xShepherdx's Progress Thread: Building A Fastlane Business

[xShepherdx]

For a bit of backstory, check out my intro post here.

Since starting my business 3 years ago, I've spent been struggling to make it profitable. For the curious, this business is a digital eCommerce business operating in a creative niche.

But as of today, I am FINALLY happy to report that things are looking up. My ads are finally profitable, sales are growing, and I have an actual plan for growing the company moving forward.

To be clear, I’m not out of the “desert of desertion” yet. My site has yet to break $4k in revenue. And my feedback loop is only just starting to spit out actionable results. Things could change at any moment, which is kind of fun.

My ultimate goal is to earn enough from my ecom business (this or a future one) to live on and start buying real estate. The plan is to live cheap, house hack a duplex/triplex/fourplex, and grow my RE portfolio while scaling my income from the business at the same time. @Envision did this exact thing in my same city, so I'm optimistic that I can figure it out too.

My goals for May are:

1) Scaling up my Meta ads now that they’re finally profitable. More ad spend, more creative, more experiments. I’ve found a guy who can crank out high-quality video ads for my niche. They've been working great so I’m leaning into that for now. My goal is to profitably break $4K in revenue in May.

2) Figuring out why my email deliverability went into the toilet overnight. I was getting ~40% open rates for a while but now only 2.5% of Gmail users open my emails. And Gmail addresses make up over 80% of my subscriber list. Email has been beyond frustrating for me and this latest struggle only adds to my frustration. Any email pros here?

3) Begin publishing content on TikTok. One of my contractors had some ideas so we’ve scheduled a few months of content to see what happens. This is largely an experiment, but I’m stoked to finally have the ability to put out content regularly. If this works at all, I'll be finding someone to do content on a regular basis for TicTok, Insta, YouTube, etc.

4) Release 3 new products. These products fit into a trending niche within my niche. These 3 products will be small and marketed primarily as a bundle. The products we've developed are really sick and I think our community will love them. As a bonus, I've got a few affiliates who will be happy to do content around these products which should help.

5) Build (or find) a dashboard that allows me to easily see AOV, CAC, MER, conversion rates, and more. On a normal site this would be simple, but with paid and free products ran through the same store tracking even basic metrics becomes a huge PITA. Even checking the simplest data takes me like 20 minutes due to page load times and having to input the data manually.

This thread will be where I document my journey and share the lessons I’ve learned. So please, say hi, ask questions, and follow along with my progress.

 

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[Andy Black]

Build (or find) a dashboard that allows me to easily see AOV, CAC, MER, conversion rates, and more.

What are your data sources? Can you download data each morning from them, drop them into tabs in a Google Sheet, and then your dashboard automatically updates?

 

[xShepherdx]

What are your data sources? Can you download data each morning from them, drop them into tabs in a Google Sheet, and then your dashboard automatically updates?

Woocommerce, FB Ads Manager, Google Analytics, and Klaviyo.

Right now I'm doing the caveman method of filtering the data on each platform and manually inputting that into a spreadsheet each that time I want to see a certain metric.

I hadn't considered just doing an export for each platform and dumping that into a Google Sheet that automatically populates a dashboard tab.

Done that way, tracking metrics would be like 10000x easier than what I'm doing now. Especially if I take the time to make charts that show historical trends like last 30 days, 14 days, etc. I'm gonna do some Googling on this tomorrow and see if I can set something up.

Thanks for the nudge @Andy Black. I'll re-read the thread you sent me about it too.

 

[MitchC]

I’m not a email expert but search Klaviyo help for instructions on adding a dedicated sending domain and warming it up if you haven’t already

Nice work on getting profitable

You’ll hit 4K easy

What’s your AOV and margins like?

To be honest at the volume you’re doing I’m not sure I’d worry too much about all that data

I’d work out if your ads are profitable, or if you are profitable over all, either daily or weekly, and that should be enough

If you’re making money then scale up what’s working

Once you have bigger volume the data will be more useful

For example, unless you are split testing with enough traffic, and have similar traffic, knowing your conversion rate isn’t going to be all that useful

This could be horrible advice, I’m probably the first person to ever give the business advice to not worry about knowing your numbers and I’m sure it’s a good habit to get into, understanding and measuring those things so they can be improved, but yeah, just my opinion

Why aren’t you using shopify? Do you think you could switch now before it’s too late?

Once you scale up then I’d invest in better tracking software like triplewhale, then I’d scale further and start looking at other numbers like conversion rate

Right now, I’m my opinion, the numbers should be:
How much did I spend on ads
How much did I make in sales
What were my costs
How much profit did I make

You should be able to scale spend just looking at those numbers

 

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[Andy Black]

I’m not a email expert but search Klaviyo help for instructions on adding a dedicated sending domain and warming it up if you haven’t already

Nice work on getting profitable

You’ll hit 4K easy

What’s your AOV and margins like?

