print business cards, turning out to be a good earner

[litifeta]

I joined http://www.printbusinesscards.com/Community.php?do=JoiningArtistsCommunity&src=litifeta a while ago. My images sat there for ages without a sale. Now I am getting regular sales.

Because the template is so small, you can cut bits and pieces out of your poorest photos and still have something big enough for a business card.

They pay you $5 each sale, and the payment is to PayPal and is immediate.

Check them out.

[leaf]

what does regular sales mean?

How many sales from how many images?

thx for the tip

[litifeta]

At least one a week from about 80 online I think.

Remember these are tiny images. Tiny tiny compared to what we do elsewhere. No reviewers to deal with, and they pay you $5 straight into PayPal straight away.

[litifeta]

Tim informed me some of you had joined.

Good little thing for those pics you cannot sell

http://www.printbusinesscards.com/Community.php?do=JoiningArtistsCommunity&src=litifeta

[dbvisualarts]

hello! another printbusinesscards.com contributor here. 

i have been with printbusinesscards.com a little over a year i believe.  i have over 400 cards on line.  http://www.printbusinesscards.com/ordering/Denise-Beverly-Business-Cards.php  if you want to check them out. that is not a referral link, litifeta deserves that but you can see what i have done.    you can see i am not very fancy with my cards.  simple designs, portions of some of my microstock work, ( i am now exclusive with dreamstime but haven't updated my profile yet), backgrounds, logos etc.  and i am not even doing this full time, so you can build your portfolio rather quickly.  there are photographers, illustrators, painters, vector artists you name it, they are there.


not only have i had good sales there, i have gotten at least 3 custom freelance orders which gave me the experience i needed to approach possible clients in my home town.  i have done custom work ranging from a local candle store, to a cruise line in California (through a greeting card site) - all due to my experience doing custom work on PBC (printbusinesscards).  i have now launched out and have an exclusive arrangement with a local store for greeting cards and artwork and it all started with one little custom order on PBC.

the cards themselves are very easy to create, a little adjustment at first converting to CMYK and saving them a certain way, but it is simple to learn and there are people willing to help.  the set up for adding text to your blank is excellent, there are multiple variations and you can play around until you get one that suits your card.  then you can get an instant preview so that if you have need of adjusting your blank at all, delete, adjust,,upload again all in less than 5 minutes.  you title, categorize and keyword through a description much like we do in microstock and  that begins your journey as a designer of business cards.

i do have to say this as well.  i am on a first name basis with all of the admins. i can call and talk to Gayle in the office, and have on several occasions.  i find they are easy to get to know and personable, you feel like you are part of a team that wants to work together.  i thoroughly enjoy being part of it.  i think the cards are actually fun to make, they are excellent quality and  the images that you can glean from your microstock work are so numerous, the issues of noise, OOF, bad composition etc are really not an issue there.  not to say the images can be bad quality, because they aren't at all.  it is just that the venue of business cards affords you a little more leeway and versatility than microstock might.  if an image is wrong for the card or text cannot be seen, they will let you know, but that is a very, very rare occurrence, in my experience with them.

last months sales of 8 cards along with a extra use of one image netted me 60.00 which would have been 240 downloads when i was with shutterstock...think about it!  those 5.00 payments per card can really add up.  also they give you the option of linking to your stock agency if the image you used on the card is available for instance on  SS or IS.  if someone wants to match their business card to other advertising they can get the image and license it through your stock agencies.  the only caveat there being if it is an exclusive image somewhere that would limit you doing so. 

there are all levels of sales there, in that some sell less and some sell a great deal more.  i am somewhere in the middle i believe.  sales have been growing as the site gets more exposure and they are working all the time on ways to promote and get the word out.  they have a blog called the art of business cards   http://theartofbusinesscards.blogspot.com/   they introduce the new artists and tell some of the news of the site.

if there is anything else you need to know feel free to ask me, as you can tell i am pretty sold on them.

[litifeta]

yes those $5 sales are adding up.

[vphoto]

yes those $5 sales are adding up.

It is quite believable, but when I click on DT or SS icons below your post they lead to nowhere.

[kgtoh]

Litifeta,

Sounds interesting. I've signed up under you.
About our previous "intercourse", sorry if i offended you. Just some good natured ribbing, honestly.  I figured if you had no objections to rjmiz calling you a prostitute, you'd be a good sport about me making fun of your math skills.

Peace?

PS. Your math does suck, seriously. If you want, I can PM you a detailed explanation of how your analysis if flawed.

[Kngkyle]

It wasn't mentioned here, and it is a bit important. They require you to upload at least 25 designs to begin with. 

[dbvisualarts]

yes that is right, i let that slip my mind. but it really does not take any time to do that.  they go very quickly

[stokfoto]

it sounds good and could a be an alternative way to make money out of our images but one thing makes me wonder: how they tackle with dishonest use  I mean since the required image size not that high res what  could stop  image thieves  to grab some shots on the net and sell it with them  as if they owned the image?   

anyway thank you for the heads up I will have another  look  at the site and if I decide to join I'll make sure using your ref link.

