Show HN: Text a photo to send as a postcard | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Text a photo to send as a postcard

postcardbot.com

149 pointstraviswingo127 comments

While I haven't tried this service and thus cannot vouch for it, I can say that:

"I love your business model!"

It's simple, it provides a lot of value for a little bit of money (yet still allows you, the owner, to make a tiny profit on each transaction), and it doesn't require a complex database driven website...

Also, I'm guessing (but not knowing!) -- that a business like this could be started for $50 or less... the only thing you'd really need is a good enough postcard printer (OK, so maybe a bit more than $50 if you include that), some cardstock, and the willingness to make a trip to the post office (or local mail drop-off point) every day (or when orders were received...)

Again, I reiterate, "I love your business model!"

The only real thing that a business of this sort would need then is some online advertising...

Google ads would be too expensive relative to the cost to acquire new customers -- so you'd have to advertise via single links posted here and there on public forums...

Well, I upvoted you and favorited you here on HN -- which might generate a teeny tiny bit more traffic for you -- or so I hope!

Wishing you and your business well, whoever you are!

They’re running the print and mailing through lob.com

Interesting!

Thanks, that means a lot!

As for the business, it’s 100% automated. Otherwise, it wouldn’t work at scale with everything else I have going on.

It’s also designed to simply be a fun thing for me and others to use, and isn’t really meant to be anything more than that, money wise. The price point, at the average use numbers, pretty much cover my costs. :)

I just wish I had this running when everyone was locked inside in 2020, I bet it would have been fun to use then!

>Thanks, that means a lot!

Again, it's well done from a pure business / bootstrapping / resourcefulness / "MacGyvering" (for lack of a better term!) perspective.

Academically (and it is a purely academic question) -- I'm looking to put together a table of capital tiers (i.e., $1-$10, $10-$100, $100-$1000, etc.) -- and what types of businesses could be created online at each tier.

Of all of them the $1-$10 tier is the hardest (well, unless we count $0 as a tier!), that is, "what type of online business could someone invest $10 in and generate a return?". Same question for $100, $1000, etc., etc.

Your business would fall somewhere in the (I'm guessing here -- $50 to $100 is that accurate?) amount to start it up, depending on initial costs with the postcard mailer, domain name, and if a color postcard printer is needed or not... or at least I'm guessing...

>As for the business, it’s 100% automated. Otherwise, it wouldn’t work at scale with everything else I have going on.

That's extra nice -- you definitely don't want to have to make a trip to the post office (or even probably not-too-far away local mailbox) every day...

So, "well done" (well played, perhaps?) -- on the automation front!

>It’s also designed to simply be a fun thing for me and others to use, and isn’t really meant to be anything more than that, money wise. The price point, at the average use numbers, pretty much cover my costs. :)

Again, very nice!

Hobby A.K.A. "fun" projects -- usually teach a lot, too!

>I just wish I had this running when everyone was locked inside in 2020, I bet it would have been fun to use then!

Well -- "we all fall short" -- of most of the opportunity inception points presented to us by life(!) -- I'm still berating myself for not investing in Tesla... before that, Google... and before that, Microsoft... (that's a lot of self-loathing and disrespect I have to put up with every day -- from myself, of all people!) <g> :-) <g>

Anyway, wishing you well!

I don’t have much time so excuse my brevity, but:

I love the idea. It’s simple, it’s solves a user problem. You can explain it in 1-2 sentences. Setup = adding your number to the contact book.

Tips/ideas:

Consider adding a CTA pointing to a .VCF file so people can “install” your app with 2 clicks.

Consider changing the design/bg photo a bit so the copy is more visible.

Q: Could you share any details regarding your stack (tech or services)?

I was thinking about building a slightly similar tool, but as a site where you could drag and drop a photo and then pay with Apple Pay. I think I like text more though.

Thanks! Simplicity is something I’m obsessed with. I hate website copy these days and how I can rarely tell what companies do by visiting their websites anymore.

Tech stack is simple: Rails on DigitalOcean app platform. Everything is automated because why not :). It’s not the most efficient, but simple > profit margins.

The address parsing is also done via libpostal statistical NLP. Addresses need to be broken into components for all services that require an address (line 1, line 2, street, city, state, zip), but asking users for each of these is so much friction and sucks from a UX pov. It’s not perfect, but works well in the intended market right now.

This is fun. I worked at a company that did something very similar around 2008. We had too much fun testing it out and I remember getting lots of ridiculous post cards in the mail from co-workers. I don't know that it was ever something that was likely to make much money, just one project among many at the company. Unfortunately, 2008 was a bit of a wrecking ball and we never got to find out. We had an iPhone app back then and my boss was skeptical that Android would ever really compete.

Yeah, this is meant to be fun more than anything. I barely cover costs each month, but that’s good enough for me :)

You should add a ‘tap to add to Contacts’ link - I think a vCard would work?

