Business Card Tips?

[ThePlaidPineconeCo]

Today I'm venturing into the realm of business cards. I'm finally at a point where people are asking for them, especially now that I've started selling handmade items in addition to my usual vintage.

I purchased some great cardstock at Michael's and I have a fresh ink ribbon in my printer. But now I'm just staring at the computer blankly, not sure how to go about designing a business card. Guess I didn't put enough thought into this!

How did the rest of you format your cards? What info did you include? Obviously business name, owner name, URL and a little logo (mine will surely be a beagle of some sort), but did anyone include their phone number or anything else?

[Former_Member]

Photos!

[Former_Member]

Hi Jaime,
Not sure about homemade business cards but I would recommend returning the blanks and just ordering some http://www.vistaprint.com. They have a million templates, fonts and designs to chose from and their prices are extremely cheap. Also, they have amazing customer service and you can ever do a chat with one of their reps for help.
Hope this helps!
Good luck ; )

[Former_Member]

Hi, I made some amazing cards at moo.com
I got them with one of five different high quality images of paintings on the back by me, full size. Then on front, it says 'Art & Jewelry by Tarren' and has a small bulleted list: Moonstone, sterling silver, sea glass, feather globes, commissioned art, original paintings and has lik 5 images (tiny thumbnails) of a close up of my jewelry. It turned out amazing and I have recieved a million compliments. I am almost totally out of cards now too and I had 100!

[hautecards]

Ok, without talking about design.. where because of my trade I would recommend to get a professional design it for you..

Your best bet is to prioritize what would be the best way for your customer to contact you and find your products. What to add is to your discretion, depending on.. if you want to give your phone number to everybody you meet, even at craft shows.. or if instead you prefer to have everything documented then , email is the best way.

I always recommend to my customers to include pictures of their products, specially if they have a handmade uniqueness to them... this is makes it easy to remember for the customer that picks up your cards, where, when did they see you and what your were selling.. it should be memorable, that way it doesnt get thrown away.

In your case, you have vintage products, it wouldnt be a bad idea to see a sample of the things you have collected or sold in your store, so people have an idea of your taste. In this case, a double sided card with help tons!! because your info would be on what side and the pictures on the other...

Im sure lots of people here, will start to recommend the best place to have them printed at, instead of home-made: Vistaprint, Overnight prints, Moo, etc. but regardless of where you print them, the most important part to actually get value out of them is to have them represent you store clearly and effectively, when even if the customer misplaces the card (it happens very often)... they are able to remember your store name and your product: "I can't find the card anywhere but I remember this cute beagle in it and used the name HoundDogs.." that's enough to find you on Etsy :)

[Former_Member]

We have two sets of business cards (over zealous, perhaps)

First set: (vistaprint.com) - business name, email, websites

Second set: (moo.com) **amazing** - front of the card has pictures of some of our items (one picture per card). back - business name, my name, my personal phone number, email, websites.

We use the first set of cards when we ship our items. Second set is real world networking with dealers, sellers, & others in our industry.

Vistaprint is inexpensive - If I remember correctly...500 business cards for $20.

[Former_Member]

I second the Vistaprint.com they do an amazing job and you get like 250 cards for $10. Plus you get to pick which design you want and picture or logo. I love them.

[ThePlaidPineconeCo]

Wow, thank you all so much for your advice! Those websites are awesome, and I even saw some card templates on Vista that have a beagle silhouette on top. This has been VERY informative!

[Former_Member]

The cards I made are from an old deck of playing cars with a sticker that has my name, urls, and email. They cost me little to nothing since I typed them all up on an old typewriter (ouch...my fingers!) Anyway I think the cards should show a side of you and what your company represents.
Vistaprint is an amazing company and remember dont make the card to "busy" have fun and best of luck!

[ThePlaidPineconeCo]

May I ask if any of you have created an email specifically for your business to put on the cards? My email address is my full name @ gmail.com. For business cards, should I register HoundDogVintage@gmail.com or something to make it simpler for the customer?

[ThePlaidPineconeCo]

Thanks, David. I love the playing card idea. I found some cardstock that is plain on one side and has a cool design on the back, and I think it fits my shop's rustic aesthetic wonderfully. It'll cost me $3 to make about 100 cards with them. But now I'm second-guessing if I should just order from a company for a few dollars more. Hmm.

It may sound crazy but my shop, and most things I do in life, are dedicated to my beagle who passed away last year. Whenever I make a business decision I ask myself if Parker (my beagle) would have approved (she was very opinionated). Parker would definitely approve of me making my own cards (she was scrappy) especially since I took a lot of graphic design classes in college. But I can't argue with the price and quality of these sites I've looked at - Vista and Moo. A lot to think about...

