5 ms·

I'm curious about this as well, I was definitely 2-3 of those 15,000 letters. If I were to guess I can imagine the amount of effort it required probably outwei

I'm curious about this as well, I was definitely 2-3 of those 15,000 letters. If I were to guess I can imagine the amount of effort it required probably outweighed any profits, especially if he was doing the letters manually. It must of been a cool experience, regardless. I've also used EZGram, L-Mail (for individual letters) and DirectMailManager, PostalMethods and Click2Mail for business letters, so competition may be a factor as well.

kmtrowbr 13y ago
Hi guys, Thanks for your curiosity. Well -- I don't want to discourage bavidar from his project. However, here's a sampling of what I learned: Snailmailr was focused on consumers. This was a mistake. Folks who still send paper mail are generally at the tail end of the curve (poorer, very late adopters). For example, one of my largest types of users were the friends and family of people in jail. There are quite a few 'prison pen pal' websites: http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-524356.html http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-524356.... These types of people don't have lots of money to spend. Additionally, technical innovation is coming even to this part of the postal mailing system and whittling down even this demographic: http://jpay.com/PEmessages.aspx http://jpay.com/PEmessages.aspx I was very focused on low price. My base price was $0.99 / 2 page domestic letter. I simply felt that this service should not be expensive. This worked for my target market but it's not a good idea for a new business to be competing on price. I soon added higher prices for color and for additional pages / international, I was surprised at the high costs that folks were willing to spend (> $20 on many occasions). I printed and mailed the letters myself. (It was a bit of a white lie, I think people need to hear that 'it is automated' ... and they can easily imagine that this is so ... and it was to a degree ... but there were definitely manual parts of the process.) I spent a good deal of time on this setup: at one point I had 5 huge laser printers in my bedroom: two monochrome, two color, and one for envelopes. I automated as much as I could by printing the letters and envelopes in a certain order, but in the end I had to fold, stuff, and apply postage to each letter myself. It took me about an hour to do 100 letters. I always planned on further automating the system once I had the money to purchase more sophisticated equipment, but it was too much of a leap. An hour per day sapped a lot of the energy I could have used on improving the software. I should have integrated with a postal mailing API right away: http://www.postalmethods.com/postal-api http://www.postalmethods.com/postal-api Direct Mail advertising would have been a better route for me to take. A solution focused on small advertisers with postcards (simpler mailing process, cheaper postage) and a slick UI could perhaps succeed. I tried to do it all myself. It just wasn't very robust and I think had I gone the route of trying to raise money, even a slight amount, that process would have provoked some discussions that might have helped me. I do like how bavidar is focusing on an API -- it was simply a brain-dead move that I didn't build this first. APIs are sticky, could bring large volumes of business. So the lessons were basically: * Overall: probably not the best idea to try to break into a very mature market that's imploding (postal mail). * Choose your customers wisely: for a new business, better to target upmarket, early adopter customers who have more money to spend. * Don't try to compete on price in the beginning, charge a premium for your product. * Value your time immensely, use the premium price that you charge to save yourself labor. * For god's sake build the API, preferably first, it's sticky and can bring loads of business. In the end I just got very tired. I was running out of money, my health was going downhill (problems with my teeth, weight gain, depression) -- I was very young (28), but still I found this alarming ... I couldn't really see any light at the end of tunnel ... if I ever had problems sleeping, all I had to do was think of Snailmailr and I would fall immediately asleep ;) Additionally when thinking of the medium-to-distant future I had a hard time imagining where Snailmailr would fit in. In the years that have passed since (5 years: 2008-2013) this is even more clear and the Snailmailr idea seems even more silly. Here's another cute piece of history: http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/9busz/well_here_it_is_the_dumbest_thing_on_the_internet/ http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/9busz/well_here_it_is_t... It was quite easy to find a new job however and the software knowledge I gained was enormous. Even though it was difficult and painful, building Snailmailr gave my career a huge upwards kick. I hope to try again and have ideas all the time ... however, the next time I'll do many things differently. Thanks again for asking! Best of luck to this new attempt, Kevin Trowbridge
- VuongN 13y ago
  Thank you so much for taking the time to share your insights. Good read.

