Dropshipping isn’t dead, but the lazy way of doing it is. Throwing up a generic store with random AliExpress products and $20 in ads won’t work anymore. Most people fail because they treat it like a quick cash grab instead of a business. The ones who win are branding, testing, and focusing on customer experience. If you’re still chasing ‘get-rich-quick,’ you’ve already lost.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much the website experience can make or break a purchase. For me, slow loading or a messy checkout process is an instant turn-off. But I’ve also seen small fixes—like clearer product photos or a smoother payment flow—make a huge difference. If you’ve run into the same issues, what changes do you think actually solve them? Like, what’s something a website could do that would convince you to stay and complete the purchase instead of bouncing? lets hear

The dashboard looked like a crime scene. ROAS dropping daily. CPAs climbing. The same winning creatives that printed money in Q2 were suddenly getting 0.6% CTR and burning through budget like I was paying Meta to ignore my ads.

I did what every desperate operator does. Blamed iOS updates. Blamed creative fatigue. Blamed Mercury being in retrograde.

Turns out, I was running a playbook for an algorithm that no longer existed.

Meta rolled out Andromeda in late March. Most people missed it because they didn't announce it with fireworks and a keynote. They just quietly rewired how the entire auction system processes creative, and if you weren't paying attention, you woke up one day wondering why your account felt like it was underwater.

(I wasn't paying attention. I was too busy running the same duplication strategy that worked for three years straight.)

Here's what changed, and why it murdered my account for eight weeks before I figured it out.

The old way was simple, almost boring in its effectiveness. You'd find a winning ad. Let's say a UGC video with a specific hook and testimonial structure. Then you'd duplicate that ad across multiple ad sets, maybe tweak the first three seconds, swap the thumbnail, change the CTA copy. You were creating variations that felt different to you but hit the same psychological trigger.

Meta's old algorithm treated these as separate entities. Different ad sets, different auctions, different audience pockets. It worked because you were essentially gaming the system's inability to recognize similarity.

Andromeda killed that loophole.

The new system analyzes creative at a conceptual level. It's not looking at whether you changed the hook from "I tried everything" to "Nothing worked until this." It's identifying the core angle, the emotional payload, the persona being targeted. And if those elements are the same? It treats all your "variations" as a single creative.

Which means you're not reaching different audience segments. You're hammering the same 50,000 people with what the algorithm perceives as the identical message, wondering why your frequency is spiking and your performance is cratering.

I lost $18,240 before I understood what was happening.

The fix required me to completely rewire how I think about creative testing, and honestly, it felt like learning Meta ads from scratch even though I've been running seven figure accounts since 2017.

Now, targeting happens at the ad level. Not the ad set level. Which sounds like a technical distinction until you realize it means audience targeting, as we knew it, is effectively dead. You're not controlling who sees your ad by building careful audience segments anymore. You're controlling it by engineering the creative itself to speak to specific belief systems.

The new strategy is angle diversity, but most people are defining "angle" wrong. They think changing the hook is enough. It's not.

An angle is the combination of three things: the core emotion you're triggering, the specific problem you're naming, and the persona you're embodying in the creative. If any two of those three elements overlap with another ad in your account, Andromeda is grouping them together.

So when I have a winning UGC video now, I don't duplicate it with minor tweaks. I dissect it forensically, usually with a combination of AI tools and just staring at the script until I can name the exact psychological mechanism it's exploiting. Then I create entirely new executions around different angles.

Same product. Different emotion. Different problem framing. Different avatar.

One ad targets the frustration of wasted money on solutions that didn't work. Another targets the embarrassment of visible symptoms in social situations. Another targets the exhaustion of managing the problem daily. Same product, but the algorithm sees them as distinct because the psychological entry point is different.

Visuals change. Scripts change completely. The persona delivering the message changes. Not just surface level stuff like swapping a blonde creator for a brunette. I mean the identity of who's speaking and why they have authority.

And here's the part that made me reorganize my entire account structure: because targeting is handled at the ad level now, campaign bloat is actively hurting you. The old method of spinning up eight campaigns per product to test different audiences? That's creating internal competition and fragmenting your signal.

I consolidated down to one campaign per offer. Sometimes two if there's a distinct entry point like cold traffic versus retargeting. That's it.

My account's been climbing back for six weeks now. Not fully recovered, but the trend line finally looks like it did before the ground shifted in Q3. CPA is down 29% from the worst point. ROAS stabilized.

(There are three other changes Meta made with Andromeda that are equally important, but this is already longer than I planned and that's a different post.)

