Get Personal With Custom Greeting Cards

There is nothing quite as personal as receiving custom greeting cards as opposed to the very popular e-card. Although the e-card is easy and a fast way to distribute a greeting, the personal touch of a handmade greeting card just make you feel that more important when you get one.

You may actually make greeting cards yourself for friends and loved ones, I just finished making my engagement invitations with my beautiful bride-to-be, Lauren. We have had so many great comments on how beautiful our invitations and are really glad now that we didn't go down the e-card path or just buy generic off the shelf invitations.

I did get some tips from subscribers to Greeting Card Profits, so thanks for that if you happen to be one. We went to a local craft supply shop and pick out the stock and materials we needed and went from there. We went home and eagerly started making up samples and I got to work in photo shop and I started setting up templates and looking though my collection of fonts.

Anyway the main reason for this post was to tell you about a really cool online photo editing service you can use to do just about everything you would need to do as far as edit and add special effects to images and photos you want to use in your greeting card making.

Its called Photoworks.com and you can even create your own custom greeting cards online. Its a better solution if you don't want to spend big dollars on photo editing software like photo shop. Its definitely worth a look.

The site was formerly known as Seattle Film Works, PhotoWorks has a 30-year national heritage of helping photographers share and preserve their memories with innovative and inspiring products and services.

So if you want to get your hands on this powerful set of photo editing tools that enables you to edit, share, and print photos in any Internet browser(IE, Firefox, Safari, Mozilla, etc.) and with any computer platform (PC, Mac, Linux), then I suggest you can go check out how to make your custom greeting cards using this service. You can register for free and they give you 25 free prints when you sign-up. Nice of them.

If you want to check out some of the newer articles and additions to my greeting card website and a photo of my handy work at making an invitation here at my site: www.greetingcardprofits.com :)

Till next time

I couldn't upload the photo here must be a slow connection at the moment.

Internet Greeting Cards - Free Website

Oh well I really thought I had an original business idea for Internet greeting cards but then I found this really cool site thats free to join and you can send electronic greeting cards and scrapbooks as well.

You can add photos, audio and video elements and simply send them to your friends or loved ones. Its easy to use and I thought it was a bit of fun. The idea is great and it backs up what I was saying in my last post.

Smilebox is the service than lets you do this really cool stuff. You can create a new category called "creative messaging," which draws from related categories including photo services, scrapbooking and electronic greetings.

This is a new medium for communication unparalleled in its ability to convey mood, thought and emotion. You can check it out for yourself here

Well as far as Internet greeting cards go this is a site that has hit the mark. Try it out and let me know what you think.

Till next time.

Dave

Internet Greeting Cards

I have just been searching around looking for some greeting card business ideas and then it hit me... Internet greeting cards. Well I got the idea while doing my regular search of YouTube.

I found this video below that just started my business juices flowing. The video isn't the greatest quality but the concept is fantastic. Just add a bit of your own creative flair and you could produce something fantastic. Check it first.



Can you see the potential here? With video podcasts becoming so big now you can create video greeting cards containing photos, audio, your own graphic designs and combine it all together on your PC using a basic video editing package, I use iMove on my macbook very cool and you can create everything on a mac even a podcast.

Anyway I ramble on... but you get the idea how personal would it be to create a video greeting card like this and send it to a loved one or create a whole range of them and build a website that sells them. This is a great business idea.

Hey I don't for a moment think the real printed greeting card will ever be replaced even in this ever evolving informaton age, there is just something that much more personal about a real card.

Anyway just wanted to share that with you because I really feel Internet greeting cards have a place and the video format could be the online version that takes off.

Please I would love to get your comments on this.

Till next time.

Making Greeting Cards Video Tip

Embossing Greeting Cards

Thought I would share this great little video by Flora Tan. Flora takes use through the process of dry embossing an oriental greeting card. Great work Flora.



If you want to see more of Flora's work you can visit her website at here.

For Card Designers Who Want To Sell Their Greeting Cards

If you have the bug for making greeting cards have you ever thought about selling your works of art? Flora is a talented card maker who has turned her passion and hobby into a business. Imagine being able to do what you love for a living. Well you can if you really want to.

Here is a tip to help you get started...

Start Up Costs

Determining what financial investment you can afford to pay in order to start a new business is usually the most stressful part of the business. But once you know exactly how much money you need for the business and how much money you can afford, you can get started with the business plan.

Remember you can just start out on a part-time basis if you like until you find your feet and your greeting card market.

