind my pricing when they didnt. Prove people will pay first, make it pretty later. When I started out I knew some SEO basics but most of my pages were a bit makeshift and it probably cost me a lot of trust in the early stages. Switched my domain to a .shop because it read as more legit (if I can even say that lol) and my bounce rate dropped (which obv matter”
Yea that makes sense! Giving more informations about the product itself is a reassurance many people want. I’ll improve that thank you!
“sounds like you’re doing the right thing by learning before spending money on ads i think combining keyword research, competitor analysis and checking customer comments/reviews can give you a better picture of demand are you already testing any product ideas or still in the research phase?”
“Hi everyone, I’m a small business owner for the past 2 years, I’ve been using META ads for instagram and they have helped me every single time except recently. I would say the last two weeks have been awful, I’m so sure there is a change because everything I’m doing is the same, same hook, feed, campaign etc Even when I tried changing it up, it still isn’t performing well. I’m not sure if anyone has experience with this or if it’s a real thing? Every month I spent between 250-500$ in ads and alw”
“I used to post product photos and links in relevant Facebook groups whenever I was running ads. I thought another place to post meant another source of traffic. Most of the time, the posts got removed, and the clicks from the ads did not lead to many serious inquiries either. Looking back, I was treating the groups too much like free ad space. People were not there waiting to see promotions. They were talking about projects, equipment problems, and real experiences. Recently, I’ve been paying mo”
“My shop is decently new and the listings are definitely very new. I see the recommendation that multiple listings can really help with traffic to your store but am struggling to have multiple listings just yet. My main listing does have 3 variations, should I spike those out into individual listings instead? What else do I need to know? Thank you in advance! https://coleyandtate.etsy.com submitted by /u/PlentyPeace6727 [link] [comments]”
“biggest one I see (and made myself) is dumping the whole first-year budget into paid ads before there's any repeat-purchase engine in place — CAC creeps up every month and you're renting every single customer instead of building anything durable. we were burning ~$4-5k/mo on meta ads with a new store and barely broke even on first orders. what actually turned things around was building out an affiliate/partner channel — set it up through admitad since they had the network already in plac”
“Websites are the part I stopped tracking. I run a swarm of agents on competitor prices and assortment instead, and most of what comes back is noise, a promo that lasts a weekend, a price that goes back up two days later. What's worth reacting to is what's still there weeks later, and that's a small slice of what the agents catch”
“If you have any apps on your Shopify store that show you real-time visitors, you'd better open them immediately after you click publish on your new Meta ad. You will be surprised by how many bots they use. Is it to inflate clicks? Is it to review? Is it to check if all links and catalog items have been linked correctly? Who knows... But the thing we know is that they use a massive amount of bots that land on your website the second you hit publish on any of your new ads. Have any of you been”
“These are really great findings, i mean i have seen the same pattern of the stores failing or being stuck. I want to ask about something, Long Form Statics by a persona page, have you used these or any experience to share about that these works or not or what should be the campaign structure for these type of ads. (also known as native ads)”
“Hey everyone, looking for some advice with a sudden PMax issue. I’ve had a PMax sales campaign running since February with phenomenal results—we were consistently seeing a 30x–50x ROAS on a daily budget of around $40. Our conversion cycle is very short (customers typically convert within 1 to 2 days), so changes in performance show up almost immediately. Both campaigns mentioned below use a Target ROAS bidding strategy. Right before performance crashed, we added nearly 1,000 new products at once”
“link clicks = 1230 landing page views = 330 shopify sessions = around 330 I've confirmed it's NOT a pixel or tracking problem, because I compared Meta's landing page view count to my Shopify session count and they're roughly the same. So the tracking is accurate — these clicks genuinely aren't arriving. What I've already done: - Cut Reels and other low-intent placements, now running Facebook + Instagram Feed only - Confirmed I'm optimising for Purchase, with the pixel”
“For the past 7 days, I’ve been getting a ton of ATCs and checkouts but literally zero sales, and it’s driving me insane. The weird part is, this used to convert for me but suddenly it just stopped. All the metrics still look good — 5%+ link CTR, no Audience Network placements, and the landing page matches the ad perfectly. I’m spending $50/day targeting the US market. At this spend, I’d expect at least 5–10 sales, especially since the product is $90. See the image attached in the comments.”
“Worth logging a month of them before you change anything. Ours cane out about 60 percent price or is this in stock, and those are fine to answer automatically because the answer doesn't change. Anything about an order someone had already paid for we left for the morning, an instant canned reply on those is what actually annoys people.”