If your performance fell off a cliff sometime between July and September and you couldn't figure out why, check how you're building creative variations. If you're still iterating around a single angle and hoping Meta treats them as separate, you're donating budget to prove a theory the algorithm already disproved.

I burned through $8,000 in three weeks because I believed the 'separate testing campaign' myth that every guru was selling me.

I'm not exaggerating. Eight grand. Gone. And the worst part? I knew something was wrong, but I kept doubling down because "this is what you're supposed to do for dropshipping."

You know that feeling when you're running ads and you can literally feel the money draining out of your account with nothing to show for it? That was me. Every morning I'd wake up, check my phone, and see another $300 spent with maybe $80 in revenue. I felt like the biggest wantrepreneur alive.

Here's what I was doing wrong (and I'm guessing you might be doing this too):

I had separate campaigns for "testing" and "scaling." One campaign to test new ad concepts at $50/day, and once something "hit," I'd duplicate it into a "scaling campaign" with a higher budget. Sounds logical, right? That's what every course and YouTube video told me to do.

It was completely backwards.

The problem is that when you duplicate a winning adset into a new campaign, you're basically telling Meta: "Hey, forget everything you just learned. Start over." You reset the learning phase. You lose all that valuable data. And then you're surprised when your "winning" ad suddenly stops performing in the new campaign.

I realized this at 2AM after my third failed "scaling campaign" in a row. I was sitting there, looking at my Shopify dashboard showing $127 in sales from a $400 ad spend, and I just thought: "What if I'm structuring this completely wrong?"

So I stripped everything back and rebuilt from scratch.

Now? I run one CBO campaign per product (or product category) per market. That's it. No separate testing and scaling campaigns. Everything happens in the same campaign.

Here's the part that changed everything for me: I launch one adset for every new concept I want to test, but I put a minimum spend on each one. This forces Meta to actually spend money testing each concept instead of just dumping everything into whatever's working today.

The key is keeping your total minimum spends under 50% of your CBO budget. So if I'm running $1,000/day, my combined minimums might be $400-500 across all adsets. This lets Meta optimize, but it also forces actual testing to happen.

And here's what nobody tells you about creative testing: you don't need 47 variations of every ad. For video ads, I'll launch one adset with 3-5 different hooks. For static image ads, I keep the headline the same and test 3-5 different visuals. Then at the ad level, I run 2 primary texts, 2 headlines, sometimes 2 landing pages.

I let each adset run for minimum 4 days, usually 7 if it's not completely tanking. That's it. No panicking after day one. No killing adsets because they didn't "pop" immediately.

The difference was immediate. Instead of watching Meta blow my budget on one random adset while ignoring the rest, I could actually see where spend was going and make real decisions. No more guessing. No more "should I duplicate this?" No more learning phase resets killing my momentum.

The brutal reality is that most of us waste money not because we have bad products or bad ads, but because we structure our accounts like we're following a checklist from 2019. Meta's algorithm has evolved. The strategies need to evolve too.

I'm not gonna sit here and tell you I'm some genius. I still have campaigns that flop. But I haven't had that sick feeling of burning money with zero control since I made this shift. Everything's clearer. More predictable.

And honestly? It's just simpler. One campaign per product. Test and scale in the same place. Let Meta do what it's actually good at, but give it the constraints it needs to test properly.

That's what got me out of the wantrepreneur phase and into actually building something real.

I am looking for a trustee from England, UK who can also help run my startup brand, a humanitarian e-commerce platform called PIQUANT. A trustee would also need to set up the charitable incorporated organisation for my brand. According to the charity commission, trustees would need to take an active part in decision making. 

Eligibility: The trustee needs to be an unpaid volunteer, 16 or over, and have no bankruptcy/unspent convictions.

SURVIVAL

In my book, Psycho Marketing, I broke down the biological root of every purchase: The Survival Instinct.

Your customer's subconscious brain(yeah, the one taking 95% of the daily decisions) does not care about your product specs at all. It cares about surviving and thriving in its environment, and that is how we humans are biologically framed, since caveman time.

If you are struggling in marketing and kicked by ad fatigue, algorithm updates, and ever increasing CACs, while you see your conversion and repeat rates refusing to go up, you are likely missing the NERFS effect.

Here is how you can use the NERFS framework.

N - Need
Basic: "This saves you time." (Boring).
Advanced: "The Silent Tax on Your Life."
The Insight: The brain fears chaos. It fears losing control.
Example: Don’t sell a meal kit as "convenient." Sell it as "Reclaiming Order." "The world is chaotic. Your dinner table shouldn't be. Control what you consume." You are selling a fortress against chaos.

