BCP 58: How Much Should an Ecommerce Owner Pay Themselves?

I'm going to say something nobody in the ecommerce space will say to you.

If your business isn't paying you more than a good job would, you don't have a business.

You have a very expensive hobby with a Shopify subscription.

Think about what a "good job" actually looks like.

$120K–$180K a year. Annual leave. Sick days. Superannuation. Finish at 5:30. Weekends off. No cash flow stress. No staff dramas. No stock sitting in a warehouse you're paying for.

Now think about what you're doing.

You're working 55 hours a week. You haven't taken a real holiday in two years because you don't trust the business to run without you. You're paying yourself $80K. You're stressed about the BAS every quarter. You check Shopify at 11pm.

For what?

I get why founders don't ask this question.

Asking it means admitting the dream might not be working. And nobody wants to do that. So instead you keep going, keep growing revenue, keep telling yourself it'll be different when you hit $2M. $3M. $5M.

It won't.

Revenue doesn't fix the problem. We already know that. A broken structure at $1M is just a bigger broken structure at $3M.

So let's actually answer the question. How much should an ecommerce business owner pay themselves?

Here's the benchmark I use with my clients: 

• $500K revenue: founder salary of $80K–$100K minimum. If you can't hit this, the margins are broken.
• $1M revenue: $120K–$150K. Anything less and you're subsidising the business with your own labour.
• $2M revenue: $180K–$220K. You should be approaching the income that justifies the risk.
• $3M+ revenue: $250K and above. This is where the lifestyle the dream promised starts to show up.

These aren't soft targets. They're the minimum a healthy ecommerce business should be able to pay its founder at each level.

If your revenue and your salary don't match those numbers, you have a margin problem. Full stop.

Here's the comparison I want you to do right now.

Write down what you paid yourself last financial year. Your actual salary. Not what you billed the business. What you actually took home.

Now write down what you'd earn in a senior role in your industry. Someone with your experience, your network, your skills.

Is there a gap?

If the job pays more, you are subsidising your business with your own labour. You are the cheapest employee on the payroll. And unlike every other employee, you don't get annual leave, you don't switch off at 5, and you can't resign.

That's not entrepreneurship. That's a trap.

Now. There are two responses to this.

Response one: "I'm building something. Short term pain for long term gain."

Fair. But I'd ask: what's the plan and when does the gain actually arrive? If you can't answer that with a number and a date, it's not a plan. It's a hope.

Response two: "You're right. Something needs to change."

Good. That's the only response that gets you somewhere.

Because here's the thing.

The business CAN pay you well. Properly well. $200K, $300K, more. While still growing. While still investing back in. That's not a fantasy, that's what a healthy ecommerce business looks like.

But it requires you to stop treating your own salary as the last thing on the list.

Pay yourself first. Set a number. Make the business hit it. If it can't, that's the diagnosis. Work backwards from there. COGS too high. Margins too thin. Ad spend out of control. OPEX bloated. Fix the structure until the business can afford to pay you what you're worth.

If you fix all of that and it still can't? Then the hard conversation is: is this the right business.

Not every idea scales to a salary. That's not failure. That's information.

I'm not here to talk you out of your business.

I'm here to make sure you're not running one that's slowly grinding you down while you convince yourself it's worth it.

You deserve to be paid well. Your family deserves to see you. You deserve a holiday.

Fix the business so it can give you that. Or make a different call.

Either way, stop drifting.

I can tell you which side of the line you're on. Book a time.

Until next week, Paul

How to work with me

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