It doesn’t come much more inexpensive than free, does it? Do you need business cards but just don’t have the money right now to plunk down on an expensive, formal business card printing? Well, you are in luck. Sit down at your computer and scour the ‘net. There is a whole host of countless ways you can secure a free business card set. It’s all right at your fingertips.
Find a free business card template site. These sites will offer you a way to put together your free business card, without all the hassles you must go through to put in an order with an official online printer to do the printing for you. Now, putting together your own free business card printing at home or in your office can be done only if you have a color printer from which you will produce your free business cards once you have them designed.
Use your imagination. Decide ahead of time what you want on your free business card, what you want it to look like, and more importantly, what image you want it to portray. Bottom line, you don’t want your free business card to look as if it were . . . well, free. You want all your business associates and clients to think you put a lot of your promotional dollars into that all-important calling card, so you need to take special care with the free business card template site you use, and the card stock on which you print your free business card.
Card stock can be all-important. If you hand out your business card to someone, and it starts to bend and crinkle the minute it leaves your hand, you have not chosen well. Nothing says “beginner” and “cheapskate” more than a flimsy business card. This process really isn’t as difficult as it might seem at first, though. Any good office supply store will sell Avery business card paper—or other reputable brand names—and usually they will have your free business card paper in a variety of colors, and even designs. It will be up to you to pick just the right stock, in the right color and/or design, for your professional needs.
Once you have that crucial detail taken care of, it’s time to go onto the actual free business card design. Make sure you know, before you start, where and how you want your name and your company name placed, in which corner you will put the address (unless you place your contact information in the middle with all pertinent details), and if you are going to go with any graphics or maybe your company logo.
Which brings up one more important point. Can the free business card site you chose to do the work for you accommodate graphic uploads from your computer to their site? This is crucial if you plan to use any graphics which they do not already supply to create your free business card. Make sure you are aware of the answer to this question before you start any design work on your free business card. This will save you a lot of future time, effort, and headaches.
Once you have the front of your free business card taken care of to your exact liking, consider what you will do, or won’t do, with the back. Some folks are happy just leaving the back of their free business card completely blank. This is good for a whole host of reasons. You can jot down a message in that area before handing out your free business card. Write down a special offer. A quick few personal words of thanks. Any number of great, personalized, hand-written words would go far in helping your bottom line dollar.
Or if you’d prefer not leaving all that white space, you can also have any number of messages printed on the back of your free business card. What sort of information is good on the back of a small business card? If you have an ongoing, permanent special offer that could be put in that otherwise blank space. Or if your company has a slogan or tagline—that would be perfect for the back of your free business card.
One thing you might want to keep in the back of your mind. When you go with a personal business card and use a printer to complete the work for you—rather than printing the entire run by yourself on your own printer—you may have to agree to have that printer company logo on the back of your free business card. This usually shows up in one of the bottom corners. It isn’t too intrusive but it does tell anyone who sees it that you got your free business card at that particular company and it was, indeed, free. Quite logically, this is how that company can afford to print a free business card, and sets of free business cards, in bulk. If this doesn’t concern you, then by all means visit one of these online print companies to secure your own free business card order. They almost always do good work.
If you would rather forego someone else’s logo for your own, then you will need to utilize a free business card template, any number of which can be found online for the looking. The steps for putting together your free business card print order will be much the same from printer to printer, yet there are sites which give you freeware—software that’s free—for you to design, create, and print your own free business card without paying a penny for any of the design and implementation work. All you are paying for is the paper, the ink, and your own time and your electricity.
Once you have put all that together to create just the right free business card for you, your needs, and your ever-crucial budget, you just may decide you like this . . . and go into it for a living. If word gets out to your friends, family, and business associates that you are creating free business card printings and they look stunning, you are more than likely to have people lining up at your door, asking you to do it for them.
Remember, though, once that happens, the business card printing won’t be free anymore. It will go from free business card printing, to fee-based business card printing . . . just so you can afford to stay in business!