How You Can Start Your Subscription Box Business On A Budget

Liam gives the answers . It's as simple as that .

I know there are a lot of people out there who are on the fence about starting up their own subscription box . They may have a fantastic idea , but they're worried about how much it will actually cost to get the business up and running . The good news is you can 100% start a subscription box business on a budget and build a really successful company .

If you're focused and you want it bad enough , you can absolutely make that happen . When we started BusterBox a few years ago , we were on a budget . We did not have unlimited amounts of money to spend on that business . We were on a very tight budget and I actually invested about three grand over 12 months .

That was literally it , and that turned into a business that has sold millions of dollars of boxes , has served thousands of subscribers all over Ireland and the UK and continues to pay me every single month . It's not a bad trade-off , is it ?

You invest three grand a few years ago and it turns into a multi-million dollar business and you end up earning more money from it than you ever earned in any job previously , and you're also working for yourself , and you also end up building a very valuable asset that you can sell for a significant amount of money one day .

I think it's a pretty good scenario and that is possible . It wasn't only us who achieved that . There are so many other examples of subscription box owners I know who have achieved the exact same thing and who started their business with a budget , so you can absolutely 100% achieve it as well , and that's the point of this podcast .

I'm going to share how you can start your subscription box for a relatively low cost . Let's jump into it . Okay , to run a subscription box business , you're definitely going to need a subscription box platform .

Your subscription box platform will allow you to build your website , take subscription payments , manage your customers , generate orders all of that stuff , which is critical . Now , there's a few different options out there , but for us in BusterBox , we use Subli , and we have used Subli from the very start and we've built a very successful business on it .

So , of course , I'm going to recommend Subli , and the good news is Subli is not expensive . Just looking at their pricing here . They start from $39 per month for the most basic plan . If you decide to pay annually , you're going to save 25% on that and it will work out at $29 per month really really good value .

Now the middle plan starts from $79 per month and if you choose to pay annually , you're going to save 25% and it's going to work out at just $59 per month . Now , there's obviously got to be transaction fees included with that as well , and that's really the same for the majority of subscription box platforms out there .

But overall , that's really good value out there . But overall that's really good value and I can vouch . Subli has all the features you need to build a really successful business . Okay , moving on , you will definitely need to be able to send sales emails and other types of emails to your customers , so a email platform is essential .

Now there's many different email platforms out there . For us in BusterBox , we use ActiveCampaign . It's quite advanced and it allows us to do a lot of different automations and stuff , and it's a great platform .

But it is expensive and you more than likely don't need all those features if you're only starting out and you want to launch your subscription box business on a budget . So there's other options out there . Another really popular one would be Klaviyo . This is really popular across the e-commerce industry but again , it is quite advanced .

It has some really powerful features . It can work out pretty expensive and if you're starting your subscription box business on a budget , you probably don't need all of those features right away . So some other options out there would be MailChimp . I have used MailChimp in the past .

We actually started BusterBox on MailChimp back in the day and I've used it for some other projects as well . It's pretty decent , pretty basic , but it definitely works . Now , two other options which keep getting mentioned and I haven't personally used , but I have heard they're good and they're quite affordable is number one mailer light .

Now , mailer light have a free plan and you can send up to 12 000 monthly emails with their free plan . Then obviously they will charge you and it's very affordable . It starts at nine dollars per month if you're paying yearly and if you're paying monthly it's only ten dollars per month , but it will depend on the number of subscribers you have .

The more people you get on your list , the more expensive it becomes . It's still a relatively cheap platform compared to others on the market . Yeah , so I've heard great things about mailer light .

The other one which I've heard great things about is flow desk , and the great thing about Flowdesk is there's no tiers , no limits , and you can add as many subscribers as you like at no extra cost , which is actually pretty insane when you think about it . Now .

Flowdesk works out at $38 per month if you're paying monthly and if you switch to annual , it's only $35 per month , so really good value for money . So , yeah , there's a few different options there . Check them out , see what works for your business and your budget and go with whatever suits you .

Okay , moving on , the smartest way to launch anything whether it's a subscription box , business , a new product , software , whatever you should 100% validate your idea and market demand before you put time , money and other resources into developing that business .