I don’t want to send a postcard right now, but I’d definitely like to store the number for later use. It’s actually kind of hard to do that, though, on iOS at least. Tapping opens up Messages, where there isn’t an easy way to add to contacts without sending a message, and long-press doesn’t seem to contain ‘add to contacts’ option. I’m stuck copying the number, launching Contacts, and creating a new contact by hand.

[Edit: Uh, and this is cool! Sorry to be the first commenter with a slightly negative post! I love it.]

from Messages: tap the phone number, then "info", then "add contact"

Second comment I’ve read suggesting vCard, so I’ll put it on my todo list :).

Lowest friction is what I’m going for here. Thanks!

Can we see a sample postcard? The link to a sample postcard is a render, not a photograph of a postcard.

Yes, curious about this too. Maybe a quick video handling it to show the weight/quality.

Really cool idea for a product though, love it!

Agreed. _Seeing_ the process happen would take this to be next level.

Despite some of the negative comments here - as a postcard fan - I love this!

Is MMS compression an issue? I typically never text photos from my android and instead rely on WhatsApp so they don't get compressed

FYI, they are still compressed, just not to such a massively noticeable level

I would love an email bot. I sent a message to the number from a prepaid EU sim, it told me to send an image, I sent an image, I got a "mms not supported" error. I remember mms from around 10 years ago, not sure if they are still standard in US?

Probably some imessage only business. Typical if US entrepreneurs, US only and only iphone.

They should call it iMessage then and not SMS/texting.

You can't receive iMessages via an API, except for "iMessage Business Chat" which can't be started by inputting a phone number and isn't all that widely used.

Not an API, but still doable to a certain scale. I've gotten image input to work with my bot. Apple once temporarily banned me for suspicious activity but after a quick call to support they lifted it. If I got more traffic maybe they'd ban it again, I'm not sure.

You can text !help to sue [at] robertism.com to demo if you're interested.

I just sent a photo from a US sim, using MMS, and it accepted the photo.

As a side note I must confess a certain degree of uneasiness reading some of the borderline-toxic comments, which - to be fair - are nothing new.

This time around though it seems there's a certain obvious difficulty in certain commenters to contextualize what's being shown here.

I understand that "oh but that could be an app/website/whatever" or that "it's an US phone number, I ain't gonna use that" or "ahhhh, this is gonna be abused soooo bad" and so on and so forth... but folks: this clearly is meant to be something quirky and - I think - a v1.

Have we perhaps become a bit of a boring grumpy bunch around here? My 2c.

Absolutely. This project is super cool!! I'll likely use this to send a postcard to some friends.

Such a cool little website to start and it feels so indie!

A lot of folks forget just because they don’t understand or agree with it doesn’t mean there isn’t understanding or agreement in it.

We are the folks that said Dropbox could be done with a few bash scripts, after all.

Lol!

Not quite the same thing but I have meetings when I roll out a new feature that are “No suggestions” meetings.

We still allow for enhancements / added features that in other ways, but some meetings are for learning, not the peanut gallery peppering people with ideas that occurred to them in the last 20 seconds and that believe it or not we know…

We get it out and in customers hands and it is like magic how all these ideas sometimes prove to not be 100% necessary on day 1 … sometimes never.

:). I used to think this way, and found that I never completed anything. To each their own

I love this. Will this have the postage stamp from a particular country though? That's probably hard to implement, but it's what's magical about postcards to me

Nope, all postage is prepaid, so the message on the back plus the photo will have to convey the origin, if that’s what you’re going for.

Trying this out, I'll report back in a couple weeks!

What a lovely idea! OP, did you make this?

Yes I did. Thanks! :)

Czech Post has an app that does. Local price is like a $1. It works worldwide regular international price.

Does that czech website have an address?

Maybe this is the one (cant use translate on my phone): https://www.ceskaposta.cz/cs/ke-stazeni/mobilni-aplikace-poh...

Correct.

The documentation says you must buy either 3 postcards or 10 from within the app. 3 postcards sent internationally cost 168CZK = $7.64.

3 postcards sent to the EU cost €6.34.

UK is private enterprise rather than Royal Mail

https://www.photowire.uk/

One example I just found. £2 to address in UK and £3 international.

A thought has crossed my mind: if these kinds of site are quite common across the world and charge lower rates for sending cards within their local country, perhaps there is an opportunity for someone to set up a central Web site that finds you a local service? Add a small percentage?

Seems to cost €2 internationally on this french website : https://www.merci-facteur.com/tarifs.php

Switzerland has it too, since a long time.

https://www.post.ch/en/sending-letters/sending-letters/postc...

And ever better: lets you send one postcard (inside Switzerland) for free per day.

How cool!

Is the resolution of MMS high enough to make a good postcard?

