This sub gets the assignment better than most so I'll be direct.

The no-code movement solved half the problem. You can build almost anything now without knowing how to code, which is genuinely incredible and wasn't true five years ago. But there's still a gap that nobody talks about. Even with the best no-code tools you still have to know which tools to pick, how to connect them, how to write copy that converts, how to set up ad accounts, how to source products, how to structure a funnel. The learning curve didn't disappear, it just moved.

Most people in this sub know exactly what I mean. You've spent a weekend deep in Zapier trying to get two things to talk to each other that should just work. You've rebuilt your Webflow site three times because the first two didn't convert. You've watched your Notion dashboard get more elaborate while the actual business stayed the same size.

That's the gap Locus Founder closes.

You describe what you want to build. The AI handles everything else. It sources products directly from AliExpress and Alibaba (or sell YOUR OWN digital services, products, or content), builds a real storefront around them, writes conversion-optimized copy, then autonomously creates and runs ads on Google, Facebook and Instagram. No Zapier. No Webflow. No piecing together eight tools that half work. Just a running business.

If you don't have an idea yet it interviews you and figures out what makes sense for your situation.

We got into YCombinator this year and we're opening 100 free beta spots this week before public launch. Free to use, you keep everything you make.

For the people in this sub specifically, this isn't a replacement for no-code tools for people who love building. It's for everyone who wanted the outcome but never wanted to become a tools expert to get there. Big difference.

Beta form: https://forms.gle/nW7CGN1PNBHgqrBb8

Happy to answer anything about how it works under the hood.

My dropshipping store did $52K last month. Here's the boring, unglamorous thing that actually moved the needle.

I was one of those people who thought dropshipping was mostly about finding the right product at the right time. Get the product, run the ads, scale, repeat. I followed the playbook everyone talks about. Watched the same YouTube videos. Read the same Reddit posts. Tested products for about eighteen months and watched most of them die quietly after the initial ad spend.

The thing nobody talks about honestly is how much advice out there is just recycled theory. I kept tweaking ad copy based on gut feeling, kept assuming my product page was fine, kept manually checking competitor stores every other day. Meanwhile fees kept adding up and the margin between what I was making and what I was spending kept getting thinner. The actual turning point started when I stopped guessing about why people weren't buying and just asked them.

How I went from 0.9% to 1.4% checkout rate without touching my ads or price

Survey responses flagged shipping timelines, not price. I made delivery timelines visible above the fold, added "arrives by" language, and moved reviews higher up the page. Ran these as A/B tests using Insighter to keep the data clean. Checkout rate went from 0.9% to 1.4%.

Around this time I also stopped buying products in bulk and started buying packaging in bulk instead. Same premium feel, way less capital tied up. If your store looks cluttered, switch your font to Futura. Close to what Louis Vuitton uses. Afacad works too if your theme doesn't support it.

How I stopped losing margin to competitors without ever racing them on price

I was checking competitor stores manually every couple of days. Eventually set up Lurk and turned on real-time alerts instead. When a competitor started slashing prices, I didn't match them. I shifted the ad angle to lean into reviews and quality instead. Didn't race them to the bottom. When margins compressed across the board I'd already moved on. Competitor tracking ended up being less about copying prices and more about spotting market saturation before your ad budget figures it out for you.

Also if you are running Google Shopping ads, one easy way to increase clicks is by offering variants and pricing one of the less desirable variants cheaper than the others. It gets you into more auctions at a lower price point and pulls people in who then end up buying the better variant anyway.

How I kept my brand in front of people at a fraction of what conversion ads cost

Most visitors don't buy the first time. Running retargeting campaigns optimized for conversions is the mistake, you already did that the first time. Switch the objective to awareness on Facebook and Google. Significantly cheaper and it does the actual job of keeping your brand familiar until someone is ready. Conversion rate went from 1.4% to around 2.2%.

Connect your store to Google Search Console too. Free, and it tells you exactly what people are searching before they land on your page, which is something no ad platform shows you clearly. And keep healthy margins so you have room to offer partial refunds when deliveries run late. A frustrated customer who gets a partial refund and an honest message often comes back. One who gets nothing just leaves a review you can't undo.