[JeannieGrayKnits]

I use vistaprints.com. They may not be the best quality, but they are cheap & have hundreds of designs to choose from. They also have constant sales & offer discounts. Nine times out of ten, I'm able to get my order for free, I just pay shipping.

[Former_Member]

David your cards soud RAD!

[Former_Member]

If you have all the materials and graphic design experience, you might as well make them yourself! Mine have my shop name/logo (similar to my little icon there) on the front, and my name, title, email, and URL on the back. IMO, adding blog, twitter, FB was going to be too crowded. This way, you're giving the receiver the most important info at once. They should be able to reach your through social media from your shop or website if they'd like to from there.

[ThePlaidPineconeCo]

Cassandra, do you use your personal email or do you have an email address specifically for your shop?

[MelvinAvenue]

I love Vistaprint.com as well. I have used them many times in the past. It is very easy to use one of the many templates for to create your own. They are also very inexpensive.

[FrancescaDeCaire]

"The cards I made are from an old deck of playing cars with a sticker that has my name, urls, and email. They cost me little to nothing since I typed them all up on an old typewriter (ouch...my fingers!) Anyway I think the cards should show a side of you and what your company represents.
Vistaprint is an amazing company and remember dont make the card to "busy" have fun and best of luck!"

I like that!

[Former_Member]

I vote for making them yourself, especially if you've got a graphic design background. The reason I say that is because I've seen a lot of Vistaprint business cards and believe it or not, I've seen different sellers using the same card design. Not cool and certainly not very unique. You don't want to be confused with another seller.

[Former_Member]

I personally think that if you're going to get an email address for your company, make it something@yourcompanyname.com or .co.uk or com.au or wherever you are. You can get the domain from 123-reg.com and then set up just email for the domain for about 99p per month. You'll get a .com

[Former_Member]

(OK, sorry! Overzealous keyboard mashing sent the message too early!!)

you'll get a .com domain for £9.99 per year, or a .co.uk for about £3 a year (and you can get .biz, and then just set up the email which means that you already have the domain name you want should your company burst into mad success!

Give me a shout if you need any help btw, I'm a web and graphic designer, so I can point you in the right direction for any web set up stuff : )

Ooooh, and moo have just brought out luxe cards which look AMEZZIN. Just sayin'...

Good luck with the cards : )

[Former_Member]

I agree that vistaprint is really convenient and affordable. You will get about a thousand new offers a week from them, but I've been happy with everything.

I found out about before I even joined Etsy, so maybe I would have gone with an Etsy seller instead. I chose one of their designs, even, and I'm pretty happy with it. I've gotten compliments on on it, in fact. But you may want to consider something original, as EmsGems suggested (although I think for a lot of us, we are just trying to get started, and I've found that it's really helped to have the cards rather than not, even if I there is a chance that I will be less unique).

I would definitely create a separate business email. I found that getting one that matched my business name was tricky, so the post above seems a good idea.

I have not included my phone number.

[Former_Member]

ooooh ooooh also, one idea that my designer friend had for me was to get the cardstock (like you already have) and buy a stamp with all your details on, something liiiiike http://www.underconsideration.com/fpo/project_images/sassen_design_01.jpg which I think looks awesome as each one would be sliiiightly different. (I never did it in the end, I designed mine and got them printed on 400gsm matt laminate om nom nom)

[craftyearth]

I started out with some free, generic business cards from Vistaprint. They are good quality and inexpensive as far as professional business cards go. But as others have said, there are only so many designs to choose from, so your cards are not unique.

I ordered cards from MOO last. They are phenomenal. They are more expensive, but one side of the card has photos of my work (you can mix multiple designs in one package) and the other has my info (Business name, etsy website, facebook page, etc).

Once my Etsy shop got going, I did create my own email for it (craftyearth@hotmail.com). I think I did this before I ordered business cards so I wouldn't have to change it later (until I have a trillion sales and my own domain name...okay, back to reality) I don't think I created any business cards with my personal email.

[redmorningstudios]

I originally planned on making my own, too, but found out it was cheaper to order them online than to actually buy the cardstock! I actually ended up using Staples.com for mine, as they were running a promotion that made it cheaper than vistaprint at the time.

If you're set on making them at home, however, perhaps make a mock design on vistaprint or moo to see their template ideas. Then you could replicate it on your own, if you choose not to buy from them. It might help get the creativity juices flowing.

[Former_Member]

Hmm, now I'm getting a little nervous. Maybe my cards are too generic. What do people think of changing logo, cards, etc. after the point where people might be getting used to your look?