Yes. I’ve used this a bunch of times now and I can’t notice any degradation in image quality, beyond the normal print quality of standard postcards.

Quality of the photo hasn’t once been a negative topic from any users so far :)

It's totally not sure whether a snail mail made-of-paper postcard is meant. Or just some HTML email with a fancy border. I hope it's the former.

If you check their FAQ section, there is a sample in it.

To save a click, it is a real paper postcard

https://postcardbot.com/assets/sample_postcard-76c114432a210...

It’s a physical, snail mail sent postcard :)

I'm in Europe with an iPhone and this didn't work, but I'd like to try it.

[edit: telegram integration would be quite cool.]

I’m curious to know more about what didn’t work!

I think it’d be a neat value-add if there were some (optional) postcard templates. Stuff like “Greetings from scenic <location_name>” that could either be used seriously or ironically. Obviously one could edit the JPG themselves to include that but I think more people would use it if it were an easy option.

Thanks, noted!

This is awesome! May I recommend a package deal? For example, I want to send to a bunch of friends, maybe a different price point for larger orders (if feasible)? $10/4-5 for example.

Not a bad idea. Noted :)

https://www.fizzer.com does the same, and it's quite nice to use.

No ideas are original :)

That's a cool use of lob.com. I used their 'send a check' feature to automate sending payments for sweepstakes and contest prizes.

Yeah, I really like Lob. They work well for doing what they say they’ll do. I don’t think I’ve had a mishap yet. Any time there has been an issue, it’s been user error.

I gave this a spin and sent a few cards.

It was great, very low friction and easy to use.

In the age of ChatGPT showing how easy a chat interface CAN be this seem really on point.

Thanks! Simplicity was the goal. It does one thing and does it well :)

The biz case here is interesting: I had no idea what the postage rates are from the US, so checked and saw that they start at $1.45. Maybe you can get bulk rates from the USPS but let’s assume that’s the shipping cost. Let’s assume <50c for printing so roughly $2 per postcard. That only leaves $1 for profit & op expenses which sounds a bit low.

What am I missing here?

Additionally, I would not be OK to enter friends’ addresses in a random app.

what you’re missing is that not everything has to be a serious profit-making venture. sometimes humans can have fun.

This. I make enough money elsewhere. This is just fun :)

Domestic postcards cost $0.48 and international costs $1.45 (which is not any discount from 1oz letter, unlike domestic).

They could also mail them from another country (which might also have cheaper print costs), especially since this is all first-class and there is no guarantee of delivery speed.

For example, it looks like sending an airmail postcard from China is 5 CNY which is about $0.70, less than half the US rate. If you can find a printer there of equal or lesser cost, that's a huge savings. If you want to really stretch things, you can use surface mail (which USPS does not offer) for 3.50 CNY/$0.49 which is less than the cost to send it domestically within the US.

From Korea the rate is 430 won, roughly 33¢, and I suspect this is faster than sending from the PRC.

According to some site, only Taiwan, Sri Lanka and Swaziland are cheaper for an international postcard.

My assumption is that they are not handling mail pieces and just outsourcing everything via the PostGrid API. Public pricing for a domestic 4x6 full color postcard $0.74. [1] There's no international pricing listed, but given that a domestic postcard stamp is $0.48, printing is ~$0.26 so add international forever stamp ($1.45) so $1.71/card. Stripe is 2.9% + $0.30 ($0.39 on $2.99). They are using Twilio so that's $0.01 for an inbound/MMS and just under $0.01 for the outbound SMS with a stripe link.

Profit per card would be $1.84/card domestic and $0.98/card international. Excellent margins for a $2.99 product with no need to handle inventory.

Seems like a great side project creating glue between three REST APIs (PostGrid, Stripe, Twilio) and I'd expect it'd generate sufficient free cash flow to cover its server costs and buy a few beers.

[1]: https://www.postgrid.com/pricing-print-mail/#perunit

http://directmailers.com is less a little expensive at $0.65

You’re not missing anything, aside from the fact i didn’t build this to be a high margin, cash flowing business. It’s just fun, nothing more :).

My margins cover my costs, and that’s good enough for me.

Everything is automated, and all data entered is used purely to send a postcard. No added layers of complexity here :)

This is great. “Yes” shouldn’t be case sensitive though.

Great catch, thank! I’ll push a fix and a test shortly.

just the headline makes me go 'this is cool and i wish i thought about it'

as a lazy person i will assume it delivers as advertised.

As a lazy person also, I agree :)

Nice idea, but the fact that it requires sending to a US-specific phone number makes it unusable for most of the world.

For me, the ideal implementation of this would be a simple app to which you could send the photo using the "share" functionality built into iOS/Android.

I think that's addressed in the FAQ:

> Currently, we only have a US based phone number that can be used to interact with our service. We understand that this can be expensive in some countries, so we will be working on a WhatsApp integration for the future.

