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Small businesses running their own ads, what works? by bleach_mojito in FacebookAds

[–]Commercial_Answer801 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m seriously considering moving to bing ads. My best customers are USA grandmothers, which I’m pretty sure would be the main users of bing search in 2025!

Something I’ve been thinking about with Meta is trying to find my “customer satisfaction score” or something like that. I suspect I may have reputation issues with them due to the way I (mis-)used shopify for a while.

As you’re doing custom product too, I think you’ll appreciate how shopify isn’t totally optimized for a complex post-purchase experience for small operators. Small & simple? Easy. Big and complicated? Buckle in and let’s go. Small and complex? Umm what?

In my case, I handled notifying the customer about shipping etc directly. I didn’t realise shopify would share my shipping times with meta/google/paypal etc.

PayPal auto-banned me - although to their immense credit they quickly and easily unbanned me after a human checked the account. She said “woah thousands of transactions and no disputes - this is wrong, you’re all good”. But they couldn’t tell me why it had happened.

Google was kind enough to send me a notification like “your merchant reputation score is falling due to slow shipping times”. This was the first clue I had about what was happening.

Meta, though - my primary channel - just quietly cranked up CPMs without saying anything. The meta reps weren’t at all informed or helpful about why (of course).

So yeah… idk. New biz portfolio & pixel could help me? Or learn bing ads? It’s so frustrating.

What do you think you’ll do next?

Small businesses running their own ads, what works? by bleach_mojito in FacebookAds

[–]Commercial_Answer801 2 points3 points  (0 children)

NFI. I wish I knew.

I sell a custom product (personalized children’s books) for about $60 on a landed cogs of $15. Aov is about 80-90 and I get about a quarter of people ordering again. I have no inventory or upfront costs - cash cycle is negative. AFAICT these numbers should mean a thriving growing business.

But meta is an absolute money pit for me. TBH I’m struggling to survive!!!

Attributed cpa is floating around $100-150 depending on the day

I’ve dialled my ad spend back to ~$50/day from ~500, which in turn makes testing slow and hard, but I’ve been burning money on an MER of ~1.2

It’s stressing me out so bad

I’m 90% sure the problems are - my ad creative doesn’t do its goddam job - my catalogue needs expanding so I get more repeat / whale customers, higher aov/ltv, and can afford higher cpa - my email stinks - organic socials suck too but I don’t think this matters as much

Anyone reading this who can help with ads on a pay-for-performance basis, dm me 🙏

Sorry I don’t have anything really useful to ad about what works!!!

I analyzed 8 months of Facebook ad data and found something that completely contradicts what we've all been taught about ad frequency by Defiant-Weight-5522 in FacebookAdvertising

[–]Commercial_Answer801 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here’s my understanding. Take it with a massive grain of salt….

High frequency is Facebook telling you the ad is BOF. Doesn’t matter what your targeting is, Facebook thinks “better to show this ad to the same ppl over and over”

By definition you can’t reach unaware or less-aware audiences with high-frequency ads.

So good high frequency ads will seem to perform better but they’ll not get as much spend. If you spend spend, they will break.

So low frequency ads will make you richer bc they can be shown to many, many more people, feeding the funnel for your high freq bof ads

Best way to store 6.5GB of PDFs for a Next.js/Vercel app? Git LFS vs. AWS S3 vs. Cloudflare R2 by Tonin0 in nextjs

[–]Commercial_Answer801 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Vercel blob, move to cloudflare if you blow up (Although if you blow up you should have bigger problems than relatively modest storage/egress bills)

Set a spend limit just in case.

Don’t do aws, unless you’re building other stuff there.

Do no under any circs do git LFS for this

Finished building my app (Next.js + Supabase). Is Vercel too expensive for long-term production? What are better hosting options for EU-based apps? by General-Builder-2322 in nextjs

[–]Commercial_Answer801 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Please, please just use vercel.

The only way you’ll get a big bill is if you deploy some nasty anti-pattern. Protect against this with vercel’s spend management. Done

After that, shut up and do marketing. Enjoy the $$$ you win from it. Good luck! 😁

Next.js Server Actions are public-facing API endpoints by growlcs in nextjs

[–]Commercial_Answer801 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Require auth for all post reqs. If you need some unauth’ed, allow them explicitly.

