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What are the Best Deals and Places to Get Business Cards?

For newbies or crafting veterans, one of the most important pieces to help promote your work is a business card for your shop. How many times have you received a compliment on your work when out and about, and how many times have you been able to hand that person a card with your business name and website? At craft fairs, I always have a stack right in front as well as adding several cards with each purchase. I find that when I get home, my items have a lot more views and several people have added me to their blogs. Business cards are also important when sending out packages to your buyers. This is a must to help develop your repeat customer base. They're also essential if you ever want to place your items in stores or sell wholesale. (You'll look a whole lot more professional with a business card than scribbling your name and number on a stickie note.) Finally, your cards can be flexible to your needs. Punch a hole in a one-sided card, add a price to the back and tie it to your item with some embroidery thread or a clothes pin, and it's an instant price tag as well as promotion.

But business cards do not have to be expensive. You can start out making them by hand. I've seen nice ones that used stamps, cardboard, circle cut outs, or a color printer from home. You can also make smaller amounts by creating a 200-300 dpi file that's 4 by 6 inches and taking it down to your local photo print booth (or there's many places online as well). I use the nearest Fred Meyer grocery store and they're only 19 cents each. You can fit 4 business cards on each "photo," then just cut them down the middle. The size is a 1/2 inch more narrow than traditional business cards, but sometimes that just helps them stand out more.

Once you're ready to place your order for business cards (perhaps after you've sold a couple of items, or done at least one craft fair), there's several places online where you can get 250 cards or so for between 10 and 20 dollars.

Vistaprint
One place for "free" business cards is www.vistaprint.com (see link at right). They currently have 42 free full-color designs to choose from (though it seems everyone always picks the mod looking green and pink star). I don't think it's worth it to upgrade to their "premium" versions for $9.99, since the free ones look just as nice.

They do charge $9.25 for shipping, and on the back of the card they put a small tag line about their web site, which you can delete for $3.99. Even with the nine bucks for shipping, that's still cheaper than other online stores and printing companies, which tend to charge $20-$30 for between 250 and 500 cards. They're also pretty easy. For $9.99 more, you can get 500 total. One nice trick is that they have several additional "free" items besides the business cards, such as rubber stamps and sticky notes. If you order other "free" items at the same time, the combined shipping is less than if you ordered them separately.

123print
123print is the best and cheapest I've found for small orders. For 100 business cards, it's $3.95 plus $4.50 for 7-14 days shipping. The standard cost includes a blank back side and 10 point paper. For 200 cards, it's $7.85 plus the same $4.50 shipping. They have hundreds of design examples, and a lot of them are very nice. Plus you can download your own design, and they are very customizable with different fonts and you can move the text around. These first three options: Vistaprint, 123print, and moo are also all pretty easy.

Moo
Another super-fun card that I just discovered is a London-based company called moo. Using your photos in flickr (or several other photo web sites such as Bebo and Habbo), you get 100 mini photo cards, and can personalize them with up to six lines of text with your name, web site, etc. Besides being adorably cute and easy to make, you can also have a different photo on each card. The 100 pack is $19.99 plus $4.98 shipping. Go to www.moo.com/flickr/ and click on the orange button that says "make 100 cards." There's even an etsy seller (splatgirl) who has a lovely tutorial on how to make a moo-pocket to carry your cards, as well as selling the pockets in her shop. And another etsy seller, Josie Soho, has cute moo card tins for just two bucks.

Overnight Prints
Overnightprints.com is more expensive, but higher quality. They're thicker, nicer paper, and you can round the edges for an additional $2. It's about $20 for 100 cards including 4-7 day business shipping. It goes up to $35-$40 for 250. They are also not as easy as the three options above, but completely customizable. A nice choice if you want to spend a little more money and time.

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