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Comment by redsymbol | Hacker News Reader

> Is it possible to start small with Meta and then ramp up?

It depends. What kind of offer are you selling?

Generally the learning curve is massive, long, stressful and expensive. I lost tens of thousands of dollars before I could consistently make ads which were profitable.

It's not like learning coding. Imagine if every time you saw a stack trace, $250 was deducted from your bank account. Learning media buying is kind of like that.

Another path is to get hired by an ad agency. They will train you and give you a budget to manage; if you lose that budget, the worst that can happen is they'll fire you (rather than losing all your stuff).

But that would be a switch in career path, which I do not think you are asking about.

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just a mobile app i been working on figured i might try my luck with meta

what is the source for that uphill curve is that because its not clear what your user wants or optimizing ad copies ?

im definitely not looking to spend thousands of dollars, figured starting out small hmmm

getting hired by ad agency seems interesting reminds me of trading desks a bit

I would not proceed unless you are willing to invest $50/day for a minimum of 6 months.

There is also the investment in learning, which would require 5-10 hours per week that whole time.

I say this because anything short of that is likely to lose money and accomplish little.

Not trying to gatekeep, so feel free to try it however you like. Maybe it is worth you trying to set up one ad just to see if you like the process enough to continue.

thanks for the heads up i dont think you are gate keeping at all

do you have any recommendation for an alternative? seems like for now i am going to defer the Meta ad experiment , was thinking of targeting TikTok videos

Unfortunately, just changing ad platforms is no magic bullet. Tiktok advertising is no easier to ramp up on, in fact it will probably be more difficult and expensive.

If are worried about the significant expense and high risk of paid ads, which is very reasonable, I recommend you do not do paid ads at all.

I think a better alternative for you is to learn to create organic content, e.g. videos for IG and tiktok, or text posts for platforms like X. And learn to stimulate sales of your app that way.

This also has a long learning curve, but dodges the financial risk of paid ads. Once your organic content is dialed in enough to make consistent profit, you'll be much better positioned to start with ads and be successful.

Good luck!

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