Small Shop Lab
Category: Your Own Store, Email & Ads
The other side of the marketplace question: running the shop on your own domain, and the email and advertising that have to come with it.
This section is written from a WooCommerce store that has been live for years, and from an ad account with real money spent in it — including the years when most of that money bought the cheapest metric on the platform rather than sales. Platform pricing is quoted from each company’s own pricing page with the date it was read, because those pages change.
Posts here cover what a site really costs to run each month, where Shopify and WooCommerce actually differ once the add-ons are counted, what free email plans leave out, and how much has to be spent before an ad campaign has learned anything.
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Klaviyo vs Mailchimp at 1,000 Subscribers: $30 vs $45
At 1,000 subscribers Klaviyo Email is $30 a month and Mailchimp Standard is $45 once the promo ends. Every published price, and what the gap buys.
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How to Build an Email List When the Marketplace Owns Your Customer
I paid about $824 for 76,294 Facebook followers and Facebook still decides who sees my posts. Etsy is the same arrangement. Where to ask for an email address, what to offer, and…
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I Bought 76,294 Real Followers for My Jewelry Shop. They Were the Right People — and It Still Wasn’t Enough.
Three years and $1,064 of my own money in Meta ads, published in full: 77.5% of it bought page follows at 1.1 cents each. Real people in my real market, and it…
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Etsy vs Your Own Store in 2026: Where the Fees Actually Cross
Etsy takes 10.7% of a $38 order; Shopify takes 3.7% plus $39 a month. They cross at about 15 orders — and that crossover is the least important number in the decision.…