2025 Q1 Outcomes

It’s been almost a month since the HackerNews spike, and what a wild ride that was! Traffic now comes in gentle waves instead of raging tides, but it’s still surprising and delightful to see those little notifications ping every week, whispering that I’ve made another $5. It’s really cool to see the automation I built work. I am encouraged by the progress but recognize there’s still a lot of work to do.

New Features

In addition bug fixes, two fresh features made their debut this quarter:

Display Name Override

Have you ever wanted to send a postcard to your friend George Orange but greet them affectionately as “Cinnamon Dude”? Now you can! Multiple thoughtful users suggested this tweak, and implementing it opened a neat little door into greater creative expression. It’s cool how removing a simple constraint, like a mandatory first and last name, turned out to be a delightful avenue for nuance and personality.

Holiday Button

Life has a funny habit of reminding us about holidays at the very last minute. Enter the “easy button” for holidays! Starting with Mother’s Day, we’ve made it incredibly simple to pick relevant words, style, and delivery dates, all with a single click. Just recently, someone used it to order a “Love you Mom” card for Mother’s Day, practically validating the concept overnight. This whimsical novelty adds an extra layer of charm to Three Kind Words, making the service both convenient and fun.

North Star Metric

I built some API endpoints to make it super easy to get metrics from the database. The metric I am focused on now is the number of postcards processed. My definition of “processed” is when we sent the card to the vendor for printing & delivery. Here’s the progress so far:

xychart-beta
    title "Postcards Processed 2025 Q1"
    x-axis ["Jan", "Feb", "Mar"]
    y-axis 0 --> 160
    bar [15, 144, 48]

We’ve now sent over 200 postcards, steadily moving toward our goal of 300 cards for 2025.

Leaderboard

Surprisingly, the phrase “Just saying hi” is the most popular, edging out even “I love you.” This trend makes me wonder how people perceive the service; perhaps we’re all simply craving gentle, uncomplicated connections that remind us we’re thought of. Here’s the top ten most sent greetings so far:

1. Just saying hi
2. You are amazing
3. I love you
4. You are loved
5. You are beautiful
6. Shine your light
7. You are awesome
8. You inspire me
9. You are everything
10. Proud of you

SEO

My “vending machine on the internet” blog post has etched a lasting little footprint on the web. Where Three Kind Words once languished on the second or third page of search results, we now proudly occupy top spots! Every backlink and curious click helped carve out a cozy digital nook, reinforcing my newfound appreciation for SEO. This experience has encouraged me to keep sharing openly and honestly, welcoming the serendipity that follows.

Social Media

Initially, I was resistant, okay, maybe allergic, to diving into social media. But discovery is genuinely tough and I need to bring my message to where my customers hang out. You’ve got to put your weird ideas out there and give them a chance to find their way. So, with cautious optimism, I’ve stepped into the social media deathmarch, turning notifications firmly off to preserve my sanity.

Find us fumbling along joyfully at:

• Instagram: @3kindwords
• TikTok: @3kindwords
• Bluesky: @3kindwords

Expect playful creativity, experimentation, and a chill vibe. The plan is simple: create authentically, share generously, laugh often, and then sit back and see what happens.

Reflecting

As always, I’m asking myself essential questions: Am I having fun? Am I learning? Am I optimizing for smiles and genuine interactions? Absolutely yes, on all counts. I’m having a blast. Sticking with it through this demand generation phase has taken me out of my comfort zone. It’s been worth it so far and I’m encouraged to keep going.

So, what’s on tap for the next quarter? I’ll be focused primarily on polishing and fine-tuning the current features, perhaps adding another holiday button, and launching a new postcard-vending-machine experiment (more on that later).

Stay tuned, friends, and thank you, truly, for joining me on this delightful, unpredictable adventure of kindness and connection. I don’t know exactly where this goes. There’s no blueprint, no step-by-step guide that I’m following. But this is the version I’m trying: make things, share them, talk about the process, and see who shows up.

And mostly, I’m just reminding myself: there’s no rush. Good things take time.