This page researched and written by Tom Irish,
owner, webkewl design
Offering free internet postcards is a great way to build additional traffic for your site. While it might not be for everyone, there are a large number of sites that this type of promotion is ideal for. Do you have an annual event to promote? Postcards can help generate interest and traffic for it. You could use previous years pictures of the event for your postcards. Artists, craftspeople, resorts, just about any business or event that can be captured in a photograph can be promoted with postcards. Actually, it doesn't stop there.
Some of the remote hosted services available actually allow you to use their image wells. Even if you have no content of your own for a postcard service, you can offer one to visitors of your site. The word "free" tends to get peoples attentions quicker than even . . . say, "Andy Inhatko", and offering a free postcard service is just one more way to draw attention to your site.
Among the remote hosted services, rules for use vary. Some are more than happy to provide the service to anyone, be you an individual or business. Others require that your site be "not for profit". There is also the option of using a free cgi script and configuring your postcard service yourself.
I decided to break down and see what it would take to configure a custom postcard service for this site. Donna and Ilene kindly allowed me to use some if their images from last years MacWorld Expo. I found that using a third party remote hosted solution does indeed save some work, and it is relatively simple to make changes to your configuration once you have set up your postcard shop. If you don't mind having no control over the final layout of your postcard, and that your postcard will be returned with a banner ad or two, this is a great way to go. If you can't find a service that returns a card styled the way you would like, or do not want the advertising on your site, you may wish to create a custom solution and utilize one of the free cgi scripts available for setting up a postcard service.
My advice? If a postcard service seems like it might enhance your site, thoroughly review a number of options and choose the one that suits you best. If you don't like the look of one, there is surely another that will suit your tastes. Options like foreign language support may influence your decision. I chose to configure "The Digital Postcard". The service cares not whether you are a business or individual, supports a wide variety of languages, and allows you to custom configure colors of text and backgrounds, include your own logo, pictures, and sounds. The tradeoff is a few banners. You can see the results here.
iCards |
Easy to use, well designed cards from Apple Computer, Inc. You won't get any followup spam later either! (Ilene, 2/3/01) |
| The
Digital Postcard |
See comments above. I did find the instructions a bit confusing at times but this remote hosted solution is indeed easier to configure than setting up your own with a cgi script if you have no experience with that. |
| MyPostCard.com | MyPostCard is another remote hosted solution that allows you to custom configure a cardshop. The free version is not for use by businesses however exceptions are made for Artists and shareware authors. |
| E-Card | E-Card is a cgi solution that allows visitors to send a postcard with picture, colored text and backgrounds, and mood music via midi. If you aren't familiar with configuring a cgi solution for use with your ISP or host, or can't run cgi's, look to the solutions above. |
| CARD.CGI | BigBird's CARD.CGI allows pictures, colored text and backgrounds, and mood music via midi. Ditto on the cgi comments. |
Should you wish to look into cgi solutions which you must configure yourself and need an introduction in how to implement these please take a look at our cgi section and my introductory tutorial.
Oh, and hey, go send someone a postcard with a picture from last years MacWorld. :-)
