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I would happily pay for this service and know others that would as well. Lots of people have kids and grandparents that would get a kick out something like this

I would happily pay for this service and know others that would as well. Lots of people have kids and grandparents that would get a kick out something like this. Good luck!

reaperducer 7y ago
I have lots of non-old friends* with whom I enjoy exchanging postcards. You can't stick Instygram to the refrigerator or put it in a frame, especially since the number of households with a printer is dwindling. I would totally use this as a paid service. Current USPS post card rate is 35¢. I'd pay up to a dollar for this service; hopefully that would cover labor and overhead. *It's worth noting that Gen-Z ("Zoomers" ick.) is correcting some of the mistakes of the millennials and swinging back toward the habits of Boomers and Gen-X. For example, there was an article in the newspaper a few weeks ago that catalog distribution and sales are up massively thanks to Gen-Z because unlike their predecessors, they don't place all of their trust in something just because it's online. I think a good number of them might also latch onto something like this.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  The Boomer/Gen x etc. bands are arbitrary. I don’t believe there is one size fits all generalisations about these bands that can be made.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    I don’t believe there is one size fits all generalisations about these bands that can be made. Every marketing company and sociologist disagrees with you.
    - wizzwizz4 7y ago
      Then they are wrong as a matter of fact. These generalisations are descriptive stereotypes, not prescriptive laws. I'd also disagree with your “every”.
gfodor 7y ago
I went down this road — the economics don’t work unless you can get your acquisition costs very very low. Good conversion rates and margins but we are talking small numbers, and large capex per user to print cards, esp if you give some away for free (which is a great acquisition channel)
- daliusd 7y ago
  Have you actually tried creating postcard sending service? Could you share what you have tried to acquire new users?
  - gfodor 7y ago
    Yup, I spent 6 months or so trying to find product-market fit for two different postcard apps, one focused on creating memes and the other focused on sending baby/kid photos to grandparents and family. The latter had much more potential, but the economics were tough due to user acquisition costs. I suspect you could make it work if you had a better marketing strategy that I did. I was trying to get traction through display ads by doing highly targeted social networking campaigns, which seemed like it should be fruitful, and was getting low CPIs ($1-$2) -- however even at that level, and with significant viral loops, growth hacking, and a recurring revenue subscription based model, I just couldn't get the numbers to work. Ultimately, users seemed to need to see the product before they spend money, so having a trial period of one or two cards seemed essential. Without it, conversions flatlined I suspect since you were asking people to pay for something they couldn't even see the quality of first. These one or two free cards greatly added to acquisition costs, and led to a long, complex acquisition funnel, and so you had to more than make up for sending a lot of free cards with your paying customers while the new leads converted. When you consider the free cards, you were now talking about $3-4 per lead, and with a generous conversion rate of 3% that is approx a $100 cost per customer to acquire them. Surprisingly, over the course of a year or so of a subscription this could actually work if churn was low. But it was very risky and cost intensive to subsidize the acquisition costs for me personally, so I stopped working on it after sending approx 9k postcards and getting approx 250 customers, who almost entirely churned out after a few months. I learned a lot from this exercise, one thing was anytime you hear anyone doing this idea, especially if they are VC funded, it's a good idea to bet against them surviving unless you see they have some kind of cheap, high volume, high quality marketing channel.
daliusd 7y ago
It seems luck is not enough :) Competition is quite high in the market (there are at least two really big players). I have created similar service as well [1] and now I look at it more like a marketing research playground than something what will succeed. I can dream about it succeeding but realistically failure is an option as well. [1] Check out my profile for link.

I would happily pay for this service and know others that would as well. Lots of people have kids and grandparents that would get a kick out something like this. Good luck!

reaperducer 7y ago

I have lots of non-old friends* with whom I enjoy exchanging postcards. You can't stick Instygram to the refrigerator or put it in a frame, especially since the number of households with a printer is dwindling. I would totally use this as a paid service. Current USPS post card rate is 35¢. I'd pay up to a dollar for this service; hopefully that would cover labor and overhead. *It's worth noting that Gen-Z ("Zoomers" ick.) is correcting some of the mistakes of the millennials and swinging back toward the habits of Boomers and Gen-X. For example, there was an article in the newspaper a few weeks ago that catalog distribution and sales are up massively thanks to Gen-Z because unlike their predecessors, they don't place all of their trust in something just because it's online. I think a good number of them might also latch onto something like this.

quickthrower2 7y ago
The Boomer/Gen x etc. bands are arbitrary. I don’t believe there is one size fits all generalisations about these bands that can be made.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  I don’t believe there is one size fits all generalisations about these bands that can be made. Every marketing company and sociologist disagrees with you.
  - wizzwizz4 7y ago
    Then they are wrong as a matter of fact. These generalisations are descriptive stereotypes, not prescriptive laws. I'd also disagree with your “every”.

gfodor 7y ago

I went down this road — the economics don’t work unless you can get your acquisition costs very very low. Good conversion rates and margins but we are talking small numbers, and large capex per user to print cards, esp if you give some away for free (which is a great acquisition channel)

daliusd 7y ago
Have you actually tried creating postcard sending service? Could you share what you have tried to acquire new users?
- gfodor 7y ago
  Yup, I spent 6 months or so trying to find product-market fit for two different postcard apps, one focused on creating memes and the other focused on sending baby/kid photos to grandparents and family. The latter had much more potential, but the economics were tough due to user acquisition costs. I suspect you could make it work if you had a better marketing strategy that I did. I was trying to get traction through display ads by doing highly targeted social networking campaigns, which seemed like it should be fruitful, and was getting low CPIs ($1-$2) -- however even at that level, and with significant viral loops, growth hacking, and a recurring revenue subscription based model, I just couldn't get the numbers to work. Ultimately, users seemed to need to see the product before they spend money, so having a trial period of one or two cards seemed essential. Without it, conversions flatlined I suspect since you were asking people to pay for something they couldn't even see the quality of first. These one or two free cards greatly added to acquisition costs, and led to a long, complex acquisition funnel, and so you had to more than make up for sending a lot of free cards with your paying customers while the new leads converted. When you consider the free cards, you were now talking about $3-4 per lead, and with a generous conversion rate of 3% that is approx a $100 cost per customer to acquire them. Surprisingly, over the course of a year or so of a subscription this could actually work if churn was low. But it was very risky and cost intensive to subsidize the acquisition costs for me personally, so I stopped working on it after sending approx 9k postcards and getting approx 250 customers, who almost entirely churned out after a few months. I learned a lot from this exercise, one thing was anytime you hear anyone doing this idea, especially if they are VC funded, it's a good idea to bet against them surviving unless you see they have some kind of cheap, high volume, high quality marketing channel.

daliusd 7y ago

It seems luck is not enough :) Competition is quite high in the market (there are at least two really big players). I have created similar service as well [1] and now I look at it more like a marketing research playground than something what will succeed. I can dream about it succeeding but realistically failure is an option as well. [1] Check out my profile for link.