What You Need to Know About Unprofitable Facebook Ads and Dropshipping

Many businesses rely on unprofitable Facebook ads to create their dropshipping business. However, this strategy doesn’t work. Facebook’s entire business is predicated on you buying ads from them. They will never give you the tools to be so successful you won’t need them anymore. They’d be damaging their own business, and they aren’t going to put you ahead of themselves. 

You need to find a way to use unprofitable Facebook ads properly, and that means seeing them as a tool to create free traffic rather than relying on them to make a profit. This guide will give you a peek behind the scenes of Facebook and explain how the algorithm can keep you reliant on their ads instead of giving you the ability to break free and become successful.

Why You Can’t Use Unprofitable Facebook Ads to Make Money

Screen grab of Peter Pru discussing how Facebook is a business

Facebook is a business itself, and the money it makes comes from your ads. It’s challenging to balance the amount you are paying for your ads on Facebook and the profit they produce. If you are actually successful and make a fortune on your Facebook ads, you’ll be able to afford more effective ad spaces, and you’ll stop using Facebook. It isn’t in Facebook’s best interest to allow you to make the kind of profit where you will be as successful as you desire.

Facebook’s algorithm doesn’t try to make you successful. Instead, it keeps you reliant on their ad space for customers. Facebook ads should therefore not be used to make money but to gather data to monetize your information.

The Key to Your Success Is Free Traffic

As long as you are paying other businesses to funnel people to your site, you are not making the kind of profit that you need. The key to creating your own business is to use the algorithms that other businesses use to your advantage. 

For example, gather data on your customers (just like social media sites do), so you don’t have to pay for ads on these sites. Instead, you can use the data directly and gain free traffic to your site. Any site that you buy ad space on needs to find a healthy balance between your success and their success. You will never come out on top in this balancing act.

Paid Advertising Can’t Be Your Only Way to Earn Money

Facebook optimizes its ads to meet whatever your cart value is, so you never quite get ahead of the algorithm. So, for example, if your average cart value is 20 dollars, Facebook will try to funnel you $20 customers. Still, as your business grows, instead of funneling you more customers, Facebook will optimize the ads so what your customer spends matches your new cart value.

With advertising as your main expense, you need Facebook to be sending you customers who have varying levels of spending — but they don’t. They’ll always match the type of customer they send you to your average cart value. They want to keep you dependent on their ads. That’s how they make money. They always try to balance your cart value with your average cost per purchase to keep you dependent on their ads.

Your Net Profit Will Not Increase by Spending More Money on Unprofitable Facebook Ads

Peter Pru discussing how Facebook ads can scale unprofitably

Facebook won’t help you get ahead to the point where you don’t need their platform anymore. They are going to continue to optimize your ads so as you make more money, you are also paying more per customer. They make their money off you purchasing their ads, and they will not prioritize you over themselves. It can feel like they’re keeping you on a treadmill.

As the customers you funnel into your business grow in value, the more you pay to attract those customers. It never ends. The more money you make, the more profitable businesses you will be facing when you bid for Facebook ads. Facebook ensures that everything scales in their favor so that you never make the profit you need to break out of your dependence on their platform.

The Secret Is to Do Your Own Optimization and Gather Your Own Data

If you are going to make real money on your dropshipping business, you need to get off this treadmill and make yourself some real money. You need to be able to control how much you spend on ads. Also, you need to decide how to use the information you get to make the ads work for you. The purpose of the ads will not be to make you money. The purpose of the ads is to gather valuable data instead. Then you can use it to funnel the type of customers you want to your site.

You want to be off of the Facebook treadmill as soon as you can. You might still use Facebook ads, but you won’t be using those ads as the entire marketing foundation for your dropshipping business. Instead, you’ll be using those ads to gather your own data and create your own audiences. It’s the only way you’ll ever get off the treadmill and make a decent profit.

