Solved: Losing Money on Meta Ads - Need Tips!

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

I had a look over your situation, and honestly, don't be too discouraged. What you're experiencing is incredibly common, especialy for a new store just finding its feet. It's a classic case of what seems logical – more money should equal more sales – not quite working out in the complex world of Meta's advertising algorithm. I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance based on what we see all the time with new eCommerce clients.

The good news is that you got 4 sales. That proves *someone* wants what you're selling. That's a huge first step. Now we just need to build a reliable system around that, instead of relying on a bit of early luck.

The problem with just upping the spend...

Alright, so the first and most obvious issue is why your results got worse when you spent more money. It feels backwards, right? The reason this happens is almost always down to something called the "learning phase".

When you launch a new campaign, Meta's algorithm has no idea who your best customers are. It has to go out and 'learn' by showing your ad to lots of different types of people to see who clicks, who browses, and ultimately, who buys. This phase is critical. During this time, your results will be all over the place – some good days, some bad days. It needs a decent amount of data (usually about 50 conversions per ad set per week) and a stable budget to figure things out.

When you suddenly increased the budget and started a new campaign, you likely did two things that threw a spanner in the works:

-> You reset the learning phase. Any major change to a campaign – budget, creative, targeting – tells the algorithm to basically start over. The little bit of learning it had done was wiped out, and it had to begin its expensive trial-and-error process all over again, but this time with your higher budget. So it was spending more money, more quickly, while being just as clueless as it was on day one.

-> You scaled an unproven winner. Those first 4 sales were a fantastic signal, but on a tiny budget, it was probably a bit of good fortune. It wasn't yet a predictable, repeatable result. Scaling aggressively based on a small, early data set is like betting your life savings on a horse that won one small race. You need more proof that it can consistently perform before you put more money behind it.

So, the first lesson is patience. You can't rush the algorithm. We need to give it a stable enviroment to learn in, and only scale things once we have consistent, predictable results, even if they're small at first.

We'll need to look at your customer's journey...

Before we even think about spending more, we need to play detective. We have to figure out where in the process you're losing people. Your ad spend is like water you're pouring into a funnel. If there are holes in that funnel, the water just leaks out, and very little comes out the bottom. Your job is to find and plug those holes. This is how we diagnose it.

You need to look at your Meta Ads Manager and your store's analytics together. Here's the path a customer takes, and the questions you need to ask at each step:

1. The Ad Itself (The Scroll-Stop)
Are people even noticing your ad? The key metric here is your Click-Through Rate (CTR). If your CTR is really low (say, under 1%), it means people are seeing your ad but just scrolling right past it. It’s not grabbing their attention. This points to a problem with your ad creative (the image or video) or your copy (the headline and text). It's not interesting enough. At the same time, look at your Cost Per Click (CPC). If the CPC is sky-high, it's another sign that Meta thinks your ad isn't very relevant or engaging to the audience you're targeting.

2. The Click to The Store (The First Impression)
Okay, so they click. What happens next? Do they stick around? Look at your ad clicks versus your landing page views. If you have a lot of clicks but a much smaller number of people actually landing on your store, it could be a sign your website is loading too slowly. People are impatient; if the page doesn't load in a couple of seconds, they're gone.

More importantly, if people land on your homepage but then immediatly leave, or very few go on to view a specific product, it points to a major disconnect. This is usually a targeting problem. The ad promised something that the landing page didn't deliver, or you're simply showing ads to the wrong people. The person who clicked for what they *thought* was a cool gadget isn't interested in your handcrafted pottery, for instance.