[Bateleur]

Thanks for posting this opportunity ... but 5 bucks a pop doesn't sound like an awful lot for the amount of work that appears to be involved.

They don't just take your image. It looks like you have to lay out the card yourself, doing all the graphics. They just add the text in the appropriate place.

[Dreamframer]

That sounds interesting. I made business cards for one local printing company before. It's pretty simple, and very creative I just made an account and I'll give it a try

[epantha]

Thanks for posting this opportunity ... but 5 bucks a pop doesn't sound like an awful lot for the amount of work that appears to be involved.

Maybe the idea is to sell each design multiple times? Then it would be worth the effort?
I did this type of work for years for freelance income (wasn't much) but with only one or two colors. It really is pretty simple work. May give it a try myself.

[dbvisualarts]

it sounds good and could a be an alternative way to make money out of our images but one thing makes me wonder: how they tackle with dishonest use  I mean since the required image size not that high res what  could stop  image thieves  to grab some shots on the net and sell it with them  as if they owned the image?   

anyway thank you for the heads up I will have another  look  at the site and if I decide to join I'll make sure using your ref link.

the images are watermarked as well as the fact that the sample text shows up on any image you try to save... i have tested it, believe me.  the word proof shows up diagonally across the card about a dozen times i don't think it would be worth anyones time or effort to take that actual image

[dbvisualarts]

Thanks for posting this opportunity ... but 5 bucks a pop doesn't sound like an awful lot for the amount of work that appears to be involved.

They don't just take your image. It looks like you have to lay out the card yourself, doing all the graphics. They just add the text in the appropriate place.

there just isn't that much work involved to be honest.  most images come from other projects and new ones are not that involved or complicated.  the layout of the text is all ready done you just pick the one you want to use.    one can be finished in under 15 minutes from scratch to completed , uploaded ready for review.  and that is for a complete newby.  experienced artists, graphics people with images to work from could do these in less than 5 minutes easy.  also like microstock it can sell multiple times.

[Bateleur]

Thanks for posting this opportunity ... but 5 bucks a pop doesn't sound like an

there just isn't that much work involved to be honest.  most images come from other projects and new ones are not that involved or complicated.  the layout of the text is all ready done you just pick the one you want to use.    one can be finished in under 15 minutes from scratch to completed , uploaded ready for review.  and that is for a complete newby.  experienced artists, graphics people with images to work from could do these in less than 5 minutes easy.  also like microstock it can sell multiple times.

That's encouraging. Thanks.

[Karimala]

The only problem I'm having is converting from RGB to CMYK.  Never done that before, and most of my images are turning out terrible.  Other than that, the process is relatively painless.

Anyone have any tips on how to convert?

[dbvisualarts]

i use cs2 and do the following
create in rgb
go to mode convert to cmyk
save as a tiff as a copy - do not have anything else checked there
next is the most important save with  LZW - interleaved and macintosh no matter what computer you use click macintosh
save  then upload. 

sometimes the color looks a tad off especially greens and some blues.  don't worry about that because brian will do some adjustments behind the scenes to convert things back to the rgb (that is the simple explanation)    the cards are printed in cmyk and the colors are not off when they are printed.   as he has explained to me several times, everyone has different monitor settings anyway and things are not going to look the same for everyone.  but i have relaxed about the color shifts i a big way.  my own cards were in blues and came out great.

also there are settings on your monitor that will allow you to see it in working cmyk ( i am not very technical on this someone else may be able to fill in better)  it is sometimes due to the fact that our monitors see in rgb not cmyk... also do not preview in windows image viewer that will really be off - that was what i was doing and having panic attacks about it.

[Dreamframer]

Oh, I converted to CMYK, and corrected colors after it. Do you think they will refuse my cards?

[dbvisualarts]

i don't think they will reject it but it would not hurt to leave a note in the forum and ask brian to tell you what to do for certain.  he has always advised us to convert to cmyk then save and upload not to worry about the color adjustments once it is in cmyk.   i had asked about creating it in cmyk to start with but he advised against it due to the adjustments he makes.  he is the color / tech guru so i leave it to him , so far it has all worked out.

if anything at all a slight greying of the tones may happen but i don't worry about it anymore, all of my custom clients have been very happy with the colors, and i am quite picky about color as well

[Dreamframer]

Thank you dbvisualarts

[Karimala]

Thanks Denise!    Appreciate the help.  I was freaking out about how gray all of my blues and purples were looking.

[dbvisualarts]

you are welcome.  i am not trying to take over , i just like to help if i can.  i hope that  litifeta will get lots of referrals for his effort in starting this thread. we are always looking for new faces and ideas on PBC.  so try it out, look at the earlier post to get his referral link.

[Magnum]

Sounds interesting...

Maybe a stupid question:)  Is this Rf cards?  Can u sell them multiple times?