Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: I ripped off Dustin Curtis' snail and got slightly different results

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 61 posts

Tell HN: I ripped off Dustin Curtis' snail and got slightly different results

#1

Post by paulsingh »

First off, Dustin -- sorry! Second, I'm still relatively new to RoR and design stuff -- so, yes, I ripped off stuff that I liked from common sites I visit. :)

Anyways, I saw Dustin's post the other day about Snail, his new webapp and thought it was a pretty sweet idea. A couple days later, I saw that he tweeted about it not being too profitable at all. Bummer.

Then, last weekend, my dad happened to complain about having to find "damn stamps" every time he needed to mail a customer a invoice or receipt. (He's in construction, an industry that really doesn't use email for anything...)

Anyways, I threw this together and launched it on Monday and now mail off 20-30 letters a day. It's barely profitable but most of that is because I haven't automated some of the key steps... stuff I'll be doing over the next few days.

Today I threw some ghetto code together for another guy that wanted to be able to email stuff to me that gets automagically mailed off to his clients. I think I just doubled the amount of letters I send every day...

Anyways, I'd love some feedback: http://www.snailpad.com

Re: Tell HN: I ripped off Dustin Curtis' snail and got slightly different results

#4

Post by ars »

Change:

  Just address your envelope, write your letter, verify
  its appearance, then pay using your Paypal account.
Add the words "electronically", or "via this website" or something like that.

You have a bunch of '2' showing up all over the place.

Mention that you don't retain the contents of the letter once printed (if you don't, and I hope you don't).

Include a photo of a sample letter so people can see if the paper really looks greenish (joke). But really, people want to see if the printout will look professional. And a photo of the envelope too - with stamp.

Mention where you are physically located, so people have an idea of how long delivery will take.

What happens if the letter is so long it takes many sheets of paper (i.e. more stamps) - is there an additional charge? Can I download a book, paste it in and you'll print and mail it to me? Just mention "up to 5 sheets of paper" or something like that, in the pricing page, but don't bother programming it, handle it manually.

Re: Tell HN: I ripped off Dustin Curtis' snail and got slightly different results

#6

Post by bravura »

Here is a variation on an application that involves mailing physical letters. It reconciles two salient facts:

1) people love to complain and be activists, but are also lazy and would rather click a button on the web than lick an envelope

2) most businesses respond better to a printed complaint than a digital one.

Anyone can start a petition. e.g. "You, the cafe at the corner of Fifth and Main, charge too much for their coffee and we would probably come their more if it cost $.25 less." You provide the address of the recipient: Expensive Coffeeshop, Fifth and Main, Smallville, NY

The application is integrated to facebook, so each time someone signs the petition it is posted to their wall for people to see. Once a critical mass of signatures has been reached, and the numbers of signees starts to level off, the petition is printed and automatically mailed.

(I have copied this idea onto idea-ne.ws: http://idea-ne.ws/item?id=155)

Re: Tell HN: I ripped off Dustin Curtis' snail and got slightly different results

#9

Post by paulsingh »

gcheong wrote: post #7

Where do your customers come from?

For now, they're coming from word of mouth within my dad's circle of friends.

Probably not enough word of mouth for this thing to scale dramatically (yet) but enough to help me cover my costs and then have some serious beer money on top.

Post reply on HN