kmtrowbr 13y ago

Hi guys, Thanks for your curiosity. Well -- I don't want to discourage bavidar from his project. However, here's a sampling of what I learned: Snailmailr was focused on consumers. This was a mistake. Folks who still send paper mail are generally at the tail end of the curve (poorer, very late adopters). For example, one of my largest types of users were the friends and family of people in jail. There are quite a few 'prison pen pal' websites: http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-524356.html http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-524356.... These types of people don't have lots of money to spend. Additionally, technical innovation is coming even to this part of the postal mailing system and whittling down even this demographic: http://jpay.com/PEmessages.aspx http://jpay.com/PEmessages.aspx I was very focused on low price. My base price was $0.99 / 2 page domestic letter. I simply felt that this service should not be expensive. This worked for my target market but it's not a good idea for a new business to be competing on price. I soon added higher prices for color and for additional pages / international, I was surprised at the high costs that folks were willing to spend (> $20 on many occasions). I printed and mailed the letters myself. (It was a bit of a white lie, I think people need to hear that 'it is automated' ... and they can easily imagine that this is so ... and it was to a degree ... but there were definitely manual parts of the process.) I spent a good deal of time on this setup: at one point I had 5 huge laser printers in my bedroom: two monochrome, two color, and one for envelopes. I automated as much as I could by printing the letters and envelopes in a certain order, but in the end I had to fold, stuff, and apply postage to each letter myself. It took me about an hour to do 100 letters. I always planned on further automating the system once I had the money to purchase more sophisticated equipment, but it was too much of a leap. An hour per day sapped a lot of the energy I could have used on improving the software. I should have integrated with a postal mailing API right away: http://www.postalmethods.com/postal-api http://www.postalmethods.com/postal-api Direct Mail advertising would have been a better route for me to take. A solution focused on small advertisers with postcards (simpler mailing process, cheaper postage) and a slick UI could perhaps succeed. I tried to do it all myself. It just wasn't very robust and I think had I gone the route of trying to raise money, even a slight amount, that process would have provoked some discussions that might have helped me. I do like how bavidar is focusing on an API -- it was simply a brain-dead move that I didn't build this first. APIs are sticky, could bring large volumes of business. So the lessons were basically: * Overall: probably not the best idea to try to break into a very mature market that's imploding (postal mail). * Choose your customers wisely: for a new business, better to target upmarket, early adopter customers who have more money to spend. * Don't try to compete on price in the beginning, charge a premium for your product. * Value your time immensely, use the premium price that you charge to save yourself labor. * For god's sake build the API, preferably first, it's sticky and can bring loads of business. In the end I just got very tired. I was running out of money, my health was going downhill (problems with my teeth, weight gain, depression) -- I was very young (28), but still I found this alarming ... I couldn't really see any light at the end of tunnel ... if I ever had problems sleeping, all I had to do was think of Snailmailr and I would fall immediately asleep ;) Additionally when thinking of the medium-to-distant future I had a hard time imagining where Snailmailr would fit in. In the years that have passed since (5 years: 2008-2013) this is even more clear and the Snailmailr idea seems even more silly. Here's another cute piece of history: http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/9busz/well_here_it_is_the_dumbest_thing_on_the_internet/ http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/9busz/well_here_it_is_t... It was quite easy to find a new job however and the software knowledge I gained was enormous. Even though it was difficult and painful, building Snailmailr gave my career a huge upwards kick. I hope to try again and have ideas all the time ... however, the next time I'll do many things differently. Thanks again for asking! Best of luck to this new attempt, Kevin Trowbridge

VuongN 13y ago
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your insights. Good read.