The $150 launch budget
- Domain (.com, one year): $10–$16. Skip the privacy upsells and the matching .net.
- Shopify: the trial gets you the first month for a few dollars, then Basic at about $39/month. You'll have made sales before month two if you follow the plan.
- Product samples: two samples from two suppliers with express shipping, $40–$80 total.
- Packaging for your first orders: poly mailers and a pack of thank-you cards, about $20.
- First week of Meta ads: $10 a day for seven days, $70.
Total: roughly $150–$200 to reach your first sale, depending on sample shipping. Your first inventory order (usually $300–$800) comes after that, paid for partly by the sales you already made.
What you don't need to spend on
- A paid theme ($200–$400). Dawn is free and converts fine for one product.
- Apps. Every app is a monthly fee and a slower store. The only one you'll install before your first sale is Shopify's own Facebook & Instagram app for the pixel.
- A logo. Text in the header is fine until order ten. Then pay $50 on Fiverr.
- Inventory. The single most expensive mistake new stores make is ordering 500 units before proving one sells.
- A course that costs $997. The information is not $997 better. It's usually the same ten steps with a webinar attached.
The running costs once you're selling
Shopify Basic ($39/month), payment processing (about 2.9% + 30¢ per order), shipping ($5–$7 per order for a sub-1-lb item via Shopify Shipping), and ads. Ads are the big one and the only one that scales with revenue; if your product sells for 3x its landed cost, there's room for a $12–$18 cost per order and still a healthy margin. Run your own numbers before you order anything.
Do the math on your product
The EcomDada course includes a margin calculator that takes your supplier quote and shows profit per order and break-even ad cost. Step 5 of ten. $5 for the whole thing.