To be honest at the volume you’re doing I’m not sure I’d worry too much about all that data

I’d work out if your ads are profitable, or if you are profitable over all, either daily or weekly, and that should be enough

If you’re making money then scale up what’s working

Once you have bigger volume the data will be more useful

For example, unless you are split testing with enough traffic, and have similar traffic, knowing your conversion rate isn’t going to be all that useful

This could be horrible advice, I’m probably the first person to ever give the business advice to not worry about knowing your numbers and I’m sure it’s a good habit to get into, understanding and measuring those things so they can be improved, but yeah, just my opinion

Why aren’t you using shopify? Do you think you could switch now before it’s too late?

Once you scale up then I’d invest in better tracking software like triplewhale, then I’d scale further and start looking at other numbers like conversion rate

Right now, I’m my opinion, the numbers should be:
How much did I spend on ads
How much did I make in sales
What were my costs
How much profit did I make

You should be able to scale spend just looking at those numbers

Yeah, for most of our clients we manually enter weekly data into a Google Sheet. I call it the Weekly Trading sheet. I posted screenshots in one of my progress threads.

 

[Andy Black]

Yeah, for most of our clients we manually enter weekly data into a Google Sheet. I call it the Weekly Trading sheet. I posted screenshots in one of my progress threads.

I also mentioned it in @Lex DeVille 's thread here. Most folks won't do it. That's part of why I'll beat them.

GOLD! - EXECUTION - How to Create a $2k+/mo Passive Income Website in 30 Days (or Less)

Hi, first of all great post! I've got a question. When you say "Product creation" do you mean actually recreating the digital product itself? Or just creating a product listing on the page? Since you're talking in very short amounts of time, I'll assume it's the latter, but I want to be on the...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

 

[MitchC]

I also mentioned it in @Lex DeVille 's thread here. Most folks won't do it. That's part of why I'll beat them.

GOLD! - EXECUTION - How to Create a $2k+/mo Passive Income Website in 30 Days (or Less)

Hi, first of all great post! I've got a question. When you say "Product creation" do you mean actually recreating the digital product itself? Or just creating a product listing on the page? Since you're talking in very short amounts of time, I'll assume it's the latter, but I want to be on the...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

Nice. I think lex replied to you exactly what I’m thinking, he needs to scale up and get things working before bothering with this.

Even only doing this once a week seems a little pointless with such little data.

The OP mentions free products, paid products, email open rates, bundles, new products, CAC MER conversion rates, google analytics, yet the revenue goal is only 4K a month.

I think he needs to take a step back, get out of the weeds and data, pick a product, offer and audience, run some ads and scale up.

It sounds like Facebook is starting to work, I would pick a product and audience, probably whatever is working, throw 10 videos in a dynamic creative adset, and increase the budget by 20% every day as long as it’s profitable.

I wouldn’t even pay for klaviyo or bother sending emails at this point.

Oh man I see TikTok is mentioned too. Man this just sounds exactly like how I was a couple weeks ago, I think you were saying you were doing the same @Andy Black

 

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[Andy Black]

Nice. I think lex replied to you exactly what I’m thinking, he needs to scale up and get things working before bothering with this.

Even only doing this once a week seems a little pointless with such little data.

The OP mentions free products, paid products, email open rates, bundles, new products, CAC MER conversion rates, google analytics, yet the revenue goal is only 4K a month.

I think he needs to take a step back, get out of the weeds and data, pick a product, offer and audience, run some ads and scale up.

It sounds like Facebook is starting to work, I would pick a product and audience, probably whatever is working, throw 10 videos in a dynamic creative adset, and increase the budget by 20% every day as long as it’s profitable.

I wouldn’t even pay for klaviyo or bother sending emails at this point.

Oh man I see TikTok is mentioned too. Man this just sounds exactly like how I was a couple weeks ago, I think you were saying you were doing the same @Andy Black

I enjoyed mucking about on TikTok etc. I even had a chat with a Google Ads client 20 mins ago and was able to explain what the benefits were and how to get started simply... from experience not theory.

I dropped video again this year to focus on the channel I know best.


I'd do those Weekly Trading sheets even with barely any impressions and visitors. Check out my progress thread to see me soing it even with €5/day spend.

Measure - Report - Analyse - Act
(I did a thread about that years ago.)

Or MJ's:
Act - Assess - Adjust

 

[xShepherdx]

@MitchC I recently read your thread and it was incredibly helpful so it's great to hear your perspective on things.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, it means a lot to me!

I’m not a email expert but search Klaviyo help for instructions on adding a dedicated sending domain and warming it up if you haven’t already

This looks perfect, I'll look into this soon. Thanks!

What’s your AOV and margins like?

AOV is around $23. Net margin is around 40% for the year so far.

This could be horrible advice, I’m probably the first person to ever give the business advice to not worry about knowing your numbers and I’m sure it’s a good habit to get into, understanding and measuring those things so they can be improved, but yeah, just my opinion

It sounds like what you're getting at is to look at the numbers that matter.