And the best way to do that for a relatively low cost is by creating a simple waitlist page explaining what your subscription box is , does a mock-up picture of a box and your launch date , and then sending traffic at it and seeing how many people leave their email address and express some kind of interest .

If you can even get a small payment off them as well , that's even better because it validates the demand .

Further now , I've recorded a entire separate podcast around exactly how to validate your subscription box idea without wasting loads of money and time , so I'm not going to go into too much detail about it on this episode , but I definitely recommend going back and checking out that previous episode I recorded and , funny enough , the name of that episode is how to

validate your subscription box idea without wasting loads of money and time . I'll put a link to that episode in the show notes . But the basic concept is you create a simple landing page and then you create a mock-up box .

And to create a mock-up box for relatively cheap , all you need to do is go somewhere like Amazon where you can purchase a small amount of boxes for really , really cheap .

Get them sent to your house , then purchase some products the type of products that you will use if your business idea goes ahead then create a mock-up box and take some pictures of the mock-up box so people know the type of products they're likely to receive .

Now a big tip is right go out of your way to make sure this picture of the mock-up box is really good quality . Don't take a picture of a lot of junk in a box and put it on a web page , because if you do that , people simply won't be interested .

Make sure you take a good quality picture and even if you have to hire a photographer , or if you have a really good quality camera on your phone and you can use maybe a light box so you have some good lighting , go with that and you will be able to get a good quality picture .

Now , to create the waitlist page , you can most likely go with your subscription box platform . They will more than likely have a feature to allow you to create a waitlist page , so there'll be no additional cost there . Some other options to create a waitlist page will be character . We use that , click , funnels , lead pages , wordpress .

There's many options out there . Once your page is completed , you're then going to want to market that page and send traffic at it to capture leads and verify the demand of your subscription box . Now , there's many different ways you can do this .

My favorite way is paid advertising , especially Facebook ads , because when you know what you're doing , you can capture leads for relatively cheap and you can drive a good amount of volume , because Facebook is still the biggest social media platform out there . So to create the type of Facebook ads which work best with .

This would involve setting up your ad account and setting up your pixel on that waitlist page . You then create a new campaign and your campaign objective will be leads , and you would optimize to collect leads on that waitlist page . Now , you don't need a gigantic budget to do this .

To run these type of ads , you can do it on a budget and you can actually do it for as low as ten dollars per day and see what kind of traction you get . But yeah , that's my favorite way to build up a wait list . Now there's obviously other things you can do too that don't cost much money either .

You could run a Google ads campaign on a low budget . You could run a TikTok ads campaign on a low budget . You could do it organically , which doesn't really cost anything at all . It just takes a lot of time . That really isn't my favorite way of building up a waitlist page , but it can be done by organically building up your social media accounts .

Another way which works really well is doing some research into your niche . Well , you should definitely be researching your niche deeply before you launch anyway , but you should find out who all the top influencers and micro influencers are in your niche and what type of Facebook groups are there covering your niche ?

Then reaching out to the owners of these Facebook groups and the influencers , making a partnership with them and asking them to promote your waitlist page in exchange for a free box . Some people will go for it .

Others may come back with a ridiculous price they want you to pay , depending on how big their following is , and others may come back asking for a pretty fair amount of money to do this .

It all depends on your budget , on how far you want to go with this , but if you're very persistent and you reach out to enough people , you can definitely get enough movement here for a relatively low price . There are so many examples of subscription box owners I know who did this strategy and filled up their waitlist page for a really low cost .

So , yeah , that definitely works . Okay , moving on , let's say you have done this stuff , you've verified demand and you've filled up your waitlist page . What's next ?

One of the biggest concerns people have and it's a very valid concern is they will have to invest a lot of money in products , shipping and fulfillment , and there is no guarantee they're going to make any profit from that . People are are concerned about that they don't want to end up in the hole and be left sitting with a lot of inventory .

So I have some good news there's a way you can launch your subscription box business essentially for nothing when it comes to any of these costs . And this is how you do it You're going to use your customer's money to pay for all of this stuff .

