I have been printing business cards for years myself using those Avery inkjet/laserjet business cards with perforated edges. They work well enough for small runs, but I've found recently they are becoming more and more labor intensive to print, and if they skew in the printer at all, I lose an entire sheet of ten. As a result, I only put out a few cads at a con as I don't have that many to make.

I've seen some free business card print services before from Clubflyer, PSPrint, and Vistaprint. They will print up your cards for free in exchange for having their ad on the back. Not a bad deal!

But then I looked at how much does it cost to get business cards printerd without that ad? Perhaps I want to put something of my own on the back? I checked all the online services mentioned above and decided to go with PSPrint for cost and also that when I called their service number, someone actually answered. Customer service means a lot, and for a complete newbie cold call, they had only one chance to impress me with their service and they did. In today's world of customer service, this means a lot. It wasn't a call center, it was a person who worked at that company. Again, more personal.

What you see above is a glossy two sided business card with a blank spot I added to write a name/contact/email/etc. Nothign really exciting, but it's a good small mini flyer.

Cost on sale was just under $20 for 500 cards. I spend that much just in te supplies to make those home printed cards! Color me impressed. Impressed enough that I doubled my order to 1000 and it was still only $22.00. Yes, only a couple of bucks more. That is very very affordable.

So next con, I'll have glossy shiny cards professionally printed. I liked it so much I made up a 4x6 postcard design following  pmoss 's design advice and suggestions. Again, a double sided design, bigger, with some neat features was about $40.

Oh, and the design was fun too. I'm not Australian in the slightest, but I still love that country's scenery and... well, ROOOOOOS!