Day 102: Three Days of Losses and a Sudden Bounce Back

Today is Thursday the eleventh of December, and it is about four o’clock in the afternoon.

It has been a bad couple of days. I am not going to lie about that. It has been emotionally draining and difficult to stay upbeat.

It is extremely frustrating when you genuinely feel like you are doing everything correctly, yet the numbers simply do not show it.

When I look at the numbers from yesterday, it is clear it was one of the worst days since starting this challenge. It knocks your confidence more than you expect.

But the only thing you can do is dig into the data and try to understand what is driving it.

Profit Trend Overview

Over the last thirty days, my profit needs to follow a certain trajectory to stay on track for the 240k goal.

Looking at the graph, we have dropped below that expected line several times.

Two smaller dips earlier. A larger dip after that. And now three consecutive days of significant drops.

Yesterday was especially bad. This makes the overall challenge harder because negative days compound quickly.

Revenue and Ad Spend Breakdown

Yesterday’s total revenue was three hundred and ten dollars.

It feels almost embarrassing to say that. Ad spend came in at four hundred and fifteen pounds.

Converted, that is five hundred and forty four dollars. The result was a loss of one hundred and seventy three dollars.

Combined with the previous day’s loss, the two-day downturn adds up to roughly three hundred dollars. It is painful.

Investigating What Went Wrong

When you look at the numbers from the eighth of December, we were at one thousand and seventy-eight dollars. We made more than six hundred dollars profit.

Then, suddenly, the next two days fall to four hundred and seventeen and three hundred and eighty-one.

It makes no sense on the surface. Facebook calls the campaign high performing.

Facebook says I should be able to scale it. Facebook says it should be stable. But the reality is anything but stable.

Comparing Key Metrics

To understand the shift, I compared the high-performing day with the collapse.

The CPM on the good day was much lower. Two days later it jumped by more than fifty percent.

A sudden rise like that immediately reduces delivery efficiency. CTR dropped from eight and a half percent to six percent.

That is a twenty-five percent fall in engagement. Cost per landing page view went from fifty-eight pence to eighty-seven pence.

On the new funnel it went from fifty pence to seventy-two pence. These are jumps of thirty to fifty percent across the board.

Cost per purchase doubled in one case and increased by fifty percent in another.

Two Main Causes Behind the Decline

The first cause is the audience being shown the ads. The algorithm decided to put the ads in front of people with lower buying intent and lower historical purchase behaviour.

These people are less likely to buy the front end, and far less likely to buy any upsells.

The second cause is auction pressure. Bigger advertisers enter the auction.
They push bids higher.

They take the most valuable audience segments. I am left with weaker segments on those days.

And that is exactly what happened. Front-end purchases fell. Upsell purchases collapsed completely.

Most people who did buy only bought the basic product. Nobody bought order bumps. Nobody bought upsells.

That lack of backend revenue is where the huge sales difference really shows.

Understanding the Painful Reality

It does not make the emotional side any easier. But at least now there is an explanation.

There were no technical problems. No structural funnel issues. It was simply auction pressure and a shift in who Facebook chose to show my ads to.

Sudden Bounce Back

Just to highlight the madness of this whole situation, take a look at what happened today.

As of four o’clock in the afternoon, sales have already reached eight hundred and sixty-eight dollars.

That is the reality.

Somehow the auction swung back in my favour. Somehow the ads were delivered to a higher quality audience again.

So while the idea of scaling a stable campaign sounds good in theory, it is never that clean or consistent in practice.

But I am relieved to see the bounce back. Hopefully it continues into tomorrow.

I will update you again then.