The part of the system that quietly added the most revenue while I was doing other things

Email pushed the store to $52,341 that month. Automated flows running in the background, recovering abandoned carts, bringing back past buyers, building trust with new visitors. Conversion rate went from 2.2% to 2.9% and that difference compounded every single day without me touching anything. I used Emailwish for this. The rating looks bad, don't let that stop you. There is genuinely nothing to set up, no emails to write, no flows to build, no triggers to configure. Everything is already done the moment you install it. It just runs and the revenue just comes in.

TL:DR - Don't want to do anything yourself? No worries. Just read below.

Want to spy on competitors and spot dying products quickly?Install Lurk and get real time pricing alerts.

Want the exact email flows that took me to $52K in a month :Install Emailwish, abandoned cart and email flows already built in

If you want, drop your store below.

I'll tell you what ads + email setups would work for you.

dropped this store last week focusing on red light therapy products, launched ads about 3 days ago and they’ve been preforming decently.

i’ve gotten 20 ATC but zero sales.

it truly seems like there’s something wrong in between my audience viewing the add, adding the product to cart, and checkout, but i can’t figure out what for the life of me.

any help?

store: https://infrdlight.com

Started documenting my dropshipping journey publicly today. Figured it’d be interesting to share the real process instead of the usual “made 100k overnight” screenshots.

Yesterday I did $2,184 in revenue using mostly Google Shopping campaigns.

One thing that worked really well for me this week:
I cleaned up my product titles + feeds to match high-intent search terms better, and CTR improved almost immediately. Also split my best-performing products into separate campaigns instead of lumping everything together. Way easier to control spend and scaling now.

Still nowhere near where I want to be, but a few things I’m learning:

- Most products don’t work
- Google Shopping is more about data quality than “viral creatives”

- Product pages matter way more than people think
- Scaling slowly usually works better than forcing budgets up too fast

Current focus:

Better landing pages

Higher AOV products

Improving feed quality

More testing, less guessing

I’m gonna post updates here consistently good days and bad days.

Would actually be cool to connect with other people running Google Ads for ecom since most discussions now are only about TikTok ads.

Few days ago someone here asked me how to increase sales for their store.
I responded quickly. In hindsight, it wasn’t the full answer.
I hate half-answers. So here are 7 high-value tips you can implement right now.

1. To create a branded experience for your audience, don’t buy products in bulk, buy packaging in bulk instead. It’s a much cheaper way to make your brand feel premium and consistent.
2. A/B test product pages   Insightful or any other similar app, it will help you increase your conversion rate by a lot.
3. If your website looks cluttered and unprofessional, change your font to Futura to make your website feel more premium and branded. It’s very similar to the font used by Louis Vuitton. If your theme doesn’t support it, use Afacad, which has a very similar look.
4. Use Email Wish to set up your flows automatically. You’ll get a complete email flow system that will 2x your sales without having to write a single email. 
5. Start retargeting ads with awareness objective instead of conversions. This will keep the cost down and convert much better. 
6. Connect your store with Google Search Console to understand where your organic is traffic is coming from and what they are searching.
7. Use  Lurk  to spy on competitor pricing and get alerts if they drop their price. This will help you keep a tab on your competitors and pivot away from a saturated product with no margins.
8. Use Formiva to collect customer feedback before they purchase and improve your ads. Its AI survey creation helps you dial in your target audience faster.
9. And a bonus 8th tip. Keep healthy margins and offer partial refunds for delays. It helps solve delivery issues and can turn frustrated customers into customers with a memorable experience.

If you want, drop your store.

I’ll tell you what  setup would work for you.

Hello Everyone, This is Philip
let's get into it

After getting results for A client of mine, the supplier decided to fuck things up
right now, he said they were out of product, i just hope he won't start sending out low quality product cos this is a skincare niche store
we need to stop the campaign(2 days ago)

but he's trying to get things fixed tho, but i will love to have other reliable supplier at hand, incase of another slip up..... and also my other clients might need, pls recommend reliable ones

incase you want to ask questions, all sales are from meta ads, no tiktok or google ads

the best structure to start with due to the andromeda update is 1 campaign, 1 adset, 3 to 5 creatives
optimize for sales.....
let it run for minimum of 3 days....

don't forget to drop me a reliable supplier pls....

