10 Things I love about Postcrossing

 First off, what is Postcrossing?

Postcrossing is a project that allows people to send postcards back and forth all over the world.  I started on the website only 7 months ago, but as soon as I started I was hooked! 

A rundown  of what you do - 

1.        request an address from the website

2.        mail the postcard to the address

3.        wait to receive a postcard

4.        register the received postcard in the system

It's pretty straight forward. I want to share with you what a love about Postcrossing and to show you how easy it is to start sending more mail.

1. User friendly – If you are just getting into sending snail mail this is a great way to get started! It’s quite simple since it is only postcards. You don’t want to worry about figuring out what you put in a letter or how to obtain penpals. They do all the work for you!

2. Fair - When you send a postcard, you will receive one back from a random user from somewhere else in the world. You don't have to be let down about not receiving something back because as soon as your postcard ID is registered, your address is eligible to receive another postcard.  If your postcard gets lost or a user does not register it, it will expire after 60 days. I have sent 72 postcards and 1 has expired. My expired postcard went to China (which seems to always take forever). Your odds are pretty good that your postcard will make it, but it’s the chance you take. After your postcard expires, you will be able to request to send another postcard. If the person does receive the postcard after 60 days, they have up to a year to register it. When you first sign up you are able to send out 5 postcards.  The number of postcards you are allowed to send out at any single time goes up the more postcards you send!

3. Great for families or groups – As much as I love receiving mail now, I think I enjoyed it even more when I was a kid. I have a good friend that does postcrossing with her family. Her young daughter enjoys it the most! Her daughter also enjoys hand making her own postcards to send.  It is a neat way to learn about the world. I have sent postcards to families as well as groups. I sent one recently to a nursing home in the UK. You must contact postcrossing if you want to have an account as a classroom or group. 

4. Postcard IDs – This goes back to everything being fair on postcrossing. One of the most important things is to write the postcard ID correct and legible.  If you cannot read or got it wrong, they will help you find the correct one. I have not had any issues with them not being able to find the correct ID. Be careful where you write the postcard ID as well. In the USA, you do not want to write it at the bottom because they usually print or put a sticker over all that.

5. Easy to figure out what to say or send -  Since postcards are so small, you do not need to write a lot. You will want  to check out the users profile first. Some are VERY detailed and tell you want they like and do not like. Also a lot will tell you what they want you to write. If you do not have a postcard to their liking, I’d recommend just sending a tourist postcard from your city or state. If they do not have a preference about what you write about, tell them about your day, the weather, or a favorite recipe. A lot of people love for you to tell them something interesting about your city or culture. Since I only speak English I love to receive postcards that have "hello"  in a different language. You can also check and see if they have their birthday listed on their profile. Saying happy birthday is always nice if you are sending them a postcard around their birthday. My profile says that I love owls so I have received quite a few postcards with owls on them. 

6. Inactive accounts – If a user does not log in for a while, postcrossing will set it to inactive so they do not receive postcards. You can also set your account to inactive if you are moving, going on a long vacation, or just need a break. This makes it really easy when you want to stop for a bit.

7. Gallery – It’s a great idea to take pictures of your postcards and upload them to the gallery. A lot of users will favorite the postcard you sent. It’s really neat to be able to go check out what others are sending as well!

8. Seeing different stamps from all over the world – This is probably my favorite part because I love stamps! You will receive some really awesome stamps from all over the world. I have yet to receive any official postcrossing stamps but I’m hoping I do soon! You are also able to choose if you only want postcards from other countries or if you want to include your own. I have included the USA because we have so many states, that I enjoy receiving mail from them as well. The only thing is I have received mail from people in Texas, and who only live a few hours from me. I don't really mind that either because we can usually relate to something.  I did put on my profile that I want as many stamps as they can use so I rarely receive postcards with only a US postcard stamp.

9. Statistics – Postcrossing does a good job with their charts. I find this part interesting because you can see what countries you receive most of your postcards from. It also will show you the average time it takes your postcards to arrive to certain countries. Here is my most recent country distribution of sending and receiving:

10. Ability to direct swap – You can set your profile to say that you are interested in direct swaps. This can be good if you are looking for certain types of postcards. I had mine set to that for a while but changed it because I was receiving a lot of messages and was not able to send out that many postcards. The downside to this is it isn’t tracked by postcrossing so you have no way to be for sure the person will send what they say. I think you should just make sure that the profile is well filled out and that the user is quite active on postcrossing. If the user has been on the website for a long time and has sent 100s of postcards, it would be rare for them to flake. 

I hope this has inspired some of you to start Postcrossing! Once I figure out how I am going to store all these cards, I'll be sharing that with you.
Please comment with any questions you may have.