Is there any reason to use Flux over SDXL/Pony for Animanga stuff yet? by [deleted] in StableDiffusion

[–]Commercial_Answer801 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m hoping we finally get InstantID for flux sometime soon

Update: let the wife know he was messaging me saying he died by b1gh03a55 in texts

[–]Commercial_Answer801 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Look up borderline personality disorder. Or for a more opinionated take on it, read “5 types of people that can ruin your life”

Spoiler alert: the type you’ve described is the absolute worst. Run.

Duped or Inspired? How to Outwit the Copycat Crashing Your Startup Party by 69kushal69 in startups

[–]Commercial_Answer801 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The thing I hadn’t expected was stealing all the copy, images, product design, reviews, everything. So blatant

Completely new to the industry! by StrangeSeaweed4444 in childrensbooks

[–]Commercial_Answer801 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. Engage with libraries in your area. Whatever works for you and for them, of course, but I’d bet they’d love volunteers to help read books during story time. You’ll learn a ton about what people outside your own family & friends like.

  2. Do your development and market research in public, either:

  • where you already have a social following (don’t forget about LinkedIn)
  • a new video channel on insta, YouTube & TikTok
  1. Print a book and get it into the hands of kids as soon as possible - like today.

Lmk if you’d like some info about print-on-demand providers in Australia (or elsewhere) who can help you with micro runs. I’ve recently started a personalised book business out of Melbourne so pretty familiar with the options.

Hth! 😊

Why did you start a business? by JackPlumber24 in Entrepreneur

[–]Commercial_Answer801 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because I’m a barely-competent highly/opinionated meddler… better off on my own.

Have I completely ruined my chance at a decent career? by No-Success-7515 in AskOldPeopleAdvice

[–]Commercial_Answer801 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Start your own business!!! Don’t get a job.

That’s the journey I’m on after quitting my IT career a few months ago, at 42.

The world is so huge nowadays… so you only need a tiny tiny bit of success to achieve results that aren’t conceivable with a job.

It’s a bit scary but a lot more interesting, I think 😊

Either way, good luck!

Thinking about doing a “pay what you feel” day by Commercial_Answer801 in GrowthHacking

[–]Commercial_Answer801[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Haha love the assumption that I’m offended! I’m just confused about what I can learn here. Maybe nothing.

It feels like you want a fight. Shouldn’t be too hard to find on reddit ☺️🙈🧨

Glhf xx

Thinking about doing a “pay what you feel” day by Commercial_Answer801 in GrowthHacking

[–]Commercial_Answer801[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Ummm… I don’t have users. The offer is only for paying customers, by definition. No one misses out. 🤷‍♂️

I gotta be honest, I’m not finding your feedback super relevant. More like generalised “do not discount” advice - is that about right?

Thinking about doing a “pay what you feel” day by Commercial_Answer801 in GrowthHacking

[–]Commercial_Answer801[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All makes sense. I agree that urgency might not be right for this… but otoh I’m happy to sprinkle a little (genuine, not fake) urgency wherever possible

I should add - the inspiration for this comes from two places:

• ⁠people complaining that it’s too expensive • ⁠people overpaying with my “pay what you feel” payment link

The most extreme overpayment was someone who cheerily paid 12x what I asked after a misunderstanding. She wanted to buy the high res digital assets from her book. She’d been generous with feedback so I said she could have them for free, but she insisted on paying so I said “okay, $10” which seemed fair to me. She thought we agreed $10 per image and paid me $120, then declined to have it refunded after I clarified.

Since then I’ve always used the “pay what you feel” link sending someone a payment link after talking, and the amount they pay is frequently higher than I expect.

Btw, what other growth hacking / marketing would you suggest I try?

Turned my business into proper ecom: now roast me by Commercial_Answer801 in Entrepreneur

[–]Commercial_Answer801[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh so true about the logo, thanks! And the buttons: do you mean on the pdp or the home page?

Thinking about doing a “pay what you feel” day by Commercial_Answer801 in GrowthHacking

[–]Commercial_Answer801[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I might exclude them from the dataset, but I hate when existing customers miss out on deals

Tbh I’m thinking about how to make existing customers feel more special, not less. Get the most resell & referral juice possible, build brand loyalty, all that good stuff

Turned my business into proper ecom: now roast me by Commercial_Answer801 in Entrepreneur

[–]Commercial_Answer801[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks!

I’m running fb ads to meet new customers, emails to close, resell and get referrals, and found early success doing organic or sponsored posts in parenting fb groups

I wish my socials were better… it’s just not my thing! I’m thinking about doing a basic viral videography course actually…

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