PostcardMailer “Show HN” launch statistics
PostcardMailer began as a Mother’s Day gift. My mother loves my photos, but hates using computers, smartphones, etc. I created this service to conveniently and regularly send her physical copies of my photos, and then built out the service a little more to also send to nieces and nephews. A handful of friends and family also use it regularly, and together we’ve sent over one thousand postcards. Personally, I’ve sent 587 postcards over 18 months (about 32/month) and my recipients often let me know how much they appreciate getting the card in the mail.
The product is effective but rough around the edges, and the friends and family testing wasn’t enough to get any convergence on clear next steps for the product. Feeling a little nostalgic about “launching” CameraLends to HN 7 years ago on New Years Eve, I decided to post PostcardMailer and see if a wider audience was interested in the service and what advice the community had for me on next steps. Here’s a summary of what happened next.
Stats
Users: 45 → 152 (+107, +337%)
Postcards: 1027 → 1138 (+111, +11%)
Inbound emails: 12
One-week follow-up email responses*: 18
Paying users: 1
That’s right — I got my first paying customer! A few folks reached out to me saying they would pay, and last night one person pulled the trigger and purchased $20 worth of credits. Given my costs (printing/mailing/Paypal transactions), I net $1.76 of profit. I’ll try to not spend it all in one place.
* this is an email I send one week after a user signs up, and has a response rate of 17%.
Feedback
There were a variety of interesting suggestions:
- remove the watermark for paying customers
- integrate with Google Photos
- specific (and good!) improvement suggestions to the postcard layout
- rotate function for when image is upside-down
- bugs and UI issues/suggestions for improvement
Posting to “Show HN” was certainly worthwhile. In addition to all the actionable feedback, it’s been motivational. I really enjoy using the service, and I’m happy to find that others do too.
If you haven’t yet, send a free postcard with PostcardMailer!