Right now, my conversion rate doesn't don't matter. I know it's around 1% sitewide and that's good enough to get me going. Over time, I will need to know my numbers much better, but for now it's more about knowing the numbers you listed out. (I quoted them below, but they are: How much I spent on ads, made in sales, costs, and profit.)

Why aren’t you using shopify? Do you think you could switch now before it’s too late?

I really should have. At the start, the ~$70 a month scared me because I didn't even know if I'd make a sale. If I could do it over, I'd go with Shopify 100%.

But now I don't know if it's too late or worth the effort to switch at this point. I guess it would be a simple matter of building the new site within Shopify using their free trial, importing all of my data, and making sure I don't mess anything up along the way lol.

Seems like a lot of work but given the issues I've been having with the site I'm highly considering a switch. I'll look into this!

Once you scale up then I’d invest in better tracking software like triplewhale, then I’d scale further and start looking at other numbers like conversion rate

Triplewhale looks like a dream. I'll get there

Right now, I’m my opinion, the numbers should be:
How much did I spend on ads
How much did I make in sales
What were my costs
How much profit did I make

You should be able to scale spend just looking at those numbers

Thanks for this. I feel I've been MASSIVELY overthinking everything for a long time now. The only reason I've actually become profitable is that I've simplified my site, offers, and ad strategy significantly.

Now it's time to simplify my mindset and focus. This helps a lot!

The OP mentions free products, paid products, email open rates, bundles, new products, CAC MER conversion rates, google analytics, yet the revenue goal is only 4K a month.

I think he needs to take a step back, get out of the weeds and data, pick a product, offer and audience, run some ads and scale up.

Haha when you put it that way it becomes way easier to see why I'm stuck.

I'm not focused and feel like I'm running around with my hair on fire trying to make everything work instead of sticking to the "One Product, One Channel, One Avatar" strategy. Thanks for straightening me out.

It sounds like Facebook is starting to work, I would pick a product and audience, probably whatever is working, throw 10 videos in a dynamic creative adset, and increase the budget by 20% every day as long as it’s profitable.

....Damn. That's incredibly simple and actionable. I'm close to doing this right now I just need to get a few more videos done and I'll be off to the races.

I wouldn’t even pay for klaviyo or bother sending emails at this point.

Honestly, that's how I've felt for a while so it's been on the back burner for a bit.

I mostly just use email for the simple flows and to release new products but it's largely been a waste of time and effort for me. It's hard to shut it down when you're collecting 100-200 emails a day from people in your target market though.

But that may just be vanity - as the revenue from those emails just isn't there. Probably because they sign up for the free content and have no intention of paying. Hmmm...

I don't think shutting down the free content/email sign-up is the right move, but there might be a better way to use the content/attention. Other companies have used download gates in the past to grow their socials, but that strategy seems dead nowadays. But I'm sure there's something I could do.

First things first though!

Oh man I see TikTok is mentioned too. Man this just sounds exactly like how I was a couple weeks ago, I think you were saying you were doing the same @Andy Black

Haha I actually read your posts about hiring the TikTok agency like 2 days after agreeing to move forward with TikTok. Luckily I didn't go with an agency, it was actually one of my contractors I work with regularly (who's very into my industry) that brought me the idea and wanted to try it.

It was relatively cheap and he was excited about the idea, so I went for it. This was also before my ads were profitable, so I was more willing to test the platform out.

My initial thought was to make content for TT and use the stuff that works in FB ads since I had just set them up and wanted to push as many videos into my ad sets as possible. But I think I'm experiencing the same thing that you did lol. The content is nowhere near direct response and breaks like all of the marketing "rules" that I've learned.

But my guy seems to know his stuff and has laid out a pretty well-thought-out plan for TT, so I actually think it will do okay on TT itself. Not sure about sales, but I invested a tiny amount of time and money into it, so I'm not worried. If it works, I have ~2 months of content going out and a system for making much more. If not, I'm only out a couple hundred bucks.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and feedback. You've given me a lot to think about and act on. I'm fired up and ready to grow this bad boy!

 

[xShepherdx]

"Our lives are frittered away with detail. Simplify, simplify," - Henry David Thoreau.

I went from a huge spreadsheet with multiple tabs and calculators to this simple tracking sheet:



Hyperlinks lead to the relevant data source for each metric. Blue boxes are inputs. Purples are inputs from the previous period. Once the colored boxes are filled in everything else will auto-populate. I'll update this every Monday morning.

My goals with this sheet are to focus on the metrics that matter and track my progress week to week.

I don't know why I was overcomplicating this before. I think I was just overwhelmed and not thinking clearly.

Again, huge thanks to @Andy Black and @MitchC for talking some sense into me. It may take me a while, but I do learn eventually haha.

I also got the final preview of a new video ad today and I think it's a huge step up from my current ads. This should be done by Sunday and will be going live ASAP. I also ran some new creative ideas past my video guy and I'm optimistic about what's coming.

Act, assess, adjust, repeat...

 

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[Andy Black]

"Our lives are frittered away with detail. Simplify, simplify," - Henry David Thoreau.

