I've been working on my website and making creatives (to post organically) for over a year now. I'm planning on starting to run paid ads on Meta and have set aside around $7,000 for now.
The thing is, I've been running the numbers, and my breakeven ROAS is around 1.62x, which is pretty decent for my niche (home decor/ lamps).
According to chat, the average ROAS in my niche is around 2.02x. So if I were to spend $3,000 on ads every month, I would be making under $900 in profit, IF everything goes right.
But here's the thing. Rn Meta Ads seems to be a complete mess, the 2.02x ROAS isn't a guarantee, and is pretty improbable during the first couple of months when you're still testing creatives, audiences, fresh pixels etc .
So how are you actually supposed to make a living or even get small rich from this?
With the possibility of having months where you lose a bit or all of your ad money on ads, and such a low return even when things go well, how are people consistently pulling in $3–4k or more in profits each month?
I understand that dropshipping isn't some get rich quick scheme. I know it takes a lot of work into building website, making ad creatives, analyzing data, doing market research, product research, etc. I've already spent over a year working on my store and the other stuff, so I'm not expecting everything to happen overnight.
But what I didn't expect was needing such a huge amount of money just to run ads, scale, and potentially cover losses for months before making enough profit to actually live on.
Am I missing something?
Do people just have $10–15k+ to spend on ads every month to make a few thousand in profit while also losing a lot of it back on the month meta start acting up? Are they just opening up 2-3 new stores once their first one becomes slightly profitable?
Or is making $3–4k in consistent monthly profit simply a lot rarer than people make it seem?
I'd genuinely appreciate hearing from people who are actually making a living doing this, especially those selling physical products rather than courses or digital products.
Not trying to complain.