Postme.me - idea to sales in 3 days | Hacker News Reader

Postme.me - idea to sales in 3 days

swizec.com

84 pointsSwizec17 comments

Good job, I'm impressed! I have a couple of questions regarding the business model though:

Charging $2, after PayPal have taken their fees you get ~$1.60. International shipping via USPS for a postcard over to here (UK) is $0.98. That means you have ~$0.60 to make the cards and make a profit - it isn't much. Would you mind sharing how much it costs you to have the cards printed?

This leads me onto my next question, you cards are unique right (a message and address on the back), so how do you get this past the printers? I understand most do bulk discounts, but isn't this for identical prints?

P.S. I also ordered a card :)

This is Web 2.0, profits are uncool :)

Turns out shipping with the slovenian post office is cheaper, only costs $0.61 internationally. And I might be able to arrange some sort of bulk discount eventually.

The printing is kind of cool, since it's digital you can do bulk discounts on large quantities of unique things.

Ouch, that site burns my eyes.

I think the practice of building sites on painfully short schedules is more common than anyone thinks, but nobody wants to brag about it because it just shows you're not enough ahead of the curve.

For instance, we spawned the idea for http://mostly365.com/ just 3 days before new years day. We got a design, promotion and all the code (including a twitter scanner, scraper for 15+ picture posting sites and basic CMS) done in time for the new year.

I'm absolutely convinced we're not the only ones doing stuff like this. We just want to pretend we had this all ready months in advance.

Yeah, I'm not a designer so the site is nothing special to look at :)

The more important point is this: * I launched a MVP * It made sales * I know it's worth investing more time

And I still think it's surprisingly rare not only for people to sell stuff online, but to even dare to try.

Man, with this idea I would jump straight on the Sincerely Ship API... Unfortunately, it's for iOS only, but you could imagine it being available for web apps soon.

Coverage: http://gigaom.com/2011/10/06/sincerely-postagram-api-develop...

Agreed. I used Sincerely Ship Library for http://Picsicle.com and it was a great experience. They are great people to work with (YC alum founder) and the library just works. They are looking to add more functionality so I would recommend them.

Any issues regarding copyright?

When you create a postcard, do you have the option NOT to be featured on the home page? Because right now, the Magdaleins are showing off their baby to all site visitors, when perhaps they meant that postcard to only go to family and friends.

And other people might post "inappropriate" photos that would get featured on the home page.

When you create a postcard, you aren't featured. The featuring only happens when you buy a postcard, which I guess means you're willing to send it out publicly etc. so it can't be that bad or too personal.

Sometimes I pick and choose cool cards for the frontpage regardless of being paid for.

Re: the can't afford advertising problem, you should be able to find a $100 adwords coupon fairly easily. Hopefully you can make enough from that to cover further advertising.

It can be tough to get a good ROI on that first $100. Getting good at advertising takes time, practice, and money.

No reason not to try, just don't expect AdWords to easily turn $100 into $200 or even $101.

I don't think AdWords coupons are the end-all answer to advertising... Adwords coupons are only for new accounts, and most people have already created AdWords accounts or linked their gmail account to AdWords.

I have some better ideas :)

I think this is really cool. Though I can't figure out how you managed to make a profit on the first couple... but I bought one :).

Congrats on finishing something. Many start things; few finish. You should be proud!

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