Two things stand between Safe Haven Metal and advertising that pays. The site is doing too much work, and Google cannot see accurate prices or complete orders. Pricing is recalculated on your own server all day, and nothing keeps Google in step with it. So pricing comes first: moving it onto a Google Sheet takes that load off your server and gives Google the same prices your customers see, which is what keeps products approved and ads running. Tracking is fixed at the same time, so Google learns from every order.
Revised after our September 29 call. The pricing sheet now leads the plan, with buyback markups and a FindBullion review added to it, and email has its own section. This covers our work only. Advertising spend and email platform fees are paid directly to Google and the email provider and are not included here.
Where the effort goes
Stages 1 and 2 run together and both come before any spend. Once approved, they take roughly two to three weeks, with Tag Manager the main unknown on timing. Stage 3 launches after both are verified. Email runs alongside and does not depend on the ads.
Pricing Sheet & Price FeedStage 1
$5,400–7,940
Tracking & MeasurementStage 2
$2,330–3,415
Campaign Build & LaunchStage 3
$1,725–2,760
Email SetupAlongside
$2,355–3,810
Three Months of TuningOngoing
$6,060–9,090
Stage detail
Nothing launches until Stages 1 and 2 are finished and verified.
Stage 1
Pricing Sheet & Merchant Center Price Feed
$5,400–7,940
Before any spend · Runs alongside Stage 2
- One sheet controls the pricing. PlatformGold's ask and bid pull into a master sheet, one row per product, with your markups beside them. The sheet does the arithmetic on Google's servers and sends finished prices to the site. Your server stops calculating and simply displays.
- The plugin's own pricing gets turned off. The PlatformGold plugin recalculating on a timer is what is loading your server today. It gets disabled for pricing, and stays in place for orders and product imports.
- The same prices go to Google in the same run. Every time the sheet updates the site, it pushes the same prices to Merchant Center. Site and Google always match, which is what prevents price mismatch disapprovals, the thing that would otherwise stop the ads running.
- Buyback markups live in the same sheet. Buyback markups are set and managed in the sheet alongside your selling prices. They are not shown on the site in this plan, but they are in place when the buyback program goes ahead.
- Clean up the feed and work the disapprovals. Titles, attributes and categories are reviewed so products are eligible in the first place. Google treats gold bullion as close to currency, so some approvals take resubmission and appeal even when everything is correct.
- FindBullion, fed from the sheet. FindBullion publishes an API. We review whether it can take your prices directly from the sheet instead of sending bots to crawl your site. If it can, the build is scoped separately; this line covers finding out.
Range breakdown
Control sheet, ask & bid markup columns$740–1,110
PlatformGold API pull & scheduled sync$1,110–1,480
Price push to site$740–1,110
Merchant Center price push$740–1,110
Buyback markup columns$185–370
Feed mapping & attribute cleanup$555–925
Disapproval review & policy resolution$480–640
FindBullion API review$370–555
Plugin pricing shutdown & testing$480–640
Sheet-side work is custom Google Apps Script. It runs within Google's free monthly limits where possible; beyond that, similar setups typically run around $10 a month, paid to Google.
What moves the range
How cleanly the PlatformGold data comes across and how many products fight back in Merchant Center. A clean catalog with a handful of disapprovals is the low end. A large share flagged under the currency policy is the high end.
Stage 2
Tracking & Measurement
$2,330–3,415
Before any spend · Runs alongside Stage 1
- Orders are going missing, and we can prove it. Checking your recent transactions against Google Analytics, at least one real order did not appear. If that happens at any regular rate, every campaign report will understate what advertising produced, and the natural response is to switch off something that was working.
- Find out why, then fix it. We compare transaction numbers from WooCommerce and Analytics directly. That tells us whether this is a tracking code problem, an order status problem, or customers running ad blockers, which is common in this audience.
- Sort out Tag Manager. There are several containers in the account and it is not clear which is live or who owns them. We consolidate to a single container we know is correct.
- Confirm the purchase conversion is real. A campaign optimises toward whatever you tell it to value. If the purchase event is misfiring or reporting the wrong amount, Google will spend your budget chasing the wrong thing and do it efficiently.
- A dashboard you can actually read. One page pulling Analytics and Google Ads together, so performance is visible without logging into three systems.
Range breakdown
Conversion tracking audit & reconciliation$740–1,110
Tag Manager cleanup & consolidation$555–740
GA4 e-commerce event repair$555–925
Reporting dashboard$480–640
Access to Google Ads, Merchant Center and Tag Manager is already granted.
What moves the range
What the audit turns up. If the missing order is an isolated ad blocker case, this is confirmation work and lands at the low end. If the purchase event is genuinely misfiring, it has to be rebuilt and re-verified against live orders, which is the high end.
