Publisher
Fillmore County Journal
jason@fillmorecountyjournal.com
Building materials, vehicles, real estate, and gas prices have been on the rise. Inflation, some might say.
Add postage to that list.
Effective January 24, 2021, the United States Postal Service implemented their regularly scheduled rate increase. That January rate increase happens every year to keep up with the rate of inflation. The USPS recently announced another heftier rate increase coming in August of 2021.
This mid-year rate increase will impact mail pricing more than any other rate increases in recent years. Consumers and businesses can expect to pay 5% to 16% more, depending on the mailing type.
And, while the rest of us pay more with the USPS, Amazon will continue to pay less than half of what we pay. Essentially, a postage rate increase on us helps to keep giving Amazon a better deal. We are subsidizing Amazon’s appetite for world domination.
Over the years, I have thrown out ideas for the USPS to generate money for the sake of sustainability and even growth opportunities. They need to diversify their revenue stream.
One of the simplest money-makers they could implement relates to selling advertising on their stamps and other package labeling. There are businesses like GAP, Old Navy, Best Buy, Kohl’s, Target, Walmart, and other big names that would most likely pay for the brand awareness opportunity to appear on all USPS mail. They’d need to get into a marketing mindset for that to happen, but that remains to be seen.
According to my research, their website www.usps.com ranks as the 27th most visited website in the United States. Why not sell ads on their heavily trafficked website? Everyone else is doing it. The aforementioned businesses could be prospects for buying ads on their website.
These are just a few suggestions.
In the mean time, we will brace for another price hike.
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