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Personal business cards are a great way to extend that first impression you just made to a potential customer or client and basically give them a snapshot of your professional self.
The main purpose of a personal business card is to answer the basic questions of who, what, when and where. In other words, who are you, what do you do, when you're available and where you're they can find you, whether it's online or in the real world.
When creating and printing personal business cards, it's important to know that the cards themselves will ultimately be a reflection of you and your business. Any legitimate business or serious individual would never want to give off the impression that their services or products are cheap or inferior, so why would they do the same when producing materials that will be bearing their name? Make sure to get your business cards printed at a reputable, high quality print shop as opposed to your home printer or even generic copy shops like Kinkos or Staples.
In most cases the cost you'd pay at one of those shops would be much higher and with flimsy paper choices as opposed to an online printer that specializes in commercial printing, or even a local commercial printer near your business.
Personal Business Card Tips
- Look into thicker cardstock, such as 16pt to achieve a substantial look and feel from the increased paper weight
- In some cases adding a shiny and protective UV coating is ideal for an extra gloss and slight water resistance.
- Buy a business card case not only to keep them in good condition, but to also come across more professional in handing them out.
- Make sure to utilize both sides of your business card!
- Use reverse side as a coupon or promotion to drive traffic to your website.
- A professionally designed card and quality printing will go a lot further in impressing prospects than cheaper alternatives.
Cheap Business Cards
Many people opt to use personal business cards strictly for that purpose and do not include any business related contact information. For all intents and purposes here we would like to clarify that cheap business cards are not the same as affordable business cards. 'Cheap business cards' refers to the craftsmanship, paper and ink quality.
Some of those individuals believe that since their cards are not going to be used for 'official business' purposes, that it's ok to use cheap business card paper from your home printer. Although that may seem like a practical idea at first, from various people we've spoken to it actually ends up hurting more than helping.
Utilizing cheap business cards will obviously get your basic information across very quickly, but will that card have a long enough lifespan to make it a few days in a wallet or back pocket? What good would your personal business card been if it didn't serve its ultimate purpose: to relay personal information about yourself. You also never know when that personal connection you made at the last event or volunteer work you did can possibly turn into a business contact or client.
Our best advice would be to land somewhere along the middle of the road. Avoid the cheap business cards and go for an affordable business card from reputable printers on thick cardstock and protective coating such as UV. Printpersonalbusinesscards.com also would advise against the other extreme of highly custom printed business cards if they were to be used only for personal purposes.