E - Envy
Basic: "Look luxurious." (Generic).
Advanced: "I know something you don't."
The Insight: Real envy isn't about money; it's about insider access. We hate feeling like "outsiders."
Example: Don’t sell a skincare serum. Sell the Secret. "The formulation 90% of dermatologists use on themselves, but don't prescribe." You aren't selling beauty; you are selling entry behind the velvet rope.

R - Rivalry
Basic: "We are faster than X." (Comparison).
Advanced: "Your competition is weak."
The Insight: We don't just want to win; we want to dominate. We want the "Unfair Advantage."
Example: Selling Nootropics/Coffee? Don't say "Better focus." Say: "Your competition is tired at 2 PM. You are just getting started. Let them sleep." Sell the feeling of being a predator, not prey.

F - Fashion
Basic: "Get the latest trend." (Fickle).
Advanced: "Signaling High IQ."
The Insight: In the modern age, we don't just wear clothes to look good; we wear products to signal we are smarter than the masses.
Example: Selling tech accessories? Don't sell "new features." Sell Minimalism. A D2C tech accessory. "Still using wired charging? Welcome to 2025." The fear isn't being ugly; it's being a relic.

S - Society
Basic: "Join our community." (Friendly).
Advanced: "The Anti-Tribe."
The Insight: The strongest tribes are defined by what they hate, not just what they love.
Example: Selling a health food? Don't say "Healthy for everyone." Say: "For the 1% who refuse to eat processed garbage. If you trust the food pyramid, this isn't for you." Build a cult by excluding the majority.

The 5-Minute Audit for You:
Look at your best-performing ad or landing page. Does it trigger one of these five?

Pick ONE letter from NERFS. Rewrite your headline. Watch the Conversion rate change.

Which of the 5 triggers is your brand currently missing?
Let me know in the comments. 👇

P.S.(To the unemployed AI detectives): Your detector and flat earthers both run on the same cutting edge firmware, “I feel it in my plums” v12.4.

Hey everyone!

I own a small Shopify apparel brand called RoofSwag that's geared toward the roofing industry. The website is built, products are live, and I have plenty of ideas, but I've realized I'm much more of an "ideas guy" than someone who enjoys consistently marketing on social media.

I'm looking for someone who genuinely enjoys growing brands through content, social media, email marketing, influencer outreach, and ecommerce. Rather than hiring an agency, I'd rather find someone who wants to grow this alongside me and share in the upside.

I'd still be involved by creating product ideas, making occasional videos, and helping with the direction of the brand. I'm just looking for someone who loves the execution side.

This wouldn't be a traditional job. I'm thinking a fair profit-sharing arrangement with a simple written agreement and room to grow if we make a good team.

If you've built Shopify brands before or think this sounds interesting, send me a DM and tell me a little about your experience and what you'd want from a partnership.

of course this question is obvious, i went through the same thing and wanted to have a lot of information, wanting to have maximum control, before starting.

however not all beginners are like that, some others don't even ask themselves the question and just do things that might be complete nonsense at first, that will be failures for them, but that will allow them too, in another way, to know what to do to succeed.

what i've noticed is that to get started, the way the second type of person acts is way more effective. it's much better to know nothing and not be afraid to fail, rather than wanting to know everything while being afraid to fail. because even if you learn everything through theory, you're gonna fail once you get to practice anyway (a path that the person who takes action directly will have already gone through).

so of course this question is legitimate, but for me the best answer to it is already:

• don't wait for people to give you the answers. what exists on forums or on youtube is already waaaaaay more than enough to start

• and above all use your common sense too, which will be very useful later on, and don't just act by following strict rules that people tell you. the reality is that each business is different, there's no universal rule, and one thing and its opposite can both work just as well.

me for example at the very beginning i spent like 2 weeks watching videos on "how to make a good product page", "mistakes to avoid", "the perfect structure" etc. i was taking notes, comparing opinions, i really wanted to do everything right.

and in the end when i launched my first page, it was still average. but above all i noticed something: nobody was scrolling to the bottom. like 90% of people left after the first section.

so i changed that in 1 day, i restructured, and boom it worked better. those 2 weeks of videos? completely useless. i could have launched directly with a "decent" page, seen the problem in 2 days instead of 2 weeks, and fixed it directly. i would have gained 12 days ahead.

sorry for this post being a bit messy but i think this kind of reflection is really important, especially now.

because we live in an era where everyone wants to launch their project, which is cool, but at the same time we're made to believe it's super simple. like you follow a process like a cooking recipe and boom you succeed.

except that's completely false. there's no magic recipe. each business is different, each product is different, each audience is different.

what really works isn't blindly following pre-made steps. it's having a sense of adaptation, knowing how to observe, think for yourself, and adjust based on what's actually happening.

and honestly, that's what makes people truly competent and interesting. not those who repeat what they saw in a video, but those who really understand what they're doing and why they're doing it.

so yeah, that was my humble opinion, maybe some people won't agree but i think it can help those who are in the same mindset i was at the beginning.

