@thenebra
Are my candles just too low priced products to make it worth my time with google ads?
Whether it is worth using Google ads isn't really a function of price. It more a function on one hand of your gross margin and on the other hand market or your competitors. How much you pay for ads will depend on how much your competitors are paying. If you find a niche with no competition advertising costs can be low. It is impossible to know without trying (like robzilla has already pointed out).
In accounting advertising cost are not calculated on per unit basis, as it is extremely difficult to attribute the cost of an ad to the sale of a product. Often many people will need to see your ads before one person buys a product, and then as has been pointed out above, a customer that has seen an ad and purchased a product may return to buy more of your product without additional advertising.
So typically advertising costs are aggregated and then deducted from gross margin, which is the revenue from sales less cost of the product you sold. So to truly get a sense of return on investment one would need to run a campaign for some period of time and then deduct that cost from the gross margin earned over the same period of time.
Moreover, there are two opposing ways to make money high volume low margin, or low volume high margin. Bentley, sells very few cars but each one sold likely provides a huge margin that would make Toyota blush. Toyota on the other hand sells millions of cars a year, so even if the only make few hundred dollars per car sold, year profits are likely far greater that what Bentley earns.
The point of that last bit, is that if you only able to make profit $1 per candle but can sell tens of thousands of them, then that is pretty good, but on the other if your market is small, maybe even 15$ per candle is not enough to sustain the business. And don't forget you need to produce what you sell so if you can't produce 25k candles a year, then that strategy is likely not the one to adopt.
One final point,
Based on your post (if I read it correctly) your per unit gross margin is $15. That is the difference between your variable costs (in your case cost of wax, wicks, and your time) and the money received from sale of one candle. Now there is nothing wrong with reasoning on a per unit basis, but it doesn't need to be. For example you can sell your candles in bundles of say 3 candles for 75$, then your GM will 75 - 3 x 15 = 30, it doubled! This is partly why grocery stores advertise products such as avocados at 3 for 5$. The other reason is that people perceive value in buying in bundles. In your case you should offer 1 candle $30 and 3 for 77$. Take numbers that are not easily divisible 75 / 3 is easy, 25$ but what 77 / 3?
The key is to have a plan before you get started spending on advertising. Set a goal, say the sale of 100 units and a maximum ad spend of $300, once you reach one of those thresholds stop, and calculate the result. If sell 100 candles first then you can double down, and if you fall far short of sales goals after spending $300 you can cut your losses and reevaluate.
Good luck!