3. The Product Page (The Consideration)
This is often the biggest leak in the funnel for new stores. You might see lots of people getting to your product pages, which is great! It means your targeting is getting better and your ads are doing their job. But then... nothing. No "Add to Carts". This is a huge red flag that the problem isn't the ads; it's the product presentation. This could be due to:

• Poor Product Photos: Are they blurry, dark, or just unappealing? For physical products, photography is everything. People can't touch or feel the item, so your photos have to do all the work. I remember one campaign we worked on for a women's apparel brand, and simply switching to professional on-model photography made a world of difference, helping us get to a 691% return on ad spend.
• Weak Product Descriptions: Is there a description at all? Does it just list features, or does it sell the benefit? You need to tell a story and explain why your product is special.
• Price Shock: Is the price what they expected? If it's much higher than similar items, you need to justify why it's worth more.
• Lack of Information: Are there details on sizing, materials, shipping times? Uncertainty creates doubt, and doubt kills sales.

4. The Checkout (The Final Hurdle)
You get the 'Add to Cart', but then the customer vanishes. This is called cart abandonment. The most common culprit? Unexpected shipping costs. If a customer in the US sees a $20 product and then gets hit with $15 international shipping from Poland at the very end, they will almost always abandon the purchase. You need to be upfront about shipping costs, or even better, work it into your product price so you can offer "free" or flat-rate shipping.

You need to go through these steps forensically. Find the biggest drop-off point. That's the first hole you need to plug.

I'd say you need to fix the shop before the ads...

Leading on from the last point, I'll be brutally honest here. Based on my experience with hundreds of ad accounts, the most common reason ads 'don't work' for a new business has very little to do with the ads themselves. It's the website.

No amount of clever advertising can fix a leaky bucket. If you're pouring expensive, hard-won traffic into a website that doesn't inspire trust or make it easy to buy, you are just throwing money away. You're in Poland, targeting customers in the US. They don't know you. You are a complete unknown. You have to work extra hard to prove you are a legitimate, trustworthy business.

Before you spend another dollar on ads, I would focus all my energy on your store. Here are some non-negotiables:

-> Build Trust, Visibly: You need trust signals everywhere. This isn't optional.

• Reviews & Testimonials: You have 4 sales. Reach out to those customers. Offer them a discount on a future purchase in exchange for a review. If you have to, get friends and family to make a test purchase and leave an honest review. You need some social proof, fast.
• About Us Page: Tell your story. Who are you? Why did you start this store? People buy from people, especialy with smaller brands. A face and a story make you relatable, not some faceless, anonymous website.
• Clear Contact Info: Have an email address, maybe a contact form, and be clear about where you're shipping from. Hiding this information looks shady.
• Profesional Photography: I mentioned it before, but it's that important. It is the single biggest indicator of quality and trustworthiness for an eCommerce store. Invest in it. Even a good smartphone with great lighting is better than amaturish, dark photos.

-> Website Usability:

• Page Speed: Your site must load quickly. Use Google's PageSpeed Insights tool to check it. A slow site will kill your conversion rate.
• Clean Layout: Don't clutter the page. Make it obvious what you sell and how to buy it. The path to the checkout should be simple and clear.

My overall impression, without even seeing your store, is that it likely doesn't look trustworthy enough yet for a stranger in another country to feel comfortable ordering from you. Fix that first. It will make every penny you spend on ads work ten times harder.

You probably should rethink your targeting...

Okay, let's talk about who you're showing your ads to. Targeting the entire United States from day one is like trying to boil the ocean. It's a vast, diverse, and incredibly competitive market. You're competing with massive brands with multi-million dollar budgets. It's a tough place to start.

A much better approach is to get specific and build a proper campaign structure. One of the first things we do for clients is to seperate campaigns by country or region, because costs and performance can vary wildly. For instance, we often run one campaign for developed, English-speaking countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia) and another for other regions.

But more importantly, you need to structure your campaigns based on the customer's awareness of you. This is how we typically structure things for eCommerce:

Campaign 1: Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Prospecting
The goal here is to find brand new customers who have never heard of you. This is where you use 'Detailed Targeting'. Please, do not just target broad interests like "Shopping" or "Clothing". That's way too generic. You need to think deeply about your ideal customer.

• What magazines or blogs do they read?
• What competing or complementary brands do they buy from?
• What influencers do they follow?
• What specific hobbies are related to your product?