I went from a huge spreadsheet with multiple tabs and calculators to this simple tracking sheet:

View attachment 48520

Hyperlinks lead to the relevant data source for each metric. Blue boxes are inputs. Purples are inputs from the previous period. Once the colored boxes are filled in everything else will auto-populate. I'll update this every Monday morning.

My goals with this sheet are to focus on the metrics that matter and track my progress week to week.

I don't know why I was overcomplicating this before. I think I was just overwhelmed and not thinking clearly.

Again, huge thanks to @Andy Black and @MitchC for talking some sense into me. It may take me a while, but I do learn eventually haha.

I also got the final preview of a new video ad today and I think it's a huge step up from my current ads. This should be done by Sunday and will be going live ASAP. I also ran some new creative ideas past my video guy and I'm optimistic about what's coming.

Act, assess, adjust, repeat...

Make it rows and columns (a table/list)?

Then you can do pivot-tables etc.

 

[Andy Black]

I created 3 videos a few years ago that might help:

• https://www.youtube.com/@excelcorner

Here's a post with a screenshot of our "Weekly Trading" Google Sheet:

• Building long-tail Google Ads campaigns for fun and profit

 

[xShepherdx]

I created 3 videos a few years ago that might help:

• https://www.youtube.com/@excelcorner

Here's a post with a screenshot of our "Weekly Trading" Google Sheet:

• Building long-tail Google Ads campaigns for fun and profit

Thanks for the links Andy, I'll check those out today.

 

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[xShepherdx]

My goal for May was to profitably break $4k in revenue. That's too easy.

My goal now is to profitably crush $6k in revenue - or roughly double my previous high.

That's only ~$194 in revenue per day. I've been well over that for the last few days. All I have to do is keep up the momentum.

To accomplish this, my objectives for May are:

• Make my ads more efficient and scale them up. Right now my CAC is running near breakeven with a slight skew towards profitability.
  • I'll need to learn a ton more about FB ads. I feel like I'm only scratching the surface here so I've built a playlist with a ton of tutorials in it. That's my Netflix now. If anyone has any go-to videos or courses, please let me know!
  • Test new creatives - A new video should be ready to go today and I'm working on getting more done ASAP. Gonna test some UGC/TikTok type of stuff that I can make myself as well as more professional ads made by my video guy.
  • Continue increasing ad spend while profitable/breakeven. I'm getting steady conversions and positive feedback/comments so FB's algorithm should naturally become more efficient over time(...right?).
  • My target is 2x ROAS for the month. I've achieved this in small spurts before, but it's not consistent enough yet. It's time to make 2x seem embarrassingly low.
• Launch at least one new product. I have one that's basically ready to go, I just need to plan a launch for it and get marketing videos done. This should be fairly straightforward now that I'm figuring out ads. We're also trying something new with this one, so I'm really interested to see how it goes.

After reading this post in @Matt Lee's "The MOST Useful Thread" I realized I've become comfortable with my mediocre life. F*ck that. So this month I'll also be:

• Doubling down on my workouts by making a program and sticking to it. Part of this is getting a gym membership and starting Kinobody. Gonna go look at gyms in my area today and sign up for the best one. I will have abs by the end of summer.
• Using GoalSumo.com to ensure I do basic stuff like washing the car, vacuuming, etc. All the boring stuff that slips through the cracks but adds to the clutter in my life. My goal is to make basic stuff like this a weekly habit so that it's painless and my home/workspace stay clean - which is when I do my best work. This also impresses/helps the girlfriend, so that's a plus too.
• Learning more about ADD as I've been struggling with it for years. I recently picked up Gabor Mate's book Scattered Minds and so far it's been very illuminating. Getting my brain firing on all cylinders will be important as my business continues to grow and I take on bigger and better challenges. I think fixing my relationship with my ADD is a key part of it.
• I attended a Toastmasters meeting the other day and had a blast. I don't struggle with a fear of public speaking, but my delivery and "Ummms" are killing me. I recently sent a video to a celebrity and realized after sending it how much better the video would have been if my speech was even just a bit more clear. I want my speech and videos/interviews to be as good as possible, so I'll be joining my local Toastmasters as a member at this week's meeting.

Let's do this!

 

[xShepherdx]

So, a while back I posted that a celebrity had bought my product.

For context, this person is HUGE in my niche and a bad experience with my shop could be a death sentence for my little company. Hell, this person is huge everywhere. Even my parents and grandparents knew of them. I did NOT want this to go bad. A single negative tweet would totally f*ck me.

So, naturally, everything that could go wrong did.

Order confirmation emails going to spam and not being seen, download links not working, weird website glitches, etc.

That’s not what you want when you’re dealing with someone who has tens of millions of followers and is a huge voice in your niche.

Luckily, they ended up being very patient and everything is good now. It definitely made for a stressful week though. Having your company in someone else's hands is never good. Avoid at all costs!

Despite the stress, I learned a literal TON and am actually grateful for the experience. And now I've got direct access to this person for future relationship building.