Why not email

Or a web app?

POST seems fine(?)

Why an app if it can be done without

The US is a big market. And is the most likely country that people will be able to send to. So it’s a great place to start.

I use voip accounts and have been able to send to international numbers for years.

I think the phone interface is great and allows use from lots of international feature phones.

I just used it and think it’s way better than having a custom app or web site.

Fair point. My current target market is people able to send via a text message.

This actually used to have a Messenger app, but the maintenance to spam ratio was too much for something I’m not interested in babysitting.

Maybe I’ll add WhatsApp integration in the future, if enough requests are made for it :)

Cool! Why does it require texting a phone number, though? Why not just put a form right there on the site?

Unlike us HackerNews weirdos, most people don’t really do websites on their phone all that much. They text a lot tho.

The other day my mom said she can’t figure out ChatGPT because she made an account but there’s no icon on her desktop or phone and she doesn’t understand where it went.

Did you suggest installing the PWA? Or it doesn't have one?

Seriously? I thought everybody used their phone for their primary web browser. Only time i really use a browser is at work (or very occasionally while at home -- why walk across the room when a large part of the internet is in my back pocket?)

From what I’ve seen normies browse the internet, not the web. Partially because that’s what companies encourage.

Links are for sharing only and even that is primarily for those annoying friends who aren’t on the app you’re using. My girlfriend for example can go hours without ever leaving instagram or tiktok. If the content isn’t natively in there, it doesn’t exist.

And nobody ever clicks links I send them. Have had to start texting (iMessage) screenshots of articles and images or they just get ignored lol

When I publish an article, most readers read it because it lands inside their email app. Short email with link? Nobody clicks that. Long email you can read without leaving gets way more engagement.

Even the quickest Google search would disprove your anecdotes

Try it. Native content gets way higher engagement than a link out.

Think about it this way: would you have read this comment if I posted it on my site and pasted a link in this textbook instead of typing it out? Would you really?

Then you wanted to add the website icon to their iphone but it was intentionally made to complicated to remember how to do it. The onlookers make the computers are hard facial expression. You explain it was intentional. They think you are just not very good with computers.

Two thirds of all web traffic is mobile.

https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/mobile-internet-traffic

85% of all adults in the US use smart phones

https://www.zippia.com/advice/us-smartphone-industry-statist....

Yes I know. My point is that people don’t really “go to websites” as their primary mode of interacting with their mobile devices.

Btw, your link uses internet and web interchangeably so it’s hard to say whether it agrees with me or not. My point was that people use the internet [way] more than the web.

I’m assuming it’s so once you have that number in your contacts, you can just text photos to that number anytime without having to go to a website.

Yes this is correct. The simplicity of texting a photo is what I’m going for.

They are trying to replicate WeChat or the other web based text services.

Texting to a number makes it accessible from more devices. It’s surprising how there’s still places that don’t have web but can send sms.

Texting a number makes it accessible from more devices out of 336 million, uploading a photo makes it accessible from fewer devices out of 7 billion.

7 billion people don’t have web access.

They don't need to. You only need 336 million of them.

The flow still requires Internet access to complete the purchase, though. Also, even in the US, all the legacy networks are gone and SMS (especially MMS) is being routed over LTE++ anyway.

Simplicity. People text photos to each other all the time, but don’t always use web apps or mobile apps.

Text messages are baked into everyone’s phones already. No apps to download, or websites to visit and log into. It’s just there, and you know how to use it.

Also, if I wanted to cover the entire user base, I’d have to make this my full time job. I think there are larger markets to focus on :). This is just fun.

>STOP to unsubscribe

Confused. Is this charged per shot or subscription?!?

"Required" verbiage when sending automated SMS.

Should probably replace the address in the sample postcard. While most here will probably get it's intent, I imagine your target audience will not appreciate any associations to "hackers"

I don't really see the problem, what's wrong with using a real address for the sample postcard?

OP didn't criticise the choice of address not because it's not a real address but because of the associations of the term "hacker" outside of spaces such as here.

The address is Meta HQ

Have you though about how malevolent people will abuse this? E.g. sending a pic from a shocksite to someone you don't like? You'd have to set up a content moderation department to deal with this sort of thing.

Can't malevolent people already pay the post office to mail someone a shock picture? Does the post office have a content moderation department?

Except now they can do it at scale

yes, at $2.99 a postcard.

Fair.

I'm sure Stripe records all transactions, so if the need arises, those postcards will be quickly traced to credit cards + phone numbers + ip addresses.

You can do this currently with a printer and stamps for much cheaper.

It can also be done much more anonymously.

Exactly. If you really want to send some weird shit in the mail, you can do it without linking your phone number and payment information to it.

Haha yep. These bad actors exist everywhere though. If they choose to abuse, they’ll pay $2.99 per abuse to do it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com