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Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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.

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 :)

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 :)

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