“I don’t think you can judge consistency on a daily, weekly or monthly basis in e-commerce. Consistency for me is if I meet a certain target across all quarters”
“Hey, I recently started expanding my business to sell through Shopify, I've just been testing the water a bit and only got about 10 orders so far but today I got a really large 3000$ order. The weird thing is, the user bought a lot of the same type of product multiple times (5-10 products of the same type) for a product that you typically would not buy multiple of. Shopify marked the order as low risk but I can't help but have to think twice about this order. We have a solid margin so th”
“its all depends on you but if you are new of distribution with no social following then except it to take longer :) or just hire or pay influencer :)”
“As its organic traffic, CAC is low so decent margins… (obviously accounting for the investment in organic visibility). I think the SEO work we’ve been doing has contributed as Shop needs to use something to determine what products deserve to be pushed organically”
“1, its dead simple. Only issue is I didn't see how to advertise only a subset of your catalog. Had to do the whole thing.”
“Upload every day. Spent three months doing exactly that. Quantity over everything. Ended up with 200 listings, most of them mediocre, none of them ranking. Follow the trends. Chased seasonal stuff, Pinterest trends, whatever was blowing up that week. By the time my designs were live the moment had passed and I was competing with a hundred shops who had the same idea. More niches equals more chances. Split my shop across five completely unrelated niches thinking I was covering more ground. Etsy h”
“That’s interesting. One a scale of 1 to meta ads campaign manager, how difficult was it to set up ads there? I’m considering doing more of what’s working for the holiday season”
“I have gotten a 6x ROAS on my shop ads. Was shocked. Not a huge volume, but about a sale per week that I wasn't expecting. You set your CPA and only pay if someone buys.”
“Not much .. that's area I am lacking interest but I think trying for some Ads will be my next target.”
“I had free credit and turned them on, and it never spent any of the budget, but I got exactly one sale from it.”
“Do you ever do shop ads? I’m considering turning mine back on. Heading into busy season and they gave me a bunch of credits last year to try them. Seemed to be working well but wondering others experiences”
“I have been selling for a few days, and i might just be impatient, but im getting little to no views. Do I need to buy ads, do those work? submitted by /u/izzy0-o-0 [link] [comments]”
“The website itself looks really professional - no glaring issues there. I notice that the one thing you didn't mention in your post is paid ads - have you tried investing in Google Ads or Meta Ads yet?”
“test in ads first, not on the PDP. by the time someone's on your PDP they've already decided to consider the product, so PDP traffic converts on completely different signals (trust, price, shipping) than top-of-funnel ad traffic where you're still selling the "why would I need this" story. ad click-through and hook rate give you a much faster, cheaper signal on which use-case actually lands, usually within a few days at low spend, versus weeks of PDP traffic split testing.”
“40 views in 3 weeks is the real problem. That usually means search demand or keywords are off more than trust is off. I would fix one thing first and make 5 listings aimed at very clear buyer jobs like candle cost calculator or bakery pricing sheet then use Etsy search plus a lead source to find real maker niches and name the products the way those people talk.”
