The field guide
Practical guides for people who sell ad spots on community postcards: what to charge, how to fill a card, how EDDM actually works, and how to get advertisers to renew.
Start with the complete playbook
You don't need to be a salesperson to fill a community card. You need a list, a reason to call, a price you can defend, and a follow-up system. Here's the whole thing.
Read the playbookAlready selling a card with other tools? You can bring the paid spots with you and keep working on the open ones.
Read the mid-campaign switching guideFrom the field guide archive
Watch the campaign setup tutorial: choose EDDM routes, lay out your 9x12 card, price ad spots, review local prospects and prepare your campaign to sell.
A secret key is unrestricted access to your entire Stripe account. What it can actually do, why Stripe stopped recommending them, and the two questions to ask any tool that takes payments for you.
Ad space gets sold. Membership gets applied for. The eight plays that move an operator from chasing advertisers to fielding people who ask to be on the next card.
Save your EDDM routes and the businesses in your mail area are already found, scored and ordered. Here is exactly where they come from, what the grade means, and where it should be overruled.
We spent nearly two years building campaign sites for 9x12 operators. The site was never the bottleneck — and a landing page that can't take a payment is about fifth on the list of what you need.
Every piece of a 9x12 postcard business can be done remotely: prospecting, selling, design, printing, even the post office drop. Here's the full remote stack, with costs.
Monthly postcard income claims depend on assumed sales and incomplete costs. See a sourced card budget, unsold-spot scenarios and the limits of the available evidence.
EDDM route counts rarely match bundle sizes. Here's exactly how to bundle a 512-piece route, what goes on the facing slip, and how to avoid getting turned away at the counter.
The feast-and-famine cycle in a 9x12 business isn't a sales problem — it's a calendar problem. Here's how operators smooth $4,000 drops into predictable monthly income.
Printing and postage for 9x12 and 6x11 community cards, using published printer tiers and USPS Retail rates. Separate the mailing subtotal from your full business budget.
What three community card ad sales actually fund, why collections are not personal income, and how to prepare a specific offer before making the first call.
A $49 boost aimed at the ZIPs your card mails to, with a video of the printed piece. Here is the setup — targeting, creative, caption — and why contractors tend to reply first.
Every community card operator hears it: 'Direct mail doesn't work.' Here's how experienced operators are turning that objection into a closed deal.
Most community card spots don't sell on the first conversation. Here's what operators are doing to close prospects who said maybe -- or nothing at all.
Most operators cold-call and email hoping someone bites. A different approach -- posting in local Facebook groups with the right visuals -- is generating 25+ inbound leads from a few posts.
Most operators focus on filling slots. The real money is in keeping them filled. Here's how to set up renewals from day 1 so the ask almost makes itself.
I built SpotLeads because operators were spending 3+ hours manually building prospect lists. Here's what it does and why it matters.
A beginner-friendly daily workflow for 9x12 operators to build a clean list, reach out, and follow up until your card is sold.
Most 9x12 cards don't fail because of routes or design--they fail because operators don't follow up. Here's a simple 3-touch system to turn warm replies into paid placements.
How a Montana marketing duo turned $150 community card spots into a thriving digital agency — and why the 'small' approach sometimes wins bigger.
The card, the routes and the campaign site — before you enter a payment method.