makeasnek on Nostr: Think of a lightning channel like a bucket full of water. The bucket is the channel ...

Think of a lightning channel like a bucket full of water. The bucket is the channel and water is sats (Bitcoin). When you first buy the bucket, it is full of water, so you can't add any more water to it (receive transactions). But you can pour water out (send transactions) which frees up room in the bucket! You can pour out and add water as many times as you like.

So, I would suggest receiving $5-$20 to start, this gives you plenty of room for zaps. Then either zap some people or use a service like boltz.exchange which will (in a non-custodial way) spent from your lightning channel and return the funds to you on-chain for around 1% fee plus the cost of an on-chain tx. You start with $20, you end up with a channel which can receive roughly $19 and you also have $19 stored on-chain.

Sounds complicated, but becomes intuitive once you've done it a few times.