Stage 3
Campaign Build & Launch
$1,725–2,760
After Stages 1 and 2 are verified
- Performance Max, built around margin rather than volume. Products are grouped by what they actually contribute, and the campaign is pointed at the groups that can carry the cost of a click.
- A return target agreed before launch. We propose the minimum return on ad spend that makes this worth doing, based on your margins, and configure the campaign to hold to it. That number is the whole test.
- Start small and contained. A controlled budget on a narrow product set, so the first month buys information. Widening comes after the numbers say it should.
- On suggested spend, somewhere around $2,000 to $3,000 a month is enough to get readable data in this category without risking much. Less than that and the campaign never gathers enough to learn from.
- Gold IRA is deliberately not in this stage. It is the highest value thing you sell and among the most expensive clicks on Google. It deserves its own test and budget cap once the e-commerce side is measuring correctly.
Range breakdown
Product segmentation & ROAS targets$555–740
PMax build, assets & feed setup$800–1,280
Conversion value & bidding configuration$370–740
Advertising spend is billed by Google directly and is not included in these figures.
What moves the range
How many product groups get built and how much creative is needed. One tightly focused campaign is the low end. Several groups with separate targets and assets is the high end.
Independent of the ads · Can start right away
- Start with who you already have. We write an export of your customers and order history and look at it first, to see what you are starting with and what kind of return email can realistically bring.
- Klaviyo is the likely choice. Mailchimp's store sync puts real load on the server, which works against everything else in this plan. The final call comes after the data review.
- Automated, so it runs on its own. Campaigns are set up once and send on schedule, without anyone having to hold their hand.
- About one email a week, at a predictable time. Enough to stay in front of customers without becoming noise.
Range breakdown
Customer data export & analysis$555–925
Email platform setup & store connection$555–925
Automated campaign setup$925–1,480
Testing$320–480
Platform fees are paid to the email provider directly and depend on list size. We confirm the right tier once we see how many contacts you have.
What moves the range
The state of the customer data. A clean export with good email coverage is the low end. Duplicate or incomplete records that need sorting before anything can be sent is the high end.
Ongoing
Three Months of Tuning
$6,060–9,090
$2,020 to $3,030 per month · Then re-evaluate
- Launching a campaign is not the work. The work is the weeks afterward: seeing which products earn their clicks, cutting the ones that do not, adjusting targets as the data thickens, and watching for disapprovals as prices move.
- The weekly email, written and sent. Drafting, your approval, sending, and watching what gets opened and what gets bought.
- Monthly reporting against the agreed target, in plain numbers. What was spent, what came back from ads and from email, and what changed as a result.
- Feed maintenance is part of it. Products get disapproved, prices drift, and new products arrive. Left alone, a working campaign degrades on its own.
- Then a real decision. At three months the numbers either justify continuing and spending more, point toward a different channel, or say paid search does not work at these margins. Reddit is the next channel to look at then.
Range breakdown
Ads management, reporting & feed upkeep / mo$1,280–1,920
Weekly email & reporting / mo$740–1,110
Three months$6,060–9,090
Month to month rather than a fixed term. Stops whenever you decide it should.
What moves the range
How much is running. A single campaign on a narrow product set sits at the low end. Multiple campaigns, a wider catalog and active disapproval management sit at the high end.
Total investment
Planning range · MRA work
Stage 1, pricing sheet and price feed Before any spend$5,400–7,940
Stage 2, tracking and measurement Before any spend$2,330–3,415
Stage 3, campaign build and launch After 1 and 2 are verified$1,725–2,760
Email setup Alongside, independent of the ads$2,355–3,810
Setup subtotal One time$11,810–17,925
Three months of tuning and weekly email $2,020 to $3,030 per month$6,060–9,090
Setup plus three months$17,870–27,015
Plus advertising spend, paid to Google directly$2,000–3,000 / month suggested
What we need, and what is not included
To get started
- A starting monthly budget for Google spend.
- A go-ahead to export customer and order data for the email review.
Not included
- Advertising spend. Billed by Google directly to you.
- Email platform fees. Paid to the provider directly.
- Buyback prices on the site. The markups are managed in the sheet here; showing them and taking sell requests is covered in the Buyback plan.
- A FindBullion integration build. Stage 1 covers reviewing their API; the build is scoped once we know what it allows.
- Gold IRA campaigns. Worth testing separately once the e-commerce side is measuring correctly.
- Reddit and community work. Revisited at the three month mark.
- Brand campaigns. Not yet worth running, since there is little search volume on the name to defend.
- Search engine optimisation and content. A longer play than this plan covers.