In February, Mandatory Fun started selling stickers again. That is to say that people started buying stickers from Mandatory Fun again in February… and you love to see it. March continued the trend in people buying Mandatory Fun stickers, which is great.
And this past month, I put a lot of energy into two things:
- Launching new designs
- Creating more ways to buy stickers on the site
Although there wasn’t an instant pay off, I am seeing some promising signs that I’m excited to share in this update. Here’s a breakdown of significant events from March 2025 and my takeaways:
Operations
- 10 new stickers dropped on the website
- 8 sticker packs dropped on the website
- 8 promos posted on Instagram
There was a lot going on behind the scenes in March. I had a wave of inspiration and used it to spend a bunch of time in Adobe Illustrator.
The cool part is that I can tell that my skill level with the pen tool specifically, and Illustrator in general, is increasing tangibly, which is one of my goals for this project.
Still a long road ahead, but I’m learning to enjoy the process and that is huge for me.
Probably the biggest change to the website this month was the introduction of Sticker Packs. I follow a lot of different sticker accounts on Instagram and there is one that just kept coming up in my feed selling three and five packs of stickers.
As an aside, I have strong thoughts against using discounts to drive traffic to this site and there are a couple reasons for that:
- I don’t believe that a 10% discount on a $2 or $3 item “moves the needle” on a purchase decision
- I have experienced regular discounts changing purchase patterns and timing
What do I mean by that second one?
With a more established brand in a totally different industry, I used discounts to grow an email list and the boost in sales was immediately intoxicating… However, over a period of time I began to see that discounts started to become required in order to hit monthly sales numbers.
That’s not to say that I believe that discounts don’t work, because I don’t believe that at all. I know they work.
I’m saying that I have made a decision, for the foreseeable future, to NOT use discounts in the form of monthly sales events on this project.
Enter the idea of sticker packs.
What I like about the idea of sticker packs is that I can group existing designs into a pack of 3 or 6 and use quantity as a discount mechanism instead of time. Theoretically, this does a few things:
- Creates more product offerings in the shop – as each sticker pack is now its own individual product
- Allows me to create “exclusive” stickers that you can only get if you purchase the sticker pack
- Allows me to control the volume discount at a per sticker level
It’s super early, I did not promote this change to the site, and initially – nobody cared…
But then there were one or two sticker pack purchases.
And then, there was a game changing, very large sticker pack order that I am currently working on in partnership with an organization – that I will be able to talk about in next month’s recap.
So, needless to say there has been enough early validation for me to continue to pursue this concept throughout the site – and I am very excited about the progress.
Marketing
The Instagram account gained 650 new followers and lost 49 followers – netting 601 new followers.
This is probably the most growth that the Instagram account has experienced in a given month, and there were three posts that literally took off this month – causing the growth in followers.
Here they are, in case you’re interested:
- 1.1M views – Roommates not seeing eye to eye about peeing in the sink
- 185k views – 2LTs living a spartan lifestyle upon graduation
- 871k views – Partial credit on Chemistry Graded Reviews
Not sure how many of these new followers are cadets, grads, or family and I’m also not sure how long many of them will stick around – as spot checking some of the new followers highlighted new accounts clearly using the follow/follow back method for early account growth.
But it’s been fun to watch nonetheless, and making those three posts made me laugh.
YouTube
I made a Mandatory Fun YouTube channel a few years ago and last month I added some content to it. When I was at the Zoo, I signed up for the video production class called Blue Tube and it ended up being one of the few courses I scored an “A” in… which is funny to me.
It was also one of my favorite courses.
We learned about story telling, storyboarding, and cut scenes… which all tied back to learning how to capture and keep a person’s attention.
For those who don’t know about it, Blue Tube was / is? a closed circuit television program that aired on Fridays. The class was split up into two teams and each team had two weeks to produce a 10-minute show.
That way, there would be episodes that cadets could watch every Friday.
A few years ago, I had uploaded my two favorite videos I produced when I launched the channel, and this past month I uploaded three of my other collegiate projects.
I also uploaded a few of the promos I’ve made for Instagram and like the idea of storing them on YouTube as Shorts, as well.
It could be that’s all this channel ever is… but I do have some ideas on making content related to building a sticker business for a niche audience – because I do enjoy sharing what I’m learning and video is a great format for teaching and learning – with the Mandatory Fun project providing some level of credibility to that type of content.
Not a huge priority, but I do like the idea of possibly expanding this project in that direction.
We’ll see how things continue to develop.
Revenue
TL;DR: Here are the stats this month – and you can see a cumulative total on the About page if you care to…
Gross Sales were up 53% month over month on a 40% increase in order volume. And I can tell you that “the Board” is happy with the progress.
Last month I committed to increasing the number of sticker offerings available in the shop and I think that’s what I need to continue to do over the coming months.
I’ve got a folder full of ideas and new ones popping up.
So far, there hasn’t been a definitive process for creation – and it has been far more likely that I just see something randomly and drop everything to make it, rather than follow some kind of scheduled creation timeline.
Reflecting on this as I type, I really appreciate that about this project and don’t know that I want it to change.
The steps being:
- See something and have an idea that I get excited about
- Drop whatever I’m doing and figure out how to make it
- Push it to the shop and share it with the community
Doing things this way has allowed me to over produce designs and develop a kind of backlog that comes in handy when I get pulled in some other personal or professional direction.
So, I plan to allow this 3 step creation process ride again this month and will let you know how it goes in next month’s recap.
But that’s all I’ve got for now, and I will look forward to catching you on the next one.
If you’ve read this far – thank you.