How Ecommerce Empire Builders Can Help

Dropshipper using data from unprofitable Facebook ads to analyze traffic

Don’t use unprofitable Facebook ads as your only tool in starting your dropshipping business. Don’t set yourself up to fail! Use them to funnel sales to your website, but don’t rely on them for success. I have started businesses before, and I can help you start yours. Our team of eCommerce experts builds eCommerce websites with the right processes to streamline your conversions, traffic, and revenue.

We will teach you how to build your eCommerce empire by signing up for our training program taught by experts. When you have your own business and the insights to run it, you won’t constantly be stuck on a never-ending treadmill where your cart value always equals your cost per customer. If you want to know how to start and market your own business, click here to reserve a seat at our webinar. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel for more insights and ad strategies.

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How to Make $250 a Day Online Without a Website

Are you wondering how to make $250 a day online, all for free and without a website? Facebook Marketplace dropshipping could be your ideal solution. 

As a Facebook dropshipper, you can make thousands of dollars promoting trending products from eCommerce sites such as Etsy, Amazon, eBay, and more. All you have to do is choose a trending product with a substantial value, such as furniture and other handmade products, and begin promoting it on Facebook Marketplace at a substantial profit.

With Etsy’s more than 4.3 million active sellers, the marketplace seems to be a goldmine for high-quality products. That’s why Etsy dropshipping often seems too good to be true. For instance, you could source quality handmade furniture for about $1,000 and sell it on Facebook Marketplace for as much as $1,250, making a profit of $250 on the spot. 

Facebook Marketplace Dropshipping Options for How to Make $250 a Day

Dropshipping is a business model that suits risk-averse entrepreneurs looking to begin an eCommerce business without the need to manufacture products, carry inventory, or ship the items to their customers.

Although you can opt for Shopify dropshipping, Amazon dropshipping, or eBay dropshipping, many people tend to prefer Etsy dropshipping for a variety of reasons, including:

  • The opportunity to sell handmade products: Etsy dropshipping allows you to sell a variety of handmade products which other popular dropshipping platforms don’t provide. So, you can sell unique and pricier products such as knitted blankets, handmade furniture, and other crafts.
  • Etsy is rich in certain niche-based products: If you want to sell handmade goods, wedding products, and printables, Etsy is an excellent marketplace for those niches. You might also be interested in dropshipping digital products or wedding accessories.

Why You Should Focus on How to Make $250 a Day by Dropshipping on Facebook 

Screen grab of Peter Pru on Etsy

Online store owners often spend a lot of money to reach out to new customers. However, Facebook boasts of more than 2.8 billion users, with most of them active several times each day. This creates a ready pool of potential buyers to reach out to with your products without spending a coin.

Besides, many marketing activities, such as gaining followers and posting content, are completely free on Facebook. Since some eCommerce platforms such as Etsy have one-click apps for linking products to Facebook, you can keep your product descriptions and inventory updated in real time.

If you want to reach a wider audience, Facebook advertising is quite inexpensive. Targeted ads can pull directly from your Facebook Marketplace. That means you don’t spend money advertising to users who have never shown interest in your products.

The Facebook marketplace customization tools are also pretty respectable. You can create a beautiful, clean storefront that showcases your products in different galleries. Additionally, you can leverage Facebook Insights to understand how customers respond to your products and posts. Typically, the infrastructure is set up for you, so you won’t need to worry about creating your payment gateway landing page. 

How to Sell on Facebook Marketplace for Free

Screen grab of Peter Pru showing how to use Facebook Marketplace

Once you know how to make $250 a day, it might be time to scale up your eCommerce business. In fact, it’s highly recommended that you automate your dropshipping business to break new barriers with your monthly earnings. However, if you’re in it for the short-term or want to make some extra dollars with a side hustle, you could manually import products to your Facebook Marketplace. 

Note that the process consumes quite some time when importing multiple products. Also, you’ll have to regularly refresh your supplier’s pages to make sure the stock levels and prices haven’t changed.

