How to Run a Postcard Business Remotely in 2026

Rick lives in Poland. While living there, he sold out a community postcard mailing to 2,500 homes in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And I've filmed videos about this business from a beach at 9 a.m. on a random Monday, right before going surfing. So yes, you can run a postcard business remotely. But there are a few things that change when you're not local, and nobody really talks about them.

Here's the thing. The money side doesn't change at all. What changes is how you sell, how you answer "wait, are you even from here?", and how the cards physically get into the Post Office when you're hundreds (or thousands) of miles away. Let me break it down.

Can you really run a postcard business remotely?

Yes. The whole business is three jobs, and none of them needs you standing in the town:

• Selling the slots. Email, phone, Facebook groups, and Messenger all work from a laptop.
• Collecting the money. A payment link works the same whether you're across the street or across an ocean.
• Printing and mailing. With All Inclusive, the printer prints, bundles, pays the postage, and ships the cards straight to the Post Office that delivers your routes.

As I said in that beach video, you can do it "over email, over the phone... as long as you have internet and a phone." Adam proved the email part. He had a full-time job and kids in travel baseball, did about 95% of his outreach by email, and got his first card to the printer. Mattia filled a card while running it from Europe.

Full transparency, though. Not being local is slightly a disadvantage. You lose the easiest line in this whole business: "Hey, I'm a local business owner putting a card together for our community." It's still totally doable. You just have to replace that line with something else, and I'll show you what.

Who runs a remote direct mail business?

A remote direct mail business usually starts because home doesn't work as a market. Lucy lives in a town of about 300 people, 18 miles from a Walmart. There aren't 16 advertisers there, so she sells into a tri-city area down the road. Rick couldn't work in Poland while waiting on government paperwork, so he picked a U.S. market instead. And once card #1 works anywhere, the next one doesn't have to be in your ZIP Code. Adam had two cities planned.

Step 1: Pick a town, even one out of state

This is where most people overthink it. On a live call, someone asked me exactly this: how do you pick target ZIP Codes when you're doing this across the country? I told him there are really two targets.

Target one is the routes, where the cards actually land. I look for higher incomes, single-family homes, and fewer apartment buildings, because so many advertisers are home service businesses. A landscaper doesn't care about a 200-unit apartment complex.

Target two is the businesses, and that's a 10 to 15 mile radius around those routes. A landscaper 15 miles away might still want the work in that high-income neighborhood. So you're not limited to businesses on the same street as the mailboxes.

When you've never driven through a town, you can't eyeball any of this. That's why we built the free EDDM route planner. Search any ZIP Code and every route shows Census numbers: median household income, single-family share, apartments, owners vs renters. You can pick a neighborhood in Ohio from your couch in Arizona, which is the whole trick to starting a postcard business from out of state. If you want the full method, here's my guide to picking routes on the USPS map.

A few more rules for a town you don't know:

• Pick a place with a real business district. You need 16 non-competing advertisers within that 15 mile radius.
• Don't stack four cards in one ZIP Code. Someone on that same call had a 20,000-home ZIP Code and asked if he should sell four cards there. No. Same pool of advertisers, four times the asks. Spread out.
• Watch the door count. Pick routes that add up close to your print run. With All Inclusive, every door on your routes beyond the print run is billed at $0.26, and those homes don't get a card.
• Give yourself a reason to be there. Rick picked Albuquerque because his LLC's address is there. So when people asked about his office, the company really was based in Albuquerque. His next card is Rio Rancho, right next door.

Step 2: Sell without walking in the door

Door-to-door is off the table, so your channels are the ones that live on a screen. Here's how I'd rank them when you're not local.

1. Build your list. Pull 50 to 100 businesses in your 10 to 15 mile radius with Lead Scout or Google Maps. Owner first names help a ton.
2. Send the two-part email. First email is just "Hey [Name], do you service the [Town] area?" No pitch, no price. When they reply yes, the second email explains the card and asks if they'd like the spot before it's gone. All of it is in the cold email scripts.
3. Ramp your volume slowly. Start with 5 emails a day, 10 after two weeks, 20 after three, and 30 after a month. Never more than 30 a day on one account.
4. Join the town's Facebook groups and post. Rick's entire card came from this: about seven groups a day, two or three comments, then a Messenger conversation with each one. Here's how to write Facebook group posts that get those comments.
5. Get on the phone when they're warm. Put your number in your messages with "feel free to call me anytime." That way the warmest people call you, and you get phone practice without cold calling.

One honest note on pace. Rick's card took about three months at roughly three hours a day, because he only posted in groups and didn't email or call. He said himself it would've gone faster with more channels. So stack them.

"Are you even from here?" How to answer it

This is the big one. Some businesses will ask. Some won't even ask. And some will lose interest the second they find out. Rick said it's about 50/50 when people ask: one of his advertisers thought it was cool he lived in Poland, and others completely checked out.

So here's how to handle it without lying, because you should never lie about it.

