My initial start up into vaping was similar to JPop's. Maybe it's changed from a year or so ago but being new to the whole vaping world I had no idea where to turn to. I didn't have any friends that vaped, my only experience was with a crappy single pack (and expensive) electronic cigarette (cigalike) a few years back I got for a family member who was in the hospital and couldn't smoke.
Turning to trusty google the things that kept popping up at the top of basic searches were for things like blu, v2, halo, vaporfi. Start up prices were pretty expensive and so was ejuice. I got a cigalike starter kit from v2 with cartos. The next kit was a clearo setup with a rechargeable pen from halo, so I bought their juice (which isn't cheap). For whatever reason, other things didn't pop up like VU, fasttech or many of the various mod/atty vendors. I wish they had but I didn't find these things until later after vaping for several months. To a brand new vaper things like regulated mods and rta's/rda's look intimidating and complicated.
There are so many terms and so many options it can be overwhelming. Rebuildable tanks, genny's, coils, squonkers, battery knowledge, mech mods. I was a smoker, it was simple. Filtered end in the mouth, apply flame to the other end. I've also had the pleasure of rolling my own both with and without a rolling tool. If someone had handed me a tin of tobacco, some papers and said 'good luck' I probably would have never started smoking because it's complicated.
Hopefully newbies find a resource like this site quicker than I did. A little shared experience goes a long way to showing how simple things can be. If I'd 1) known I'd enjoy and stick with vaping and 2) known about other options as opposed to the somewhat overpriced starter kits I would have been well ahead of the game. Realizing that juice doesn't have to cost $20-22/30ml or more and that I didn't have to be a slave to proprietary factory coils.
It certainly wasn't cheaper in the beginning but it got a lot less expensive once I started using rta's and winding my own coils. No more buying crappy plastic tanks at $7/ea just to have them break, crack, come apart or fail in a week or two and necessitate having to buy another and a few more for backups. Glass and stainless steel are much more durable and cost efficient.