Having said that, here is how to import products to your Facebook Marketplace and begin your dropshipping business:

  • First, go to Facebook Marketplace and click ‘Create New Listing.’ 
  • When prompted for images of the product, grab the product images from Etsy or other eCommerce platforms that you want to sell from. You can either download and upload the photos or simply take screenshots.
  • When asked for the product description, simply copy the description from Etsy and paste it into Facebook. Do the same for the title, or create your own engaging title to encourage click-through.
  • Next, choose the right category. Set the condition to new and type in the brand name. Alternatively, you can simply name it “Branded” if you don’t want to disclose the brand details.

Pricing and Order Processing

When it comes to pricing, you’ll need to check the price from Etsy. Then increase it enough to cover your profit and the Facebook Marketplace 5% fee. Under Availability, select ‘List as in Stock’ to ensure you can continue selling the same product even after the listed item sells. Otherwise, the system will indicate “out of stock” status after a single sale. Once the item sells, head over to Etsy, add the item to the cart, and begin the checkout process. 

When prompted to key in the billing address, put your address. However, in the shipping address, use the customer’s address as placed on Facebook Marketplace. Now, here is the cool thing. Etsy will ship the item directly to your customer without you having to touch or handle the package.

Wrapping Up Our Thoughts on How to Make $250 a Day Online

Dropshipper considering different strategies for how to make $250 online

To wrap it up, Facebook Marketplace dropshipping is a simple way to make $250 or more per day. You can do this without having a website or setting up a sophisticated ecommerce site. It is fun, exciting, and highly profitable! If you’ve looking for a perfect side hustle that’s seamless to run at home and profitable enough to earn you a decent income, then you need to give Facebook Marketplace a try. 

At Ecommerce Empire Builders, we can teach you how to stand out in the eCommerce space. Our experts can help you launch and scale your profitable eCommerce business. So register now to learn how to grow your own wildly profitable eCommerce business without a website or any past experience! For more insights and tips, also subscribe to my YouTube channel.

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How to When Know It’s Time to Move on to New Products

It may seem in your best interest to continue using a winning dropshipping product that’s previously gotten great results. But that’s not always the case. There are certain situations when it’s ideal to cut your losses, drop the product, and move on to new products. 

If you stick with a product that’s no longer generating the kind of income you want, you may wind up losing money if you don’t switch to a new source of revenue. So much of people’s success in dropshipping comes down to momentum and the encouragement it brings. But businesses lose drive when they’re bleeding money. This is why it’s important to know when to make the necessary transition to maintain that momentum.

In this post, we’ll go over when you should move on to new products as your current products begin losing momentum.

Test Your Facebook Ads to Determine Their Effectiveness

First, it’s important to know how often you should test your ads to determine their effectiveness in the sales funnel. This can help you gauge when it’s time to move on to new products — or a new strategy. 

Here we’ll be strictly referring to Facebook ads, which are commonly used. As an example, we’ll use an ad with a “free plus shipping” offer, which we recommend using when you’re just starting out as a broke beginner. Even if you make some mistakes with this offer, you can still make money.

For a typical ad with a “free plus shipping” offer, we would start with a budget of $250, which we spread to $30 per day across a six- or seven-day period. One mistake we see a lot of people make here is that they’ll spend around $30 on ads for one day. But they won’t make any money on them, so they turn them off entirely. Unfortunately, this is the mindset that many beginners have in dropshipping, which keeps them from being able to test ads effectively.

What you really need to do is invest a full $250 in a single week. This will more accurately show you how effective your campaigns are as you test your campaigns. Within a week, you can begin to see certain trends that stand out. For instance, you’ll likely find that certain days perform better than others. This can help you schedule your ads and determine when to expect sales.

Here’s why we recommend you give your ads seven days to work their magic or encourage you to move on to a new online business strategy.

Your First Three Days Will Be the Most Crucial

Breakdown of how to organize ad spending over the first three days

As we explore the first week of an ad campaign, the first three days will be the most important. The first day will be the day you launch your ads, followed by the next two days, all of which will have ads running for $30 per day. Throughout these three critical days, it’s important not to touch anything as you let your ads do their job.

