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It turns out @desmondhth is right (again). Paid > organic. I got my AI photo generator to $6k/month almost purely via organic, but I wanted to revisit paid before going further down that rabbit hole. It turns out paid ads were a HUGE opportunity for me that I was completely ignoring. Here are the interesting realizations/dumb mistakes I made along the way: (These are very specific to my business - which is web based - and may not apply to yours). Google search ads: 1. Be VERY careful about location target. When I started, I included a bunch of rich, English-speaking countries like Singapore, Canada, Australia, etc. Took me way too long to realize USA was the only highly profitable country for me. It took me even longer to realize you need to change your settings to ensure Google only targets people PHYSICALLY IN the United States, as opposed to anyone who is "interested" in the USA (I was getting so many people from India before). 2. Set up a retargeting campaign, and give it a MUCH smaller budget than your main campaign (it's crazy how efficient this is). My initial logic was: why wouldn't you want to spend MORE money on people who are already warm leads? But the pool of warm leads is so much smaller, that a higher budget wastes a lot of money unnecessarily. 3. For everything else, don't get caught up in the weeds. Set goal max conversions, set a reasonable daily budget, and adjust as needed to meet your CAC goal. Focus on improving your website/product offering, rather than constantly tweaking your settings. Meta ads: 1. Install the Pixel and setup purchase event WAY before you start running Meta ads. I tried starting Meta ads at the same time as Google search, and burned hundreds of dollars with zero purchases. So I stopped. I assumed my creatives were just shit. But I left my pixel there, and the whole time it was learning. Use this information in the next point. 2. Lookalike audiences are insanely good, either standalone or with advantage plus, if your goal is not to burn a shit load of money without any results. When I restarted meta ads with a 1% lookalike campaign, 1-5% lookalike campaign, and 1% lookalike advantage+ campaign, they were all instantly quite profitable. 3. Setup a retargeting campaign for visitors and registered users (import from your DB). Another no brainer. 4. Website/product is just as important as creatives. When I started up Meta ads again, I used the same shitty creatives I made myself - inspired by @nico_jeannen example for codefast in his course (looks like some ms paint shit). So why are the ads so much more profitable than before? Because my landing page/product offering is 10x better than when I initially launched the ads, and not to mention the audience is a bit more well defined.