I set myself up with esuperfund a few months ago.
I too had always thought you needed a large balance to make a SMSF worthwhile, but with esuperfund you have a pretty low fixed cost each year - I would estimate the running costs will be < $1100 taking into account buy sell costs on top of the standard fees. That will work out around 0.75% of assets for me, which is quite competitive compared to most super funds.
First year free set up and audit makes the decision a lot easier.
The question is are you willing to spend the time looking after your money? What's your strategy going to be? How much risk will you take on board?
For me I wanted to be able to earn a decent return on cash, be able to pick the fixed interest I wanted, and target higher yielding shares. I'm after dividends more than capital growth - bit like a bird in the hand or 2 in the bush. So far my portfolio is looking to provide me with a grossed yield of 9%. I buy to hold for the long term, so while the companies and interest earning securities and bonds keep performing I wont be jumping from 1 to the other in the hope of timing the market for extra yield that's lost after tax is paid.
I'm all for people taking control of their super. It will be most peoples biggest investment after their private house, and the earlier you take n interest and help it to grow, the better. Just make sure you are really willing to put in the effort to educate yourself. First thing is to make your investment plan. there's plenty of templates out there, but don't just cut and paste. Taylor it to yourself, because if you can create a good investment plan, then you have an understanding of your risk mentality (especially understand how you would feel if your share portfolio saw a 10% drop in a week). I hope to be able to have the Warren Buffet mentlity of buying when others are fearful and selling when others are greedy.
I decided to keep an investment journal. Each investment I make I've notes a few points as to why I made the investment. Every quarter I go through my journal and see if the reasons are still valid. If things have changed significantly and I know have reasons to seel I will, if I still believe the investment will rpovide value over the long term, then I will not let the herd mentality and volatility of the share market affect my decisions - yeah some people will try to surf the momentum and that's a valid strategy, but I'm a bit lazy and don't want to be buying and selling all the time.
I'm also hoping that if the SMSF market keeps on growing that eventually the leaching financial industry and super funds are going to have to move away from a clip the ticket mentality, to providing a true service. I've yet to see a valid explanation as to why someone with 500K in a super fund pays 5 times as much as someone with 100K. With modern computer systems there would be practically no cost difference, and in most industries the more volume you are offering the cheaper unit price you get.