I used to try and sell in usa but rn im tight with money and didn’t want to back up. So i try to sell products in my country with cheap ads and small audience just to raise some funds. My plan is to sell summer seasonal products just to try and learn this thing a little more while i dont have that much budget to try and sell in bigger markets. My store is all i. My native language so dont take much focus on that just please tell me honestly JUST BY VISUALS, DOES MY STORE LOOKS LIKE A SCAM ? https://www.getvelorise.com/products/airnest-atputas-matracis?variant=57229503431033&\_su\_rec=YYJpwnrPEFxIwM6LsFpXdNQaCIDtWC\_E9RbdlCHHtoJ7vUa4xh57IxYW9fqFdEI\_CMfKnPWZpNWiLdAXgCOPpj69FhMYcLDi3fwMQ1naqSUS\_PGq586xsBPq6kKBMIfxKl-8XsCeDcQYkKWDlll39G2tffO-hA4pc34QPVrpmk6sBvrp4mNY-W7PQuQOcp6DqvzJJuEUKjS1fnkYu5szw9sw0CP4UkClAkuNkReagY1XJpGwYWPWn9-eTIrqxUoq4WI&\_su\_rec\_id=262d93f3-c877-4b37-93cc-80d0c78d1ea7-1778777444

Hey everyone,

I recently launched my Meta ads for my Shopify store and wanted to get some feedback from people who already have experience with this.

So far I’ve spent almost $35 USD mainly to collect data and test creatives/products. My setup is:

•	1 Campaign

•	1 Ad Set

•	3 Ads

Two ads are for the same product with different creatives/angles, and one ad is for a different product. The different product ad barely got any reach/spend.

Right now I’m getting some Add to Carts, so I feel like there’s at least some interest, but still no sales yet. I know $35 is not a huge amount, and maybe Meta is still learning.

I currently have around $200 budget left, and I want to use it wisely instead of wasting money randomly.

I’d really appreciate advice from people who have already gone through this stage:

•	Should I keep testing the current creatives longer?

•	Should I duplicate the winning ad?

•	Should I test more creatives instead of more products?

•	ABO or CBO for a beginner with this budget?

•	How much spend do you usually allow before killing an ad?

•	Any tips for turning Add to Carts into actual purchases?

Honestly, I’ve already learned a lot from Reddit reading other people’s experiences, so thank you guys for that. I’m still hopeful I’ll eventually get my first sales.

Any guidance or strategy suggestions would really help 🙏

TL:DR; 5 Step process

• Feedback  →  tells you what’s wrong  →   Use Formiva to create forms quickly
• Testing  →  validates what actually  works  →  Use Insighter to run a/b tests to see what works  
• Competitors  →  help you track positioning, pricing, and market saturation  →  Use Lurk to check competitor pricing.  
• Retargeting ads  →  keep your brand familiar before people are ready to buy   →   Choose Awareness in facebook as goal & google
• Email  →  helps you retarget, recover lost visitors, and build loyalty  →  Use Emailwish to automatically setup exact email flows I used to generate $150.8k from email. ( don’t let its low rating fool you, it’ works well)

 

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Background

I was one of those fools who thought  dropshipping was luck

Find a winning product, scale to the moon, buy a Lambo. Simple.

That was the dream lol, but reality was very different.

Most of my stores failed. Ads, Shopify fees, and dozens of apps slowly drained money while I kept chasing “winning products” and following generic guru advice.

Eventually I realized most of the advice was just recycled theories made to sell courses.

Ads and demand still matter, but after a point you need to stop relying on generic advice and start understanding why people actually buy.

-------------------------------------------------------------

1. Stage 1 (~2 minute ) : Fixed my ads (based on real objections)

So instead of guessing, I started asking.