Here are the 3 biggest takeaways from this experience that I'd like to share:

#1 Stop using 1990s customer service techniques

My customer service is usually done via email. A lot of this exchange happened over Instagram which made things a lot easier. They sent me a video, I sent one back. Boom, problem solved!

After they sent the first video, I slapped myself because of how dumb I’d been. (Regular email? Really? That's the best you can do?)

It turns out that in 2023 people don’t want to read instructions. Even if they’re well-written.

But they will watch videos. And videos can be kept and reused just like email templates.

If I had taken a moment to record a quick Loom in my first email to this person SO MUCH of this trouble would have been avoided.

Now every customer question gets answered via video with accompanying written instructions. I tested it this morning on an inquiry and it made things way more simple and the customer really appreciated it.

I’ve also made it way easier and more clear on how to contact support on all our socials. My goal is to answer questions where customers are most comfortable and stop forcing them to use email. They can email us if they want (and that’s still where I’ll route most people), but I’m set up to respond everywhere now.

If you have the chance, try responding to a customer inquiry with a Loom or video accompanied by your regular email/message. It's pure SUCS.

#2 Keep it simple, stupid.

I watched clarity’s recording of this person using my site and they seemed confused at a few points. Mainly on the final thank you page, as there were no instructions on what to do above the fold. Just some stuff about setting up their account and checking the welcome email.

They never saw their download links like 10 pixels below the fold.

So now I’ve added one simple line of text above the fold on the thank you page:

“Your download links are below”

How else would they know to scroll if I didn’t tell them to?

I learned to stop assuming people know how to use the site and actually tell them (or show them via video like in point #1).

That was a design flaw on my part but it’s been fixed now. I'm going through and refining my mobile optimizations so that buying and accessing products is super easy on a phone.

#3 Stop assuming your users all fit the same avatar

Prior to this experience, I held the assumption that almost all of my customers were relatively new to the niche.

That influenced how we designed our products. We did everything with that avatar in mind.

I never actually considered that well-known celebrities or big professionals might use our stuff. But they are. Several of them now.

So now instead of just telling my product designers “We make stuff for new people, so keep that in mind and make it super simple, obvious, etc.”...

I also get to layer in “Remember, X big celebrity will be one of the first people to get their hands on this product. Let’s make sure they love it too.”

I think layering this into my product feedback will drive us to create even better products that appeal to way more people. Our product quality has always been high, and this is added motivation for everyone to keep raising the bar.

it's also shifted how I see my company. After 2-3 years of working with no real results, this validated the value I bring to the market and encouraged me to keep pushing things forward. Now I'm super motivated to grow the company and make sure the marketing and website are always on point.

As Johnny showed in this post, there are several ways to skew value in your favor and build a highly successful company. Everything needs to be top-tier from now on.

---

Final Thoughts

I listened to this podcast by Alex Hormozi today and it resonated with this experience. I literally HAD to figure out this stuff in order to win the celebrity over. I couldn't let anything slide or be done half-a$$. That put my brain into a whole new mode and I saw my business in totally different ways. I can hardly even explain it.

Before I was unconsciously comfortable with small growth and an average business. But now that big names are using our products my mind is screaming that everything NEEDS to be on point - which will only help us grow faster. Otherwise, I'm doing them a disservice.

It's like the game changed overnight. I guess it did kind, actually. I have a tangible direction to go in now that's been guided by the market.

Try putting yourself into a position where you HAVE to succeed or else (insert big consequence here).. I'm willing to bet that you'll pull it off.

---

P.S. @Johnny boy your post about stress and "blowing through things that the average person wouldn't have the stomach for and would make them cry" was incredibly helpful while going through this. I read that right before this person bought and it helped keep me calm throughout the whole process.

Funny enough, midway through this ordeal I went to a family member's house where some overweight job-hating slowlaners were talking about their jobs being stressful because "Debbie broke up with her man but now she wants him back and won't shut up about it and do her work that doesn't affect me at all".

It just made me laugh. 10 minutes before that conversation I was DM'ing a huge celebrity who could make or break my company. And I wasn't even too stressed at that point. It had become normal and I was deep in problem-solving mode.

It was a surreal experience and showed me that it's such a different world when you start taking this stuff on.

And I realize that my experience wasn't even crazy compared to what most other business owners go through. But I'm actually looking forward to the next challenge now. That means I'm growing.

So thanks for the post. Your perspective has always been super helpful!

 

[xShepherdx]

Does anyone have a reliable WordPress developer they could put me in touch with?

I just need occasional bug fixes and changes made to my site that ChatGPT can't implement correctly. It's a relatively simple eCommerce site so nothing crazy. Probably just a few easy hours a month.

I've hired a couple of people on Upwork before but the communication and quality just don't seem to be there.

Send me a PM and we can share contact info.

I'd really appreciate it and I'm sure they will too.

 

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[Private Witt]

Does anyone have a reliable WordPress developer they could put me in touch with?

