In August I built a website that makes cat greeting cards. Two months later, more than 3,000 people have used it to tell someone they love them, miss them, or are sorry about the thing with the cake.
I did not plan for any of that. I planned to sell a few cards and then stare at the analytics dashboard for an unreasonable amount of time. I did do the staring. Here is what the staring taught me.
It started with cat videos
It began with cat videos. I posted a few just for fun, the kind with a cat saying something it definitely shouldn't know how to say, and people loved them way more than anything I'd ever made on purpose. So I thought: what if the cat could say your thing, to your person?
My first guess was that this was for grandparents. Older people love a sweet card, and a cat telling grandpa happy birthday felt like a sure thing. I built the whole thing with them in mind.
The first version of Kitty Messages was simple. You pick an occasion, write a message, and get a cute kitten card with your words on it. Pay $4.99, download the image, send it however you like.
It worked, in the sense that nothing was on fire. It didn't work in the sense that almost nobody bought anything.
Wrong people, right idea
The first thing I got wrong was who it was for. Grandpas weren't searching for cat cards at midnight. People between 18 and 30 were: sending one to a girlfriend, a best friend, a sister they'd been fighting with, a mom they'd forgotten to call. Cat videos are basically the native language of that age group, and I'd built it for the people they were sending cards to.
So I pivoted. Same cat, new crowd. The messages got funnier and a bit more chaotic, the occasions shifted toward "I miss you" and "just because", and things started to move.
The second thing I got wrong was what I was selling. Even the right people came, picked an occasion, wrote a sweet message, reached the payment step, and left. Over and over. A conveyor belt of almost.
People don't want a file. They want to not forget.
Here's what I eventually figured out: nobody wakes up wanting a PNG. They want their mom to feel remembered on her birthday. The card is just how that happens.
So I changed what Kitty does. Instead of "buy a card", it became "Kitty remembers, and delivers it on the day". You write the card now, pick a date, and on the morning of, Kitty emails it to them. You don't have to remember anything. That's the whole point.
This sounds like a small change. It wasn't. It meant a scheduler that wakes up every fifteen minutes, emails that actually land in inboxes, a page where you can edit or cancel a card without making an account, and a lot of thinking about what happens if the server crashes halfway through sending. (Answer: Kitty would rather be late than send your love letter twice.)
Then I made it free, which felt insane
Even after the change, most people still left at the payment step. They hadn't seen their card yet, so they were being asked to pay for a promise.
So I let people make a card for free. A real one, with a link they can share, plus a small Kitty mark in the corner. Paying removes the mark and unlocks the good stuff, like Kitty delivering it on the day.
This is when things took off. Free cards are where most of those 3,000 people came from. People made a card, sent it, and the person who got it sometimes made one too.
It also taught me an uncomfortable lesson, which comes up two sections from now.
Most people found it by searching
I didn't run ads. Almost everyone found Kitty through Google, searching for things like birthday messages for a grandma, or what to write to a sister.
So I wrote. A lot. Pages of messages for moms, dads, grandparents, girlfriends, exes (respectfully). Thousands of messages, all hand-written, each page ending in "or let Kitty send it for you".
The surprise was cats. The first searches that showed up weren't about birthdays. They were about talking cat cards. People wanted the cat to say it. So I leaned all the way in: messages from your cat, funny cat messages, gifts for cat lovers, and a little tool that tells you what your cat would say if it could. It turns out the internet is mostly people who love cats, which, fair.
The free version was too good
Remember the uncomfortable lesson? Here it is.
At one point, people had made over a thousand free cards in a month, and about ten people had paid. That's under one percent. The free card did everything that mattered: the photo, the song, the warm feeling when someone opens it. Paying only got you logistics. Nobody falls in love with logistics.
So I tested a new version of the card maker. Paid cards get the extras that make people tear up: more photos, a voice note, writing your own occasion, prettier themes. The free card stays good, just not complete. Checkout became one tap instead of a small form.
Conversion went from about 0.6% to about 2.9%. The numbers are still small enough that I don't trust them too much, but that's nearly five times more, and nothing else I tried came close.
Running it myself
Kitty started on Vercel, and as more people came, I could see the free plan's limits coming. So I moved it to a small server that costs about three dollars a month, with Cloudflare in front so it doesn't fall over, and a backup every night so I can sleep.
I'm the whole team: design, cards, code, emails, payments, server, and support. Payments alone took a ridiculous amount of time, because the usual providers wouldn't take me. I ended up on one that would, and I'm very grateful it exists.
What I'd tell myself in August
- Build for the people who'll actually use it. I built for grandpas. The 22-year-olds showed up.
- Sell the feeling, not the file. I spent weeks polishing a download nobody wanted.
- Let people see it before they pay. A free version isn't charity. It's how people decide to trust you.
- But don't give away the part that makes people cry. That part is the product.
- Search is slow, then suddenly it isn't. Every page I wrote felt pointless for a few weeks.
- Watch what people actually search for. I'd never have guessed the cats.
Kitty is still small, and still mostly me staring at a dashboard. But a lot of people have opened a message from a cat that told them they're loved, sent by someone who'd never have said it that way themselves. Honestly, that's a pretty good use of the internet. (And yes, some grandpas got one too.)
If you want to send one: kittymessages.com.
Originally published on arbizen.com.
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