After nearly 20 years at the same business address—palatial “Suite 403” that is actually a mailbox at a UPS Store (formerly Mail Boxes Etc.), conveniently located across the street from my residence—I've switched to a virtual mailbox service.
I initially got a business address at a time when people purchased my early small press comics via mail order. Since the emergence of the Internet, however, most of my business, including mail orders, has of course moved online and the need for a business mailbox has declined significantly. Nowadays, I receive only a few pieces of mail a month, mostly junk mail, which made the relatively high cost of a commercial mailbox a bit of an extravagance. I even considered simply using just my home address, but the thought of publicly posting and sharing my home address for business purposes still gave me pause.
After confirming that other local mailbox centers didn’t offer much of a price difference, I came across a virtual mailbox option—online services that partner with local brick and mortar mailbox businesses around the U.S. (and internationally) that provide users with a physical street address and dedicated “mailbox number” (and other services) for less than renting a physical mailbox. (These services seem to target users and businesses that need a business address anyplace in the world, even if they are not local—mail can be managed, discarded and forwarded physically or by scanning within the user's online account. All told, I’ll be saving from $250 to $300 a year!)
Ironically, my new business address is no longer within my city of residence and has the same zip code as my first Los Angeles business address I maintained from 1990–2003!
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