Analyzing your start-up costs and expenses is simply listing all of the expenses you will have in starting the business in the first month and even the first three month. Not only does it include the cost of the location, but the cost of advertising, utilities, insurance, and inventory.

If you want more information about selling your cards you can visit my website if you like at: www.greetingcardprofits.com

Anyway that's all for today I hope you found this useful. I would love to get your comments and feedback too.

Talk soon

David

It's so important to identify your market

Thanks to all who have been to my website and left me feedback - fantastic. I am really glad to hear so many of you are enjoying my book - keep the feedback coming. :)

I have had a few emails from my subscribers who are still struggling to find there greeting card market to sell too. Well get ready because I have a fantastic tool that will help you do just that and it will blow your mind.

Here it is : http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

You simply type in the search terms you think your target market would be searching for and you get a total list of related terms as well and this site tells you how many times a day someone searches on those terms.

So the higher the number the more popular the term is. Don't be too quick to discount the lower numbers you could fin yourself a real targetable niche to sell your greeting cards to.

If you haven't checked out my new site you can go here www.greetingcardprofits.com I would love to get your feedback.

Talk again soon.

David

Greeting Card Profits Website Update!

If you have visited my website before at www.GreetingCardProfits.com you will now notice a big change in it. I have totally rebuilt the site and will continue to improve its content over time.

I would really love to hear your comments on the site and any suggestions are welcome.

Talk soon.

David

I Just made an invite

Hi all its been a while I know but when you get engaged it's a big deal so I have been off in lalla land. I wanted to sheare with you all my engagement invitation making skills or lack there of ... I have to get a lot of the credit to my beautiful bride to be Lauren.

Here's a picture of me and Lauren and my card making efforts.



Anyway that's all for now but keep any eye out because I have some really great tips and ideas for you coming very soon to this blog. It will blow your mind it's that cool.

Till then

David

What greeting cards to start selling for a begginer

Ok I would recommend you focus on finding an obsessive hungry market that has money to spend. Let me give you an example of this…

Let’s say we are going to look at the Golfing market as an example. Golfers are insane about Golf, they will buy just about anything related to Golf. But here is what you need to think about when looking for a market that wants the cards you are going to design… who is going to be the person that buys your cards focused on Golf and who are they buying them for.

If you have a friend or family member who is a mad Golfer and their birthday is coming up and you walk into your local card shop to buy a birthday card for this person, what type of card do you look for? A card with cute animals and pets on it? NO he doesn’t like pets. Maybe a general humorous card? What about a card that is aimed at Golfers? What if there was a series of cards that catered for Golfers would you maybe get this person one of those cards for his birthday?

Of course you would, it’s easy and you know their going to get a kick out of it and the fact you got a card about Golf shows you made an effort. Do you see where I am going here?

With greeting cards usually the people who buy the cards are not the people who you have aimed the cards at?

There are millions of Golfers out there and they all have family and friend who may not even like golf themselves but when it comes to buying this friend or family member of theirs a greeting card, what type of card do you think they will usually buy? A Golf related card of course.

So to answer your question…

I would do some research and look for a market niche that doesn’t have any cards that are specifically deigned for it and go down that path.

I would start promoting your cards using a website first as it is the cheapest and quickest way to test and get your business up and running.

Now here is a big tip for you and don’t take this lightly…

If you are not sure about how to design your cards for example say you want to do illustrations or cartoon type cards but you can’t draw well don’t worry because I am going to give you the location of a website where you can go and have someone do it for you.

This site works a little like Ebay but instead of you listing your products to sell, you list your job request and members of the site, who are service providers, bid on your job to design your cards. You can get top quality work for very little cost and you own all copyright and ownership of the card designs because you stipulate this in your listing and to top it off the website provides you with agreements that you can use and have the provider sign that gives you ownership/copyright of the designs and cards.

When you get your series of cards designed they will supply you with the original art work ready for printing. You would stipulate this in your listing.

Now simply go to a printer and get them printed. I would get some samples printed up and give them to shops on consignment to sell and also start selling them in packs online.

The website is called Elance - http://www.elance.com

How cool is that. This is one of my secret underground tips here that I will be including in my comprehensive course I am working on at the moment that shows you exactly how to build and market a successful online business.

How this advice is of some help.

Good luck and keep in touch.

Warmly

David W. Allen

www.GreetingCardProfits.com
Discover how to sell your greeting cards from home!