I just need occasional bug fixes and changes made to my site that ChatGPT can't implement correctly. It's a relatively simple eCommerce site so nothing crazy. Probably just a few easy hours a month.

I've hired a couple of people on Upwork before but the communication and quality just don't seem to be there.

Send me a PM and we can share contact info.

I'd really appreciate it and I'm sure they will too.

Did you ever find anyone? Im in the same boat have three WP sites that I canned the original developer after I got hacked by a third party contractor. Just when I think I have them humming by myself, along comes a new bug. Same thing a few hours a month could lead to more but I'm in no hurry as I really trust nobody from Upwork or other random and rather find a solid reference.

 

[xShepherdx]

Did you ever find anyone? Im in the same boat have three WP sites that I canned the original developer after I got hacked by a third party contractor. Just when I think I have them humming by myself, along comes a new bug. Same thing a few hours a month could lead to more but I'm in no hurry as I really trust nobody from Upwork or other random and rather find a solid reference.

Sadly no, I'm still looking. I'll PM you if I do find someone good though!

 

[xShepherdx]

Small win today: I just crossed $4k in revenue for May. I've never had a month above $4k before so doing that amount in 12 days feels amazing.

Lately, I've been focused on learning FB ads and so far this meme from @MitchC sums up my approach perfectly:


... except that I'm still fighting for a 1.79 ROAS

My ads are still just on the profitable side of breakeven so I'm working to reduce my CPM and improve my CTR now. These seem to be my weak points. That means better ad copy, better remarketing ads (zero sales from those yet), and working to create new creative as cheaply as possible.

If I can average a 2x ROAS I'll be over the moon so that's the target.

---

Why do I care about revenue if it's not profitable?

For a LONG time, I was convinced that my products were too niche, too specific, that ads wouldn't work, etc. But seeing the orders and positive comments has LIT UP my motivation to grow this company and removed many, many limiting beliefs I held about it.

So revenue = proof that I can use this company as a vehicle to get me into the Fastlane.

It's also given me a huge opportunity to engage with the market and get their feedback. So far it's 100% positive comments/questions on my ads and I've gained valuable insights into my audience and what they want/like.

---

Want to get better at Facebook Ads? Check this out...

If you're new to FB ads or have tried them and failed (like me), check out these two videos from Davie Fogarty:

1) How To Run Facebook Ads in 2023 - Beginner Tutorial
2) Facebook Ads - Advanced Tutorial 2022

Obviously, I'm no pro, but these videos alone took my ads from wildly unprofitable to breakeven/profitable. They took me from 0 -> 1 and now have a good foundation for growth.

I've also been loving Dara Denney's videos. She seems to have a video for every question I've asked myself and her channel is a really good resource for beginners.

With these resources, you should be all set to start experimenting with ads and getting your product out there. Don't overcomplicate things like I did, just get out there and take things one obstacle at a time.

 

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[Happyheart]

Sadly no, I'm still looking. I'll PM you if I do find someone good though!

I can relate. After having built several websites on another platform, I thought I would try Wordpress. I have been battling with the program the entire week and when I though it was done, Wordpress decided to change the url of my main page to .../home, leaving the "original" main page url barren and empty.

@xSheperdx you seem to be doing great though. That sounds wonderful, wishing you more months like this and better!

 

[Saad Khan]

Small win today: I just crossed $4k in revenue for May. I've never had a month above $4k before so doing that amount in 12 days feels amazing.

Lately, I've been focused on learning FB ads and so far this meme from @MitchC sums up my approach perfectly:
View attachment 48768

... except that I'm still fighting for a 1.79 ROAS

My ads are still just on the profitable side of breakeven so I'm working to reduce my CPM and improve my CTR now. These seem to be my weak points. That means better ad copy, better remarketing ads (zero sales from those yet), and working to create new creative as cheaply as possible.

If I can average a 2x ROAS I'll be over the moon so that's the target.

---

Why do I care about revenue if it's not profitable?

For a LONG time, I was convinced that my products were too niche, too specific, that ads wouldn't work, etc. But seeing the orders and positive comments has LIT UP my motivation to grow this company and removed many, many limiting beliefs I held about it.

So revenue = proof that I can use this company as a vehicle to get me into the Fastlane.

It's also given me a huge opportunity to engage with the market and get their feedback. So far it's 100% positive comments/questions on my ads and I've gained valuable insights into my audience and what they want/like.

---

Want to get better at Facebook Ads? Check this out...

If you're new to FB ads or have tried them and failed (like me), check out these two videos from Davie Fogarty:

1) How To Run Facebook Ads in 2023 - Beginner Tutorial
2) Facebook Ads - Advanced Tutorial 2022

Obviously, I'm no pro, but these videos alone took my ads from wildly unprofitable to breakeven/profitable. They took me from 0 -> 1 and now have a good foundation for growth.

I've also been loving Dara Denney's videos. She seems to have a video for every question I've asked myself and her channel is a really good resource for beginners.

With these resources, you should be all set to start experimenting with ads and getting your product out there. Don't overcomplicate things like I did, just get out there and take things one obstacle at a time.

