How to read the field guide
Sources and corrections
A useful guide lets you check where a claim came from and what it does not establish. These are the standards for our community card and 9x12 business guides.
Last updated
Who publishes this site
9x12 Tools is operated by Seek First Development LLC. Dustin Myers is the founder and solo developer. We sell software for community card operators; our guides are published by a business with a commercial interest in the topic. They should be read with that relationship in mind.
The software company 9x12 Tools is independent of the similarly named The 9x12 Method LLC, 9x12 Sites, 9x12 Agency and 9x12 CRM. The general business model and our product are different things.
What counts as a source
Postal requirements: USPS is the authority for EDDM rules and postage. A guide or printer’s marketing page is not a substitute for checking the current requirements before ordering print.
Printer prices: A published rate card is a dated quote reference with its own assumptions about stock, quantity, shipping and services. A printing and postage subtotal is not a complete operating budget.
Product capabilities: Product claims are checked against the app’s shipped behavior and confirmed product decisions. Free building and previewing are distinct from paid publishing and checkout. Planned features must be labeled as unavailable.
Operator observations: Practical recommendations are advice from operating and building the product. They are not controlled studies or population averages.
What the pricing survey measures
The Community Card Pricing Survey (2026) reports advertised prices on operator sites hosted on our platform. It does not measure completed sales, profitability, first-card earnings, hours worked, success rates or advertiser response.
The underlying operator-level records are not public. The published methodology also does not specify the exact observation window or total number of eligible spots. Those limits prevent independent reproduction from the published page; we do not present the survey as a representative census or independently audited dataset.
Examples are calculations, not outcomes
Multiplying an advertised spot price by an assumed number of sold placements creates an illustration. It does not show that anyone sold those placements. Expenses outside printing and postage must be counted before describing a remainder as profit. We do not have a verified operator earnings distribution.
A scan, click or customer-reported redemption is an activity signal. It does not on its own establish an incremental customer or advertiser revenue.
Dates and changes
Publication dates identify the original article. An updated date identifies a substantive change; rebuilding the site does not make its research newly collected. A page update does not change the observation date of the sources it cites.
We preserve existing page URLs when revising content. Corrections should state the material change, particularly when an earlier version could have been read as an earnings claim or a postal requirement.
Commercial relationships
We do not sell a course or operate the EDDM Skool community linked from some articles. That community’s link includes a referral code. It is a recommendation with a tracked referral relationship, not an independent review without a commercial connection.
Request a correction
Use the Contact link in the footer. Include the page URL, the statement you believe is wrong and a source we can check. Pricing, postal requirements and product behavior can change; a clear report helps us correct the affected pages.