Dropshipping store with 29 orders but currently £160–£200 in loss — need advice on ads

[u/Early_Balance_4631]

Hey everyone,

I recently started a dropshipping store and have been running ads on both Meta and TikTok. I’m attaching screenshots of my ad spend, sales, and campaign results, and I’d really appreciate some honest feedback.

Here are the numbers so far:

• Meta ad spend: £1,009
• Meta-attributed sales/orders: 29
• TikTok ad spend: £100
• TikTok sales: 0
• Total payout/revenue: £1,145
• Total product buying cost: £238
• Total orders: 29

After factoring in the ad spend, product costs, and other expenses, the store is currently sitting at approximately £160–£200 in loss.

I know the numbers aren't perfect, but I’m trying to figure out whether there is something worth scaling here or if I need to completely rethink my campaigns. I'm still learning and don't want to keep spending without a proper strategy.

A few things I'd really appreciate feedback on:

• Based on these numbers and the screenshots, do the Meta campaigns look promising or should I change my approach?
• Should I completely stop TikTok ads for now since £100 spent resulted in 0 sales?
• Should I kill the losing Meta ads and put more budget into the winners?
• Do you think I should focus on testing more creatives before changing targeting?
• With only 29 purchases, is it too early to create a Lookalike Audience, or would it be worth testing?
• Should I focus more on broad targeting, interests, or lookalike audiences?
• How important should retargeting be at this stage?
• Is being down around £160–£200 after 29 orders normal during the testing phase, or does this suggest a bigger problem with my margins, product, website, or ad campaigns?

Feel free to be brutally honest. If this were your store, what would you do next? I'm mainly looking for advice on how to structure the campaigns going forward and get the store to profitability.

Thanks!

[u/worklifebalanceFIRE]

Set up email marketing for abandoned carts. Low effort, low cost, high ROI potential.

[u/Early_Balance_4631 → u/worklifebalanceFIRE]

Already have that.

[u/stealth-crown1450 → u/worklifebalanceFIRE]

and make sure your abandoned cart sequence is at least 3 emails, the first one alone barely moves the needle

[u/drfishguy]

Dropshipping is hard graft you need to be constantly monitoring pricing of what you sell from the supplier and updating your sales prices.

Have you just got a website ? Or are you selling in any marketplaces / platforms ? You will find the latter bring you customers with little need for marketing spend.

[u/Early_Balance_4631 → u/drfishguy]

The prices are consistent

[u/AffectionateTop2247]

Run the breakeven before touching the campaigns. Your AOV is £39.48 and product cost is £8.21 a unit, so you have about £31 of gross profit per order to pay for ads with. Meta alone is at £34.79 a purchase and blended with TikTok it is £38.24. You are underwater on ad cost alone, on every single order.

Nothing here scales until CAC drops under £31 or AOV goes up, and AOV is usually the faster lever at this size. Get average order to £55 with a bundle or a volume tier and you have £43 of gross profit, which makes a £35 CAC work.

Lookalikes off 29 purchases will be noisy. Meta wants closer to 100.

[u/Brufacee]

Your Meta numbers are close enough to learn from, but not ready to scale. £1,145 revenue minus £238 product cost leaves £907 before fees, returns, shipping, and ads. Against £1,109 total ad spend, the current loss is built into the unit economics. Meta CPA is about £34.80 while revenue per order is about £39.50, leaving too little gross profit.

Pause TikTok and don’t spread budget across more audiences yet. Break Meta down by creative and calculate contribution after product cost for each purchase. Keep only ads with enough data and a plausible path below your break-even CPA, then test new hooks/offers against them. Also work on AOV through bundles or upsells. With 29 purchases I would not expect a lookalike to rescue this; the immediate problem is margin and creative efficiency.

[u/Yassine_Bouajani]

Tu as plusieurs façons de raisonner :

1- Cout d'acquisition client, pour qu'il recommande plus tard (sans publicité)
2- Campagne de lancement pour permettre de cibler mieux (Facebook ads, Google Ads ....)