• Describe what you do, not where you sleep. Rick's line: "I get the businesses together, I design your ads, and I make sure they're shipped." That's the job. Where you live isn't really relevant to it.
• Find your "up the road." Lucy sells across a tri-city area and says, "Hey, I'm up the road on State Road 150." That highway runs through Indiana and down into Kentucky, so wherever she's selling, she sounds like a neighbor. If you live a state over, name the highway or the region you share.
• Send your face. This was my suggestion to Rick on our call. When someone asks where you're from, answer honestly and then send a short video message: "Hey, I'm Rick, I'm actually in Poland, but I wanted you to see I'm a real person." It proves you're not some call center.
• Show the route map. Rick sent a sample card plus a map of exactly which routes it was going to. That makes the town feel real even if you're not in it.
• Get a pin on the map. A pin on Our Local Spotlight (free for members) gives a prospect something to look up besides your Facebook profile.

There's all sorts of businesses all over the country that sell to people that are not in their community. That's not everything that a business cares about if you're still providing this very specific value.

Look, a business owner wants customers. If your card puts them in front of 5,000 homes for $500, most of them care way more about that than your ZIP Code.

Get paid from anywhere

This part is easy. Collect before you print, every time. When someone says yes, send them this (my exact wording):

"Happy to have you on board, we do ask for commitment up front to officially claim your slot. It helps pay for the cost of printing and postage."

Then send the payment link. Fernando texted a payment link to a guy who said yes on a follow-up call, and he paid about an hour later. If someone wants to give you a card number over the phone, you can charge it manually in Stripe.

Rick, as someone living outside the U.S., set up a U.S. LLC in New Mexico, opened an American bank account, and collected through Stripe. He said collecting the money worked "exactly the same" as if he lived in the States. He also said the taxes were the part he still had to figure out. So talk to an accountant before you mail into another state or country, and read my LLC, sales tax, and insurance basics first.

Printing and mailing when you're not there

Okay so this is the part people are actually worried about: doing EDDM from out of state. EDDM mail has to physically get to a Post Office. Which one? USPS says to "take or send your mailing to the Post Office locations that will deliver to your selected EDDM routes". For faraway ZIP Codes, USPS even says you can send it by Priority Mail to the Postmaster for that route.

So you have two ways to do this from a distance.

With Print Only, you'd be getting 5,000 cards delivered to your house, bundling them, and then shipping heavy boxes to a Post Office in another state. Possible, but now you're doing the hard part twice.

With All Inclusive, we print, pack, cover the postage, and ship the cards straight to the Post Office that delivers your routes. Then we send you the tracking and photos of your print run, and mail you a pack of extra samples to prospect with. The first Post Office is included, and each additional Post Office is $25. That's why I tell remote people to go All Inclusive. You never touch a bundle.

One more honest note: USPS doesn't promise a delivery window for Marketing Mail. If an advertiser has an event or a sale date, give yourself a cushion and don't promise a specific day.

The remote problems nobody warns you about

These came straight from people who've done it.

• Time zones. Rick was sometimes replying 15 to 17 hours after a message came in, because businesses wrote him at 3 or 4 a.m. his time. It still worked, but answer as fast as you can. Set your phone to notify you for Messenger and email replies.
• No card in your hand. You can't walk in and drop a sample on the counter. On card #1, send a mockup and the route map. From card #2 on, you've got real proof: the extra samples we mail you and a finished card with real businesses on it.
• Price friction without the face-to-face. Rick messaged 20 to 30 businesses at $500 for the 9x12 and felt pushback. He switched to a community card at a lower slot price to get his first win, then planned to move up. A community card at the typical $250 a slot ($4,000 for 16 slots, $1,449 All Inclusive, $2,551 profit) is a great first remote card for exactly that reason.
• Fear of rejection from strangers. Someone on that same live call had tried messaging businesses in another city he was in, got rejected over and over, and quit. That's normal. It's a numbers game, and strangers say no to locals too.

Full transparency: I do teach this stuff inside the community, and there are people in there doing it from all over. But you don't need it to get started. Everything in this post is enough to sell your first card from wherever you are.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you run a postcard business from another state?

Yes. You sell by email, phone, and the town's Facebook groups, collect payment with a link, and have the printer ship the cards straight to the Post Office that delivers your routes. That's exactly how Rick filled his Albuquerque card.

Do I have to go to the Post Office to mail EDDM?

No. USPS lets you take or send your mailing to the Post Office that delivers your routes. With All Inclusive printing, we ship the bundled, postage-paid cards there for you, so you never make the trip.

What do I say when a business asks if I'm local?

Tell the truth, then make it about the job: you put the businesses together, design the ads, and make sure the cards get mailed. A short video message and a map of the routes help a lot. Some businesses won't care at all.

How do I choose a town to mail in if I've never been there?

Look for routes with higher incomes, single-family homes, and fewer apartments, then prospect businesses within 10 to 15 miles of those routes. Our free EDDM route planner shows Census income and housing numbers for every route.

Should my first postcard be local or remote?

Local if you can, because it's the easiest trust line you'll ever have. If your town is too small, or you live abroad, start with a community card in a market you pick on purpose, then scale.

Can I sell postcard ads without going door-to-door?

Yes. Adam did about 95% of his outreach by email. Rick sold his whole card through Facebook groups and Messenger. Door-to-door is one channel, not a requirement.

The beauty of this business is that the mailboxes don't care where you live. Pick your routes, start the conversations, and let the printer handle the heavy boxes. As always, I'm rooting for you.