Added a short flow before/after purchase with questions like:

• what made you click this ad?
• what almost stopped you from buying?
• what were you looking for?

Nothing fancy, but the answers gave me real insights.

If you are unsure on what kind of questions to ask, just use something like Formiva. It has great templates to get you started. 
Offer a small incentive like a discount to get engagement.

From the data i collected, I realized people kept saying:

“not sure if this works” That made me realize my ads lacked trust.

So I started showing ads with:

• UGC
• before/after
• proof-based ads

Simple changes based on actual feedback, not theories.

-------------------------------------------------------------

2. Stage 2 (~2 minute ): Fixed my product page through testing

A lot of people said:

“shipping feels too long”

So I didn’t touch the price, I didn’t optimize ads, I tested a few UI design changes. 

• made delivery timelines clear above the fold
• added “arrives by”
• reviews position

Small changes, nothing ground breaking which increased checkout rate from ~0.9% to ~1.4%.

Used a simple A/B testing app to run clean tests without messing data. Many different A/B Testing apps in the market but I found insighter, with most relaxed limits in the free plan.

New apps generally have very good limits in the free plan and that’s the best time to use them ;)

-------------------------------------------------------------

3. Stage 3 (~1 minute ): Started keeping a tab on my competitor pricing.

This one sounds obvious now, but I used to constantly check competitor stores for pricing manually every other day.

Eventually I just set up competitor tracking on Lurk  and enabled alerts instead. There are many apps out there, this was the only one I found with real time alerts included in the free plan.

Way less mental overhead and honestly, it helped more with positioning than copying prices

A few times competitors started pushing aggressive discounts, so instead of joining a race to the bottom, I changed the ad angle and emphasized quality and reviews instead.

And when margins became too thin, I moved on before wasting more money on ads.

Honestly, competitor tracking is one of the easiest ways to understand when a market is becoming saturated.

-------------------------------------------------------------

4. Stage 4  (5 ~ 10 minute ) : Fixed retargeting

Most people don’t buy on the first visit. That’s normal.

But a lot of stores either ignore retargeting or run it poorly.

I know showing ads 10–11 times can get expensive, but that’s why retargeting ads on facebook and google should usually be impression/awarness-based, not conversion-based. Your ads were already optimized for conversions the first time, no need to optimize it again while retargeting.

Awareness based ads are generally much cheaper than conversion based ads. This will help you bring your conversion rate from 1.4~1.5% to easily  2~ 2.2%

-------------------------------------------------------------

5. Stage 5  (30 sec ~ 1 minute ) : Retargeting & Improving brand loyalty (through emails)

Once you are done with retargeting ads, you need a cheaper and more scalable way to keep reaching those users and that is through email !!

Most people think email marketing means blasting campaigns to purchased lists. That’s usually where stores go wrong.

The real value comes from automated emails (flows) triggered by user behavior:

• Welcome Series→ introduce your brand and build trust
• Abandoned cart Series→ recover lost checkouts
• Review request Series→ build social proof for future buyers
• Post-purchase Series→ increase repeat purchases and loyalty

There are many more flows but these are enough to get you started. For email marketing, there are quite a few apps but If you don’t want to write any emails and get started with essential flows I will recommend   Emailwish ( don’t let its low rating fool you, it’ works well) 

Emails will help you increase your conversion rate from ~2.2 % to around 2.8% ~ 3%

-------------------------------------------------------------

Over time, I realized the stores performing best weren’t just running ads better.

They had better systems. Miss one part of the system, and results become unpredictable.

To summarize 

• Feedback  →  tells you what’s wrong  →   Use Formiva to create forms quickly
• Testing  →  validates what actually  works  →  Use Insighter to run a/b tests to see what works  
• Competitors  →  help you track positioning, pricing, and market saturation  →  Use Lurk to check competitor pricing.  
• Retargeting Ads  →  keep your brand familiar before people are ready to buy   →   Choose Awareness in facebook as goal & google
• Email  →  helps you retarget, recover lost visitors, and build loyalty  →  Use Emailwish to automatically setup exact email flows I used to generate $150.8k from email. Despite it's poor rating, it works