Let me give you an example . Imagine you opened the cart for your new subscription box business on the 1st of September . You're then going to make a cut off in the middle of the month . So you can say , hey , from the 1st of September until the 15th of September , anybody who signs up is going to receive the first month's box .

We don't start shipping our boxes until the 30th of September . So what you're essentially doing here is you're collecting money and you're selling your boxes for 15 days . Then you're giving yourself another 15 days to source the products , to pay for the cardboard boxes , to pack your boxes and to pay for shipping .

Now , if you're well organized , you can absolutely make this work . You obviously want to have the products for your box picked out . You want to have an agreement with your cardboard box provider . You want to basically have everything ready to go . Then , as the sales come in , you will use that money to get the first round of boxes out to your customers .

The great thing about this strategy as well is you're giving yourself a cutoff point in the middle of the month , so you should know the exact amount of boxes that are going out , and you won't end up over ordering and being left with excess stock , which can be a killer at the very start when you don't have the revenue in your business to essentially cover that

. That's exactly how we launched the booster box at the very start and it worked great for us . And again , there's so many examples of other subscription box owners who will follow this strategy and it's worked great for them as well .

Now , something else I want to touch on right , which can be a complete killer for a new subscription box business , is custom boxes . I highly recommend you don't go with custom boxes at the very start unless there's a massive reason why you should .

And , to be honest with you , I can't really think of any circumstances why you should go with custom boxes at the very start . They're really expensive , right , and they can absolutely eat into your margin .

I know so many examples of new subscription box businesses who thought they were doing the right thing , and they invested in a big amount of custom boxes , and it ended up putting the company under pressure and a big strain on the cash flow . Now , at some point in your subscription box journey , you may want to go with custom boxes , and that's absolutely fine .

When you reach a certain level and you have the volume , you will be able to get custom boxes for a reasonable price and you'll also have the cash flow to actually support that . At the start , though , flow to actually support that At the start , though , I don't recommend that . I recommend going with the cheapest box possible .

Obviously , the box needs to be good quality , but the cheapest one possible . Now I'm not going to recommend different box suppliers on this episode . It will all depend on where you're based , but if you go with a relatively plain box , it's going to be a lot cheaper .

Now , if you want to customize your box and add your branding to it , you can do that for a relatively cheap price . You can use stickers , you can use a stamp or you can ask your box company to put a plain logo on your box , and that won't break the bank . That's exactly what we did in buster box .

Back in the day , we just had a plain brown box with our logo on the front of it and it wasn't expensive . You should do the exact same once you start adding crazy designs to your box . That's when it can get really expensive .

So just be wary of that , because you want to ensure you have a healthy margin from the start so you can go profitable as quickly as possible . Okay , as you can tell from this podcast , you can a hundred percent start a subscription box business for a relatively low amount of money .

If you have been on the fence and holding back from taking action because you've been worried about the cost , my advice is just go for it , because it can be done on a budget . If you're resourceful and persistent , you can 100% make this happen .

Now I just want to remind people my new subscription box membership Subscription box founders Is launching next week , on the 30th of September . So this is like the Netflix for launching and growing your very own successful subscription box business .

It's a brand new membership that is going to be hosted on school and it's designed to help people who are in the very early stages of their journey , whether they're at the idea stage or just recently launched . This membership comes with over 70 training videos , live group calls and a very supportive community .

The plan is to give everybody all the knowledge and support they need to build a very successful subscription box business . I launched BusterBox eight years ago and I have learned a serious amount of information about what works and what is a complete waste of time .

My goal is to share all of that knowledge with you in the easiest way possible to give you the best chance of success . Subscription Box Founders is going to be very affordable , so it's accessible for everybody , and the first 250 people who join will get a lifetime founding members discount .

If this is something you're interested in , head over to subscriptionboxfounderscom right now and join the waitlist . Like I said , we're opening on september 30th . I'll put a link to the waitlist in the show notes .

I'll be back next week at the exact same time and , as always , if you have a question you want answered on the show , head over to SubscriptionBoxResourcescom , join the free Facebook group and post your question there . Chat to you next week and have a great day .