You can build a shooting table out of a pair of sawhorses and a sheet of 4x4, 1/2" thick plywood. I built my sawhorse out of 2x4s (I-beam style). You can get wood and other tabletop/backdrop materials cheap. Vinyl floor tiles work well, cheap laminate flooring, used, aged lumber (think old pallets), faux brick wall panels from hardware stores, etc. You can mount a pair of 2x4s to the wall, stepped off with another piece of 2x4 for a spacer, and use them to hang backgrounds. Then you can keep the background and the table far enough away that you can easily separate the background lighting and subject lighting. This way you can also use the backgrounds for portraits. To give you an idea, here are a few shots of my set up from my old house.
This is a portrait set up
....and now the same space used for tabletop shooting, notice the background being used is a portrait background
Another advantage of not locking yourself into a flexed plexi table is the ability to work around all sided when you need to
You can still use shoot through acrylic on a homemade shooting table. Steve Stint details how to set up for that in his book "Still Life". It's a worthwhile read.
Light modifiers can be made yourself. 20"x30" black and white posterboard can be had cheap at Dollar Tree, for use as reflectors and flags. Fingers and dots can be made on the fly with small gauge steel rods from the hardware store, some black vinyl screen material and white ripstop nylon from the craft store. Rolls of vellum can be used as diffusion panels.
The question is, are you trying to introduce a new revenue stream, or is this something you want to do for personal enjoyment? I ask because shooting drop shots gets old fast. Once you master shooting product on a white background, it's a "been there, done that" thing.