I don't want to brag, but I'm the Chad media buyer.

Doesn't mean I've had screw ups. We all learn one way or the other.

All I care about is whether the campaign is profitable and converting better than my category's average.

This is all you need to get good results with PPC

Good Creative
Good Targeting
Good Offer

You need to get these 3 things right, let facebook do the rest of the heavy lifting.

Focus on principles.

If your conversion rate is shit but you know that you're targeting your market than something is wrong with your offer. And your creative sometimes.

If your conversion rate is good but CTR is horrible you need to work on the creatives.

Lastly, check if you're really targeting the people you want to target.

Put me infront of any PPC platform and I'll look for these two things first.

The median CPC of a niche + the conversion rate of a niche. Then I would try to do better in both.

 

[xShepherdx]

I can relate. After having built several websites on another platform, I thought I would try Wordpress. I have been battling with the program the entire week and when I though it was done, Wordpress decided to change the url of my main page to .../home, leaving the "original" main page url barren and empty.

@xSheperdx you seem to be doing great though. That sounds wonderful, wishing you more months like this and better!

That sounds incredibly frustrating, it's good to hear I'm not the only one who deals with random stuff like that!

And thanks! It has its ups and downs but I'm slowly figuring things out.

 

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[Private Witt]

I can relate. After having built several websites on another platform, I thought I would try Wordpress. I have been battling with the program the entire week and when I though it was done, Wordpress decided to change the url of my main page to .../home, leaving the "original" main page url barren and empty.

@xSheperdx you seem to be doing great though. That sounds wonderful, wishing you more months like this and better!

Im kinda over WP as I'm just so sick of logging in and there being tons of alerts and some sort of issue after it just sitting there for months. Always a backwards update or some sort of plugin issue. On upside my sites are super fast/clean and people in my industry love them and I can use links as a weapon of all sorts.

 

[xShepherdx]

I don't want to brag, but I'm the Chad media buyer.

That's fantastic, I've been hoping to hear from more people with eCom experience. Especially the Chads/Gigachads

This is all you need to get good results with PPC

Good Creative
Good Targeting
Good Offer

You need to get these 3 things right, let facebook do the rest of the heavy lifting.

Simple and brilliant. Thanks for the reminder - it really doesn't need to be more complicated than this!

If your conversion rate is shit but you know that you're targeting your market than something is wrong with your offer. And your creative sometimes.

If your conversion rate is good but CTR is horrible you need to work on the creatives.

Dang, this is super helpful! Looking at my numbers now and I think my offer/landing page needs some work too.

Lastly, check if you're really targeting the people you want to target.

Put me infront of any PPC platform and I'll look for these two things first.

The median CPC of a niche + the conversion rate of a niche. Then I would try to do better in both.

Another gem. I looked up the average CPC on Facebook by Industry and found this chart that gave me a realistic target to shoot for:

Thanks for taking the time to share all of that. It was very helpful and I really appreciate it!

 

[Happyheart]

That's fantastic, I've been hoping to hear from more people with eCom experience. Especially the Chads/Gigachads

Simple and brilliant. Thanks for the reminder - it really doesn't need to be more complicated than this!

Dang, this is super helpful! Looking at my numbers now and I think my offer/landing page needs some work too.

Another gem. I looked up the average CPC on Facebook by Industry and found this chart that gave me a realistic target to shoot for:
View attachment 48814
Thanks for taking the time to share all of that. It was very helpful and I really appreciate it!

Thank you for posting that, this means I am actually doing much better than I thought!

 

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[Saad Khan]

That's fantastic, I've been hoping to hear from more people with eCom experience. Especially the Chads/Gigachads

Simple and brilliant. Thanks for the reminder - it really doesn't need to be more complicated than this!

Dang, this is super helpful! Looking at my numbers now and I think my offer/landing page needs some work too.

Another gem. I looked up the average CPC on Facebook by Industry and found this chart that gave me a realistic target to shoot for:
View attachment 48814
Thanks for taking the time to share all of that. It was very helpful and I really appreciate it!

I'll share the biggest lesson I learned in 2023.

Principles over gimmicks. In everything you do.

 

[Saad Khan]

Thank you for posting that, this means I am actually doing much better than I thought!

Aim higher Sergeant!

 

[xShepherdx]

Been busy lately so a lot has happened since the last update.

Good news first: I broke 6k in revenue a few days ago!
Bad news: My sales are way down and nothing seems to be working all of a sudden

Right before Mother's Day I was spending about $200/day on ads and getting $400+ back in revenue. Life was great and the feeling of "IT'S FINALLY WORKING" was incredible.

However, on Mother's Day Eve my ads just stopped working and I've averaged around $50 in sales/day since then. I quickly shut off the ads, re-evaluated things, and still have no clue why everything stopped so suddenly.

In my search for a cause, I discovered that my prioritized FB events - almost all custom conversion events - were poorly set up by an idiot (me) and were no longer accurate due to website changes. In addition to those events, the events on my FB pixel (via the helper tool) were even further off because they hadn't been changed in like 2 years despite massive changes on the site. Ooops...