During this time frame, you’ll want to keep an eye on a few key elements, including:

CTR

The first item to look at is your click-through rate (CTR) for each day, which should be around 2%. If your CTR falls around that mark, this indicates that people are actively interested in your ads. If your CTR is too low, you may need to change the ad creative to entice more people to click, be it a modified image, video, or text. Ideally, you should run ads using three different pieces of creative material to see which performs the best.

We suggest you look at the CTR regularly on days one and two. This can help you determine if it’s likely to continue increasing or remaining steady. After two days, if some ads still see low CTR, turn them off. Also, if ads don’t see more than a 0.5% conversion rate on day one, chances are this won’t increase through day three. 

Landing Page Stats

Once you’ve determined that your CTR is where it should be, it’s time to look at your landing page, at which point you’re looking at your funnel stats. Are people opting in? If not, this could indicate a problem with your landing page and the value of the offer. Your ideal opt-in rate should be at least 25%.

If your opt-in rate is below 25%, you may need to modify the offer to encourage more people. Generally, try modifying your current offer before you move on to new products entirely. In this case, we recommend using an offer stack image that serves as a visual representation of what you’re offering. Testimonials and lifestyle photos can also help enhance your opt-in pages.

Order Form Stats

If your ads and landing page seem to be functioning optimally, a problem could lie with your order forms. For a beginning offer, you should see a minimum conversion rate of 5%. 

For order forms that dip below that minimum conversion rate, there are a few ways to improve it. 

One way is to make sure you offer quantity break discounts for products of 2x to 8x. Here, you should highlight the 4x quantity break and autoselect it for the customer to encourage them to convert. 

Second, you have to name your product something unique and catchy that differentiates it from other more generic options. All of this can increase the perceived value of your product to get more people to purchase.

It’s worth noting that if you do not see the numbers you want on a small scale, they won’t likely improve on a larger scale. This is why you need to make the necessary changes early on if your campaigns are underperforming. If your ads don’t culminate in a high CTR, you need to focus on your marketing. This will drive more people to your sales funnel and purchases.

Look Ahead to the Rest of the First Week Before You Move on to New Products

Breakdown of how to organize ad spending over the first seven days

Generally, if your CTR is low and you’re not making any sales in those first three days, it’s often best to go back to the drawing board and tweak your ads, opt-in pages, or order forms. However, if you are making a few sales, the next several days will be important to monitor. 

For example,  your CTR may be over 2% and your opt-in rate may be around 25% by day four. Your order form might also be seeing a 3% conversion rate. These are all good numbers when starting out with your ads. 

It’s also important to keep in mind that early on in your campaigns, the Facebook algorithm will still be adjusting the targeting for your ads as it attempts to identify your customers. Because of this, your stats could potentially double later on as you feed the algorithm more customers.

Throughout the last four days of that first week, you’ll want to figure out ways to optimize your current ads. You might introduce new ad creative on day five as you remove ads that aren’t yielding good results. Some ad creative is likely to do better than other images, videos, or text. So remove ineffective assets and replace them with ads that are similar to the ones getting results. You can also target new interest groups based on interest groups that responded favorably to your previous ads. 

Based on your campaign’s performance during the first seven days, you can truly get a sense of how well your ads, landing pages, and sales pages are doing. From there, you can decide what needs work and revamp your strategy accordingly.

Determine When to Cut Your Losses or Keep Moving Forward

Dropshipper adjusting his ads and monitoring results

In the first week of advertising, keep an eye out for issues during those first three critical days. If you’re making sales and seeing decent stats by day four, you can continue monitoring them for the rest of the week and optimizing your campaigns. 

Your CTR simply might not be cutting it in those first few days. So it may be time to optimize your existing ads or try new ones. If you’re not seeing any opt-ins or sales by the third day, you may need to try an entirely new offer or price point. You might even move on to new products if adjustments don’t seem worth the effort. 

To learn more about how to succeed with your dropshipping business and develop a winning funnel, register for my free eCommerce masterclass today. You’ll find out how to use ads and other fundamental elements to make a full-time income online, whether you’re new to dropshipping or looking for a way to improve your efforts. Also, subscribe to my YouTube channel for more insights, whether you move on to new products or stick with your current item.

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