“june to august, every source that sent me traffic: direct, 673 sessions, 0 sales tiktok ads, 480 sessions, 22 second average visit, 0 sales tiktok referral, 157, 0 sales twitter, 47, 0 sales product hunt, 5, 0 sales mcpmarket.com , 1 session, 1 sale the one who bought came from a directory that had scraped a listing i published in august and then forgot about. four files, one afternoon. they signed up and paid within two hours and never opened my pricing page. one sale proves nothing. 480 paid c”
“Marketing is very rough, we all know that - maybe we just do it "wrong" ? Let me explain. Its much easier to get likes/upvotes then it is to get a signup - agree? So i was wondering When you post something bout your saas, lets say, a new feature, and that post, gets 10 upvotes. Then 10 ppl, think that feature/your saas is nice - right? - Should they be contacted right away? I mean, they just said " yes, i like what you said/do/build/etc " ? I know its not mindblowing though,”
“Day 1: $37 CPM, 1,884 impressions (fast and cheap delivery of impressions - what I was thinking was normal) Day 2: $87 CPM, 386 impressions (first sale) Day 3: $91 CPM, 603 impressions Day 4: trending $118+, barely any delivery USA broad audience geo. Purchase campaign. Adv+ placements. Pets product. From day 2 onwards delivery of impressions became slow - like it was pacing them out - knowing it was going to be fewer and more expensive impressions. The trajectory is completely wrong. Day 1 felt”
“Day 1: $37 CPM, 1,884 impressions (fast and cheap delivery of impressions - what I was thinking was normal) Day 2: $87 CPM, 386 impressions (first sale) Day 3: $91 CPM, 603 impressions Day 4: trending $118+, barely any delivery USA broad audience geo. Purchase campaign. Adv+ placements. Pets product. From day 2 onwards delivery of impressions became slow - like it was pacing them out - knowing it was going to be fewer and more expensive impressions. The trajectory is completely wrong. Day 1 felt”
“My shop is about 1 month old and I haven't gotten any sales yet (even with 10+ listings) but the problem is i have no reviews. submitted by /u/Parking-Beyond4499 [link] [comments]”
“I start with very good price but it's clearly pointed out as launching promotion https://www.fullhouseqa.com/#pricing”
“Putting myself in the shoes of a customer and visiting the store you linked, my first impression was that the store feels unfinished. It looks like it’s either still being built or hasn’t been fully launched yet. Seeing only two products, with one of them already sold out, wouldn’t give me enough confidence to place an order. I’d honestly be worried about sending my money and never receiving what I ordered — completely regardless of what kind of products are being sold.”
“For 7 days now, I have had so many ATCs and checkouts but no sales and it’s driving me crazy. The funny part? I used to convert but not anymore. All metrics look fine, 5%+ link CTR, no audience network too for placement and landing pages matching the ad. Spending usd50 a day too in the US market. At least with this amount, I should have 5-10 sales and product costs $90. See image attached in comments. submitted by /u/Kealvyn [link] [comments]”
“I recently started my Shopify store in Pakistan and started advertising it on Instagram and Tiktok, and it blew up national and international. But mostly international. The thing is I do not have even a month of proven revenue/profit, so I haven't registered the business yet because I don't want to invest so heavily into it before that. Also if I start registering and making business accounts, the hype train might die and I don't want that to happen either. So payment gateways on Sho”
“The biggest blind spot I see stores make is relying purely on social media instead of optimizing local SEO / their Google Business Profile and building an automated capture and follow-up system. Once people click over from TikTok, are you capturing their info so you can nurture them via email or SMS, or are you just hoping they buy on the first visit? What does your current follow-up process look like after someone lands on your site?”
“Yeah the logo-on-white thing shows up in B2B too. An ad that doesn't name the pain in the first line is just paying to decorate someone's feed. I write ads like I'm finishing their sentence ("stuck doing X every Monday") instead of "innovative platform." If a stranger can't tell what problem you solve in one second of scrolling, the creative isn't ready, no matter how clean the brand looks.”
“with 15 visitors a day youre doing well to get one sale a month. thats just math. the fix is usually answering the questions people ask before they trust handmade jewelry, like metal sourcing or allergy stuff. i use blawgy to automate those posts but you can write them yourself once a week and get the same result. your studs take four hours so content is the only thing that scales without your hands”
“I launched my campaign 2 days ago at $30/day and I know that I have to give it time before I judge anything. I did the Advantage+ catalogue with 2 other creatives but basically all the budget is going to the catalogue. For the catalogue ad the website link is directing it to the shop all page and then I think the individual products go directly to the product pages. I’d like to know what’s a reasonable timeframe to start getting some add to carts and sales? I’ve already received a lot of clicks”
“You are not doing nearly enough volume bro this is nothing, this is just sales”
“Sales is a whole art that can be studied. Go on YouTube and follow some creators and learn how to sell. Sales is not the same as marketing.”
“and make sure your abandoned cart sequence is at least 3 emails, the first one alone barely moves the needle”
“That is probably the right order. Mine had the same shape by accident, except I never got to the second half. Four months of pre promo and then more pre promo. How long do you usually let it sit before you start pushing?”
“For real, people think ads get them sales, NO, ads give you visibility, and visibility doesn't always mean sales”
“the geo diagnosis is probably solving the wrong problem. even a fully wrong-country audience clicks at some baseline rate if the hook and CTA are doing their job, curiosity alone gets people to tap through. "almost no clicks" on 600k views across two separate platforms is a CTA and hook problem showing up as a geo problem, not the other way around, which is basically what CrypticBakedGoods already flagged. on the benchmark: for organic short-form with a genuinely compelling hook, 0.1-0”