Postcards!

[Bruiser]

Hi, I'm very new to photography, I actually only got a camera in the Christmas sales 3 months back.

I have been getting some good responses and was think of trying to do a project and earn a few pennies.

Right then, for the background, I am a printer by trade. I work currently for one of NZ's biggest print organisations. We do everything from magazines, books, posters down to business cards for enormous world wide organisation and I have been working in the trade for about 20 years, so I am quite knowledgeable on that side...

Now my plan was to initially print up 4 or so different cards of a run of about 500, any less basically is just uneconomical for cost, any more is a pain getting rid off...

Next step was to try selling them to tourist shops and recoup the rewards. Part 2 of the plan is, now I have some hard copies, try market and sell customised ones to coffee shops, pubs etc. Basically, I photograph the premises, they pay for the cards with a mark up and do what they like with them. Sell them, give away with a coffee, who cares!

The end plan was to create a calendar with the revenue, but then I realised a calendar obviously has a shelf life, so just create a cheap tourist book and sell through tourist shops again.

Any comments or suggestion appreciated. Anything I am overlooking?

[DeeGee]

Re: Postcards!

Scope out the market before committing to printing and spending money. Take samples of photos that you consider turning into cards. Go into the shops, café's, markets etc... see if they are willing and interested and what they consider the right price to be. If they are giving something away with a coffee, they might want to pay less per card that its worth printing for.

Consider double sided printing, if some of the companies are going to give the cards away, they might want their information and contact details on.

Consider larger prints, that will go onto the wall of café's and restaurants and if all else fails don't forget hotels and guest houses. They might fancy their lounge been decorated with a large print and offering cards of same said print as a memento...

I'm sure others will come along with some advice.

Hope it works for you.

[coldclimber]

Re: Postcards!

just to jump onto this topic does any one know where the best place is to get cards created/developed been scouting the net but its a mess out there could do with someone that has already created some to provide pointers

[Bruiser]

Re: Postcards!

Ok, I got some stuff printed free as a test run, because I'm a printer. But the material isn't ideal, so haven't tried selling any.

Your best bet to get them printed is to get several printed up together, so you would have 8 A5 types printed up on a SRA2 (oversized A2 sheet, 4 times larger than an A4) sheet with a minimum run of 100. But the price gets cheaper the more you have as the cost is in the set up. So 250 would be maybe 30% more than 100.

If you know someone who works in design, they should be able to sort the artwork and layout for you, otherwise, any printing firm could do it for you. Try calling in local printing companies around your area, they're normally more than happy to send you in the right direction if they don't deal in that area. The firm on the web doing cheap deals normally have set quantities, stocks etc and take maybe a month or so. The reason behind that is, they wait for several clients to come in and print the jobs up on the same sheets before cutting and sending your ones. It is just economical for them and keeps the price down.

[David Morison]

Re: Postcards!

I have designed some postcards for our village church to sell and they sell quite slowly. However they are a nice momento for visitors to our lovely old church and are much appreciated. Financially they don't bring in a lot of money as they cost 28p each (for a run of 100) to print and sell for 50p each.

David