For example, if you sell high-end kitchen knives, you wouldn't target "Cooking". You'd target interests like "Fine Cooking Magazine", "Bon Appétit", followers of specific celebrity chefs, or brands like "Le Creuset" or "All-Clad". The more specific you are, the more likely you are to find your people. You should test 3-5 different ad sets, each with a different theme of interests.

Campaign 2: Middle/Bottom of Funnel (MoFu/BoFu) - Retargeting
This is where the real money is made, especialy for new stores. This campaign's job is to target people who have *already* shown interest. These are your warmest leads. You need to create 'Custom Audiences' for:

• All Website Visitors (in the last 30-90 days)
• People who viewed a Product Page (last 14-30 days)
• People who Added to Cart but didn't buy (last 7-14 days)

You then show these people different ads. For a website visitor, maybe show them your bestsellers. For someone who abandoned their cart, show them the exact product they left behind, maybe with a message like "Still thinking it over?" or even a small 10% discount code to nudge them over the line. Retargeting is incredibly powerful. I remember one client, a subscription box, for whom retargeting alone delivered a 1000% return on ad spend. You are leaving a huge amount of money on the table if you're not doing this.

I often see new accounts trying to do everything in one campaign. That's a recipe for disaster. Seperate your prospecting from your retargeting. It gives you so much more control and clarity on what's actually working.

You'll need to set realistic expectations...

Finally, we need to have a frank chat about numbers and timelines. Getting 4 sales on a $13/day budget was, as I said, definetly a bit of good luck. It's not a realistic or sustainable Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) for the US market.

Let's do some rough, back-of-the-napkin maths based on industry averages for eCommerce stores targeting a developed country like the US.

-> A decent Cost Per Click (CPC) might be anywhere from $0.50 to $2.00, or even more.
-> A typical eCommerce conversion rate (the percentage of website visitors who buy something) is around 2-5%. Let's be optimistic and say yours is 3%.

To get one sale, you would need about 33 website visitors (1 sale / 3% conversion rate). If your CPC is $1.50, those 33 visitors would cost you 33 * $1.50 = $49.50. So, a realistic Cost Per Sale for you might be closer to $50 than the $3 you were seeing. The actual number can be higher or lower, but it's almost certainly not going to be a few dollars per sale long-term.

I'm not saying this to discourage you, but to set you up for success. The goal isn't to get impossibly cheap sales from day one. The goal is to build a predictable system where you know that for every $50 you put in, you get a customer who spends $100. That's a winning business. But it takes time, data, and a lot of testing to get there. Two weeks is the very, very begining of that journey.

We've worked with clients where it took time to significantly reduce their cost per acquisition. For instance, in a student recruitment campaign, we were able to reduce the cost per booking by 80% over time. It's a process of continuous improvement, not an overnight fix.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know this is a lot to take in. To make it simpler, I've broken down my main recommendations into a table. This is the roadmap I would follow if I were in your shoes.

As you can probably see, getting paid advertising right is a lot more involved than just setting a budget and pressing 'Go'. It’s a full-time job of analysis, testing, and strategic thinking. It's about building an entire system, from the ad creative to the targeting to the website experience and the final thank you page. Every single part has to work in harmony.

Trying to learn all this on the fly while also running every other aspect of your new business is incredibly tough. Mistakes in this area can be very expensive, as you've already started to see. You can burn through hundreds or thousands of dollars very quickly with little to show for it.

Often, the fastest and most cost-effective way forward is to get an expert to review your specific situation and give you a clear, tailored plan. We offer a completely free, no-obligation initial strategy session where we can go through your ad account and your store together on a call. We'll show you exactly what we'd do to turn things around. It's something many of our clients, from eCommerce stores to B2B software companies, have found incredibly valuable.

If that sounds like something that could be helpful, just let me know and we can get something arranged.

Either way, I hope this detailed breakdown gives you a much clearer path forward. Good luck!

Regards,

Team @