Making your own cheap postcards is a great way to save money and get your message out.

When I was just getting started as a real estate investor, I made $10 an hour at my day job.  I new I wanted to do mailings to targeted lists like foreclosure leads, bankruptcy filings, probate sales, etc. but it had to be CHEAP because I didn’t have a lot of money to spend.

I found that I could make my own very cheap postcards with the following approach.

 

Steps for Creating Your Own Cheap Postcards

1. On your computer, or by hand if you want a different look, divide an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper into four quadrants.   Create two sheets like this – one will be the front side of the cards, and one will be the back side of the cards.
2. Write your sales copy on each side of the card.  One side will be mostly blank and you will put the mailing address label there.  The other side is where you have the opportunity to put your sales copy.  You can put a black-and-white photo or drawing if you want, but I have found that with limited space, long copy on postcards pulls very well.
3. Make sure you include a call to action and your contact information (phone, fax, website, email, etc.) so people can get in touch with you in the way that is most comfortable for them.
4. Print out and bring your two "sides" of the postcard to a local copy center.  Get the postcards printed on light card stock (tagboard) on a color that is easy to read.  (I like light yellow.  But different colors may pull well with different audiences – for example – lime green is great for teenagers, but adults don’t like to read things printed on this color.)  Make a two-sided copy so you have four "front of the postcard" images on one side of the tagboard, and four "back of the postcard" images on the back.  You should be able to have this printed for about ten cents per sheet.  If you are printing a lot of post cards, find out if you can get a price break if you order a certain quantity (e.g. over 1,000).
5. Have the copy center do two cuts (one vertical, one horizontal) to cut each sheet into four quadrants.  This should be about $1 "per cut" which is just $2 for the whole print run.
6. Now you have cute little postcards that you can stick address labels on and stamps on and they are ready to go.

 

Special Note About Making Your Postcards

These days, you can also have postcards made for you in 4-colors for pretty cheap.  The nice thing about printing your own is:

1. You can do small print runs (you don’t have to order a huge number).
2. You can do them fast (don’t have to wait for print company to make them and ship them to you.
3. You can make them at home, and print them out on your computer with a "mail merge" so you don’t have to use address labels, you can just print right onto the postcard.
4. Sometimes things that look "home made" or "less professional" actually get MORE interest from the people you mail to.  You look like a mom-and-pop business rather than a big corporation sending junk mail.  Consider who your target audience is and whether this approach might be more effective.

 

Postcard Template To Make Your Own Postcards – Cheap – Using Microsoft Word

If you want to use this strategy, the only hard thing about it is setting up the template for Microsoft Word. 

I hope this is helpful!

 

Good luck with making your own cheap postcards!

 

Emily

 

P.S. If you prefer to have your postcards printed, I have had really good luck getting unbelievably cheap 4-color postcards printed here. 

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