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Business cards on the cheap?
yalborap
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, I'm broke as hell. While searching for a real job to get some pocket cash, I've also been pushing my photography. One big issue I've run into is promoting it. It's easy to talk to someone and tell them I'm starting to go pro, it's not easy for them to read my chicken-scratch handwriting or memorize my email or something.
Hence, business cards. I don't know what's good, what's bad, or where to look for a good deal. Which is where you come in. Where can I get some good business cards(double sided, color setup), and where can I get something really cheap? Bonus points if these intersect.
Hence, business cards. I don't know what's good, what's bad, or where to look for a good deal. Which is where you come in. Where can I get some good business cards(double sided, color setup), and where can I get something really cheap? Bonus points if these intersect.
yalborap on
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You should definitely ask in the photo thread
BUT
I found a great site, just bought a set of minicards from them (they're the length of business cards, but about half the height), they are awesome and adorable and the card stock is great
They let you do two-sided cards for both business and mini cards -- photo on one side, words/logo on the other
And here's my favorite part
Each card can have a different photo -- up to 50/set for business cards and 100/set of mini cards
Both are about $20 (50 business cards or 100 mini cards)
(they also make photo stickers oh god I love my stickers)
moo.com
If you use them, I have a promo code that gets you 20% off your first order and gets me some swank credit.
Sheri Baldwin Photography | Facebook | Twitter | Etsy Shop | BUY ME STUFF (updated for 2014!)
Yeah, I've known about moo for a while. They're awesome, but when I can get something from Vista Print or some other more general site at like a tenth of the cost, it doesn't add up.
Really, I think what I need more is a place that lets me do a smaller set. I could wrangle together $5 for 100, or $10 for 250 way more easily than $20 for 50/100/500/whatever.
EDIT: Woops, misremembered Vista Print's prices. They're actually 20 for 250, not 500.
Wow. Everyone I've talked to about my cards and shown them to has thought the prices were pretty damn good.
If you're looking for that cheap, I'm not sure the kind of quality you're going to get.
But good luck!
Sheri Baldwin Photography | Facebook | Twitter | Etsy Shop | BUY ME STUFF (updated for 2014!)
Actually, they will print you 250 cards for free...I think that's what we did. Can't be cheaper than free!
You know, I'd completely forgotten about their free cards option. Guess I'll go with that, then. Not perfect, but a good stopgap.
Thanks.
http://www.cnapromotions.com/
I get that you're broke, but $20 for 100 cards with variable photographic imagery on one side should be a no-brainer marketing investment for a photographer to make.
I mean, I work in print. We do small run, high quality print. I look at moo.com and pretty much think 'Game over, man'.
Utter, complete and total Garbage. It's a waste of money, as there is no quality control between stores, etc. This is what we do at my organization (I'm a non-profit, we have lots of different consultants/fundraisers, etc. coming in and out, and its a small staff so we don't "order" business cards for them because its inconvenient, a time-sink, and they usually dont use all of them):
Use Avery professional business cards for either Inkjet or laserjet.
Most Avery products (you can get them at Office Depot - non-glossy is usually best for self-printing) can be found at office depot for around 20-30 dollars for 250-500 cards. They are also a paper format already built into most late Office packages. Use word, select the avery paper template, design the cards. import jpgs onto the cards ,etc.
get access to a good printer (you can use kinko's here...just use your own paper) - and print them out.
If you dont like how they look, change them. They can also be changed for each circumstance - maybe you want a portrait photograper business card, maybe a wedding photographer business card. It allows you the versatility and the ability to modify your design. Its a little more expensive that kinko's itself, but you are guaranteed more quality control and the quality of the card itself is identical, if not better, than the card stock provided at large printing stores like kinkos as opposed to a small, boutique shop which will be more expensive than you need at this point.
No current job, no current source of income, nobody I can ask to borrow money from. The gear was all gotten during happier times when the money flowed more freely.
In short, I'm an idiot.
Well, maybe buy some food or something first, then some decent business cards.
What's your plan anyway? Are you going to hire your services? For weddings etc. or for marketing or something? Or are you just going to sell prints directly? There are a lot of ways you can turn that Flickr gallery into steady income online. Ways that don't even need business cards.
Building a blog and the like as well to further get my name out there, and various other things, of course.
For paintings in progress, check out canvas and paints
"The power of the weirdness compels me."
Cheaaap.. and the quality is outstanding.
http://gotprint.net/g/showStaticPage.do?page=business_cards_pricing.html
Check out a local print shop, and they should be able to set you up. Depending on what you're looking for, and the number of cards you want, the price will vary wildly. At least at my job, you can get 250 basic black text cards with a stock logo for about $30. 500 for about $37.
If you're looking for a more detailed, full color, two sided job, then it's going to be harder to give you a price. For designing and setting up the card, you'd be looking at anywhere between $20-75, depending on the level of complexity, and then for printing you can get 100 cards for about $40. And of course, the more cards you get, the lower per-piece your cost gets.
If you do any design work yourself, you can save a lot on the front end by designing the cards yourself. But check with where you'll be getting them printed for the specs they need. I get a lot of people that design their own cards with a bleed, but only extend the artwork to the crops, while the printing process can shift each individual piece of paper as much as an eighth of an inch, resulting in white strips on the edges of their cards.
The problem is 95% of the printer's cost is in design and the time it takes to get everything set-up and ready to print and then cut out. 10 or 20 cards is only 2-3 pieces of paper, depending on the layout. At that point, running another 10 pages, or even 100 pages isn't a significant cost on our end.
Depends on if it's digital or litho. Litho has a high initial set-up cost with reduced unit costs the larger the run whilst digital has a basically insignificant setup cost but with little or no reduction in unit costs for larger runs. But even digital printers are likely to have a minimum cost before they bother lifting a finger, for the ones we use it's around £30.
With business cards, they don't take up a whole lot of sheet space anyway, so even on an SRA3 digital printer if you're printing one card you're going to get about 16+ cards on a single sheet so if you're paying a minimum cost anyway you might as well run 50 or so sheets and come away with a large stack of business cards.
Places like moo.com are probably digital printers who are batch printing the cards, so they aren't filling an entire sheet with just your card, they'll run a sheet with 16 different customer's cards on it and you end up sharing that minimum cost between those 16 customers.
The only way you'll get that quality at a lower price is if you become a middle man - negotiate a deal with a digital printer for say 50 sheets, full colour both sides for maybe $50 or something and then go out and find 15 other people who want a batch of business cards printed, sell them 50 cards each for $10, fill the run with their cards plus yours, ???, profit.
Under no circumstances go to staples - they are the biggest joke of a print center ever. Completely unknowledgeable, and typically they're more than willing to put people from other departments who have never worked a copier before in there.
I'd say either go online, or find somewhere local, you'll get better price, better quality, less hassle.