I only joined Postcrossing 12 days ago. I’ve sent 7 postcards - 2 were received and 5 currently traveling. I have not received anything yet. I’m happy to be patient, and am not complaining about things not happening faster.
My question is, how long did it take before folks here felt like they were able to send and receive a good number of cards per month - like maybe sending/receiving 20-30 per month? 6 months? A few years? My plan is to send postcards as soon as I am allowed to! Just trying to manage my expectations.
I just started a month ago, but I only recieved 1 card so far, and 3 registered and 5 traveling. I even sent one within my own country a month ago and it still hasn’t been registered.
It took me about a year, but cards to Russia took much longer back then and many of my cards went to Russia back then, for the Postcrossers there where much more active than they are now.
For starters you can choose some easy group like Happy Group where you simply do what you do when sending an official card and try to find something that fits the other persons profile.
Have fun with postcrossing!
I think many of us find that slow in the beginning, so what many of us did was jump into direct swaps, tags, lotteries etc on the Forum while we were waiting for our official card sending count to go up.
I’ve been consistently sending official cards since I joined 18 months ago & I can now send 13 cards. I’ve sent 249 cards & received 255 so far just to give you one fairly typical example.
It’s important to regularly spend time on the Forum & read lots of posts & participate in discussions initially so you can begin to participate fully on the Forum as there are different levels of participation, but it’s a friendly group & lots of fun to do direct swaps & play other postcard games. Enjoy!
I’ve been here 11 years, have almost 1000 cards sent, and can have 28 travelling at a time. It’s not nearly enough slots, IMO – I could write easily enough cards to have 100 travelling at a time. So I would be happy with a lot more slots.
However, that’s only official cards, as others have said there are many swaps and games on the forum if you want to participate. They can be a lot of fun!
I joined up in February of last year in the deep dark months of COVID. I checked the option to send and received from other countries only, and did not get any for about 5 weeks. But in another month I started getting maybe 5 in a month and now it’s probably 8.
On top of that I have started doing Tags, Round Robins and Lotteries. Also some private swaps if someone has posted something I’d love to swap for. So now most days I get one or more things in my mailbox which makes me very happy!
But if you want to get more fun stuff while you’re waiting for the regular postcards to roll in, Tags are much faster, and anything sent from within the US. So go to the Forum and scroll down to the Language and Geographic Communities section and click on North American. There you will find Tags and Round Robins that you are likely to enjoy the results of much more quickly.
For me it was about ‘three months in’ I started in March 2019 and I think travel mode saved me, sending from both Malaysia & The Isle of Man, in my first year, sparked the mini obsession in PC.
Don’t get me wrong, sending from my home country is great, but I’m not sure I would have stayed.
I was a bit weary of Postcrossing in the beginning, I didn’t max out my postcard allowance until I knew how postcrossing worked.
I still don’t max out my postcard allowance, keep a few slots free. Approaching three years my allowance is 16 postcards.
In 2021, I became regular on the (New) Forum and love the Tags & Round Robins.
Welcome to Postcrossing. I’ve found it to be a wonderful community of people. And the joy I get in preparing a little bit of kindness and communication is great.
I’m at 4.5 months of membership and I’m nowhere near being on a roll yet though . But this is at least partially due to the speed (or lack thereof) of our post.
I was beside myself with glee recently on drawing a fellow Australian address! At last!! A card that would take less than three weeks to travel.
After only 4.5 months I’ve already had three expired cards. Two of which eventually arrived. The third is still en-route. The silliest thing about the third expired card is that it is going to Indonesia!! Literally the second closest country to us geographically….
So yeah…I think the ‘being on a roll’ feeling will have a number factors contributing…where you live (and therefore the speed of your exchanges) being a very big one!
I’m still working on my patience factor .
ETA: I smiled when I read your statement that at 12 days you already had two cards delivered! I started Postcrossing during a lockdown here…not realising that postcards would be so hard to find. So I had trouble even sending out my first five cards. But this image shows how long my first five cards took to travel…
I have been around 5 years and I send/receive 10-12 a month That is more than enough for me and it is a lot higher than in the beginning as back then I would send about 5-6 a month due to living somewhere more expensive than now. It didn’t feel so hard as I also don’t feel like I have enough time and energy for more, so that works for me. Of course we all have different limits but a lot of newbie seem so excited to max out and it really is not necessary, though of course it is a personal perception.
2 cards registered after 12 days of joining is a much faster than average experience. Most people “complain” of much longer times. My first cards took about 30-40 days to be registered (I chose “repeated countries” because I wanted more Russia, which was the most common then, forgetting how slow Russia can be!). And then a couple more weeks for me to first receive, so my first received happened about 6-7 weeks after joining. I was of course impatient for my cards to arrive so I took part in some forum activities, a couple of swaps and getting penpals.
After that, I got into my own rhythm which I described above which I guess is my own “roll”.
It took me about 2 years to reach 20 postcards a month and then an additional year to reach 30 postcards a month. During that time, I always maxed out my allotment. However, this was also before the pandemic and I live in a large metropolitan area where the mail in general is faster than sparsely populated areas of the US. This is also before the USPS is deliberately slowing down delivery times so I would imagine it will take longer now.
If you want to send more postcards now, the folks above have some great suggestions for participating in tags and swaps. I personally don’t send more than 5-10 postcards per week these days because it takes me a while to decorate and write them. Perhaps another alternative to sending more postcards is to put in more effort into the ones you do end up sending.
Oh wow. I guess that being in Australia would make it MUCH harder. I really appreciate your putting this in to perspective for me. 2 cards/12 days isn’t that bad.
I was kind of impressed myself that two cards were already delivered to Europe! Of course, the one to the US seems to be taking a long time. Maybe that’s because it’s third-class mail here and so it gets the slowest service?
Thanks Maddymail - I will check those out. All of the games and tags are kind of confusing for me, but I guess I just need to try them to figure them out!
That’s very reinforcing. My goal is to get to a point where there is almost always something in the mail, and something for me to send, even if it’s through the tags, etc. I appreciate your help!
. But this is at least partially due to the speed (or lack thereof) of our post.
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That is more than enough for me and it is a lot higher than in the beginning as back then I would send about 5-6 a month due to living somewhere more expensive than now. It didn’t feel so hard as I also don’t feel like I have enough time and energy for more, so that works for me. Of course we all have different limits but a lot of newbie seem so excited to max out and it really is not necessary, though of course it is a personal perception.