As soon as I saw that my events were way off, I realized I needed to move back to the standard conversion events (mostly for my sanity). It also appears to be the general consensus that they will work a lot better since FB's algorythm knows what a purchase or add-to-cart is. The algorithm doesn't know what a "Paid Add To Cart v2" custom conversion event is or how to optimize for it as well, it seems.

So, I completely changed how my free downloads were delivered and effectively removed them from the shop.

Now I have a single "Get all of our free downloads" form embedded on several pages around my site and a secret page that they get access to once they click the link inside the welcome email. This secret page is WAY easier for my users to use because it features all of the free downloads as individual direct downloads all located on one page. It also totally separates them from my store, so now I can run standard events like everyone else. (Man, I've never wanted to be like everyone else so badly before.)

Looking at my ads data, I found that 99% of the visitors from my ads were on mobile. This was not the case before, so I checked my site on mobile and it was clear that I needed to optimize a few things to make it even easier for people to buy. So I changed all of my product pages to be more optimized for mobile. No results on this yet, but it should be a change for the better.

Lastly, I changed all the prioritized and pixel events so they actually make sense now. I also enabled the FB conversions API using this tutorial. It was crazy easy and I should have gotten it done way sooner.

All of this should provide my users a much better experience, my pixel better data to learn from, and ultimately bring my ad costs down.

Splitting the free and paid products has also helped me with some email list issues I was having, which is a nice bonus. Now, people are more incentivized to actually read the welcome email since that's where their access is. My Gmail open rates are steadily climbing now so it's wins all around.

Now that I've gotten everything switched over I'm running a Memorial Day sale to get some fresh data flowing and see what happens. I'm very interested to see how my ads perform now after making the change.

---

I also had a very nice chat recently with @Saad Khan who taught me a TON about marketing. The dude really knows his stuff!

I had several big takeaways from the call, but the one that surprised me the most was that you can use ChatGPT to help define/refine your customer avatar. This is something I've struggled with forever and his method was pure genius.

Unfortunately, that's his secret sauce so I won't spoil it here. If you want to learn how to do it you'll have to ask him to share or figure it out for yourself. But seriously, DO ask him to share. It's worth it even if he charges you!

What I can share is that he is GREAT at simplifying marketing and explaining things in a way that a smooth brain like me can understand.

For example, here's how he explained what each layer of FB ads:

Offer/product -> Real value you’re providing
Creatives -> Convey that value to your audiences (Build up perceived value)
Targeting -> Makes sure that the creative is shown to the right people

It's probably dumb to most of you, but hearing it this way really helped FB ads "click" for me and gave me a tangible guide to follow. Now I constantly ask myself stuff like:

"Am I showing potential users enough perceived value?"
"Am I showing that perceived value to the people who would actually value it?"
"Where in my ads funnel are my drop-off points at?"

That combined with his data-driven "think like a scientist" approach was immensely helpful and I feel much more confident with ads now.

---

Last thing: My video guy and I tossed a bunch of ideas back and forth and came up with some ads that look very organic and also show off that sweet, sweet perceived value very clearly.

The final versions should be done by later next week and I think they're going to be 1,000x better than what I've been using. And, they're cheaper, way easier to make, and will help show/teach viewers how to use the product. Wins all around again!

 

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[Oso]

I can relate. After having built several websites on another platform, I thought I would try Wordpress. I have been battling with the program the entire week and when I though it was done, Wordpress decided to change the url of my main page to .../home, leaving the "original" main page url barren and empty.

@xSheperdx you seem to be doing great though. That sounds wonderful, wishing you more months like this and better!

If you Google "WordPress website at url/home and not url," you'll find the exact fix for this within the first 2-3 search results, including a YouTube video. If you're going to follow the path of development, I highly suggest practicing how to properly utilize ChatGPT and Google for development.

That said, this can be edited by going into your general site settings and swapping over to the correct url. Occasionally WordPress gets confused about where it's supposed to be pulling the Homepage from, and at what domain it needs to display said Homepage. Most, if not all, of this can be edited in the general site settings.

 

[Happyheart]

If you Google "WordPress website at url/home and not url," you'll find the exact fix for this within the first 2-3 search results, including a YouTube video. If you're going to follow the path of development, I highly suggest practicing how to properly utilize ChatGPT and Google for development.

That said, this can be edited by going into your general site settings and swapping over to the correct url. Occasionally WordPress gets confused about where it's supposed to be pulling the Homepage from, and at what domain it needs to display said Homepage. Most, if not all, of this can be edited in the general site settings.

Thank you, I will absolutely look into that.
In my case the problem was that I changed the title on the top of the page that says "home" and WP automatically changed it to an underlying page then. I made a workaround and said a few words that I dare not repeat here.

P.S. and thank you for the tough love. I worked through many google results, but totally forgot to ask chatGPT about this one although I use it a lot . Could have made my life easier...