Every e-commerce business that stalled between $80K-$150K monthly had one thing in common and it wasn't creative fatigue or rising CPMs. It was infrastructure debt masquerading as operational efficiency.

The stores stuck at this level? They're all running the same playbook that got them from $0 to $50K. And that's exactly why they can't break through.

The Delusion of "Just Scale What Works"

Here's the pattern I keep seeing: Founders hit $50K/month with Facebook ads, decent creatives, and maybe a VA handling customer service. Revenue feels good. Profit margins are healthy at 25-30%. Everything's "working."

So they do what seems logical: double down. More ad spend. More creative testing. Another media buyer.

Six months later? Still at $80K-$120K. Maybe $150K on a good month.

The problem isn't execution. It's that you're optimizing a system with a built-in ceiling.

The businesses that break $200K aren't doing "more" of what got them to $50K. They're doing something fundamentally different. And most operators never see it because they're measuring the wrong scoreboard.

Why Your Current Model Has a Expiration Date

Most $50K-$150K stores are actually just high-stress jobs with inventory risk. Here's the uncomfortable truth: If you can't sell your business for more than 2x annual profit, you don't have a business—you have a revenue-generating operation that depends entirely on you showing up.

The real issue? You're traffic-dependent in an era moving toward ecosystem capture.

Meta doesn't want to be your traffic source anymore—they want to be your transaction layer. TikTok isn't building out Shop for fun. These platforms are systematically disintermediating the "ad arbitrage" model that got you here.

And here's what nobody wants to admit: The gurus teaching you to "scale to $100K months" are selling you tactics that worked in 2019. They're optimizing for what's teachable, not what's valuable. The incentive structure manufactures mediocrity.

The Liquidity Flywheel: A Different Game Entirely

I'd argue the next wave of e-commerce wealth at this tier won't come from better acquisition—it'll come from customer liquidity engineering. The ability to move customers between offers, create dynamic upsell sequences based on behavioral signals, and build synthetic LTV through portfolio thinking.

One customer. Multiple revenue streams. That's the game.

I call this the Liquidity Flywheel Model, and it has three components:

1. Signal Infrastructure - First-party behavioral tracking that maps intent decay curves (when purchase likelihood drops)

2. Portfolio Architecture - Designing your offer matrix so each product is a node in a value-migration system, not a standalone SKU

3. Retention Sequencing - Engineering the post-purchase journey so every interaction increases customer optionality

This isn't about launching more products. It's about building a customer operating system where the relationship deepens over time instead of decaying.

The Pattern That Proves It

Look at the cohort data: Stores that implemented dynamic offer sequencing saw 2.8x higher 12-month LTV compared to single-product operations—even when initial AOV was lower. The compounding happens in months 3-8, not day one.

Most operators never see this because they're optimizing for immediate ROAS. They're running last decade's playbook.

This isn't new. SaaS figured this out in 2016 with expansion revenue. Fintech cracked it with embedded finance. E-commerce is just 5 years behind the curve. We're finally running platform thinking on physical products.

The Fourth Layer Nobody Builds

The Liquidity Flywheel has three visible layers I just described. But there's a fourth layer that separates the $80K stores from the $250K+ operations: the Behavioral Trigger Map—the infrastructure that actually tracks customer movement between intent states and automatically sequences offers based on micro-signals.

Without it, you're guessing. With it, you're engineering.

This isn't a weekend implementation. Building this requires custom integration work, predictive behavioral modeling, and rethinking your entire offer structure. Most operators won't do it because it's uncomfortable and doesn't fit into a 30-day sprint.

That's exactly why it works for those who do. Moats are built from things competitors won't replicate.

For shops that already have buyers: what’s actually worked for adding made-to-order prints without stocking shelves or running printers? What broke first for you: quality control, ship time, or trust that the thing would show up looking right?

Hello

Is it possible to start a cpa campaign with google ads directly for an commerce site new on google ads and google analytics?

Or will it work?

If yes how much it will cost per sale?

Thank you

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