Subscription Box Answers

How You Can Start Your Subscription Box Business On A Budget

• Liam Brennan

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It’s 100% possible to start a subscription box business on a budget! You don’t need to invest thousands to get up and running. When we started BusterBox, we barely had any money. I invested €3,000 over 12 months, and that was it. Over time, that small investment turned into millions of dollars in revenue and a business that now supports a team of 12.

There are so many examples of people starting their subscription boxes from home on a small budget, growing them into successful businesses. In this episode, I’ll explain exactly how you can start your business with a low budget and achieve success.

If you have any questions you’d like answered on the show, head over to www.SubscriptionBoxResources.com and join the free Facebook group to post your question.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Subscription Box Answers with your host, liam Brennan. You're no rubbish, no crap. Straight to the point podcast with real, actionable tips, real strategies and insights from the industry which will help you start and grow your own successful subscription box business. You ask the questions, you ask the questions, you ask the questions. Liam gives the answers. It's as simple as that.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to a brand new episode of Subscription Box Answers. I hope you're having a fantastic day. On today's episode, we're taking it right back to the start and we're discussing how you can start your very own subscription box business on a budget. 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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 2:

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.