Free Toolsday for April 15th
Happy tax day! Here’s a great free tool to save yourself some green. Honestly, I’m not sure why it’s taken me SO long to tell you about this tool. Anyone who’s ever had to hire a graphic designer for a really simple postcard or business card knows how frustrating it can be to put so much back & forth into a project that takes the designer 10 minutes to flesh out. Not to mention how much money it costs. This is why PsPrint launched the fabulous Design It! tool last year.
Design It! uses state of the art online graphic technologies that allow you to design a business card or postcard in mere minutes. It’s super easy to do the design work and ordering online. With the tool you can either upload your own background or photograph or pick from hundreds of stock designs that PsPrint’s internal graphic design team have developed since the launch of this tool.
You may be weary to use it since it it’s provided by a printing company, but there’s no obligation to buy. At no time do you put in your name or email address or anything unless you decide to order. So you don’t have to worry about receiving junk mail or anything after just giving it a try.
All text boxes are very intuitive to use when adding your custom text, and you can change fonts, colors, and customize the photos or logos you use on the cards. When designing postcards you can even add your own indicia to mail the cards professionally. At last count there are over 300 different templates for the business cards and over 150 templates for the postcards. PsPrint even has an open invitation to users to submit their feedback about what templates they’d like to see and what would improve the system.
Give it a try today. You have nothing to lose!
Read MoreFeedBurner FAIL
Something wonky happened a few days ago and I didn’t notice… sorry feed readers!
Here’s the posts you may have missed…
- Effective Email Case Study – TubeMogul
- Link Glossary – Alt Text
- Comfortable Branding by Name (Video)
- Hard Sell Tactics DON’T WORK
- Developing Professional Business Cards with Sharp Company Logos
- Link Glossary – Backlinks
- Cribbed Content for April 11th
- Twittermethis v. Twattermethat (Podcast)
Where Online Meets Offline
I should talk about this topic more, but online is just SO fascinating and I’ve been immersed in off line for the last 4 years so it’s routine to me. Since we discontinued our old poorly performing affiliate program at the beginning of February, I’ve been focused on growing our new Reseller Program and much more improved Affiliate Program. We decided, as I’m sure we’re legally bound, to pay out all pending commissions, regardless of whether or not they met our minimum threshold. This meant 400+ checks being processed by accounting, then printed, then signed, then put into envelopes, then posted, then actually put into the mail. This took about a month to get through the internal systems and the checks were sent out a couple weeks ago.
Since many of our affiliates in the old program had long abandoned the program, a lot of checks are coming back unable to be delivered. I’ve been contacting people and resending the checks as I get new addresses, and with every check I’m re-sending I’ve been throwing in one of my business cards. I realize today that this is the epitome of online marketing (affiliate payments) meets off line marketing (business cards).
It just goes to show that you can’t keep exclusively to one medium or another. There’s such a vast audience out there for your product or service – and they’re not all going to be able to be found in one place. It’s important – maybe now more than ever – to integrate your direct mail marketing with landing page testing. Put your produced commercials for television onto the web and get a piece of the viral marketing cookie. Remember the old adage “don’t put all your eggs in once basket” and don’t put all your money into PPC or direct mailing.
Diversify your marketing efforts and remember that just because you’re an internet geek, not all your customers are.
Read MoreQuote of the Day
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
-Plato
Affiliate Summit West 2008 kicks off today (officially!). Stopping in around 2 to set up our booth and then heading over to the Meet Market with plenty of spiffy die-cut business cards in hand! Too bad they all have my former title on them :p
Read MoreAffiliate Summit Won’t Come to You
Vegas… again. For faithful readers you’ll know that after having not been to Sin City since I was six, I’ve been twice since August. And I’m going yet again at the end of February for Affiliate Summit West 08. It should be sweet; AS East 07 in Miami was my first trade show attendance and it was a special and magical time. And since the show is directly involved with what I do on a daily basis, it’s like going to a crash course on my job.
Luckily for anyone who saw footage of the Monte Carlo on fire today, it’s being held at the Rio All Suites Hotel & Casino. Home of Penn & Teller, an excellent show if you’re looking to mix business with pleasure. I saw them in August and it was top entertainment for not bad of a price.
This year Affiliate Classroom LIVE is putting on an all day training session on affiliate manager training. And it’s FREE (well, aside from that $97 reservation fee to make sure you come). It’s 8:00 am to 6:00 pm so that much won’t be fun, especially since my husband will be joining me for part of this trip so he’ll be on his own to explore :(. But at that price, how could you pass it up? There’s only 150 seats, so if you’re interested go make your reservation now!
Jay Berkowitz of Ten Golden Rules is also putting on an Internet Marketing Bootcamp the same day. Which sucks for me because I’d love to go to both, but maybe some kind soul would give me a verbal crash course in how it goes ;). But this bootcamp is a lofty $200. In comparison to what you’re spending to attend the show that’s chump change, but still hard to swing if you’re a start up publisher wanting to learn the ropes. Affiliate Summit attendees do get $50 off though. Check out the Affiliate Summit Blog for more details on how to swing that.
For anyone even thinking about going to this, I highly recommend it. I learned SO much as a beginning affiliate manager, and got to network with some great people. It’s also an excellent resource for a publisher to check out all the different networks that are out there and all the best strategies and tactics for converting your website into your income. And just look outside at your winter weather then remember that Las Vegas will be warm and sunny and book your flight to go already!
Remember to take plenty of business cards as you WILL need them (we ran clean out last time). As a special, PsPrint is offering 20% off for attendees. But you have to register to get the code for the discount, so register today for Affiliate Summit!
All for One, One for All Printers
All in one printing is a valuable asset to have. The printer I use at home, an HP OfficeJet 6210, is a great piece of machinery. With this I can print anything I want with photo quality results (usually photos and Google Map directions are what I’m printing). I can also scan my photos, make copies for free, and, if I had land line phone service, I could easily fax to my heart’s content. I’ve had all in one printers for a few years now, and I’d never go back to a simple printer as my main machine.
Here at the office we have a Konica machine that almost does as much as my little HP (despite being 5 times the size). It prints, it scans, it copies, it slices, it dices. Wait – rewind those last two there.
But it’s a great machine when it’s not tragically overworked by the volume our office sends it’s way. Without an all in one machine like this, our efficiency is severely hindered. Anyone who’s been here on a day when the printer goes down knows exactly what I mean.
While not a scientific percentage, a quick search of Google Shopping shows 23,015 results for “all in one printer”, so clearly there are a ton on the market and many small businesses look for combination deals like this to save on money and supplies. Every business I’ve worked at has kept a similar all-in-one machine in their arsenal of office equipment. So if these are so important to us, why do people still look to specialized companies for their professional printing needs?
The best stop is a printing company that can do it all for you. This way you save on supplies, shipping, and effort. The time you save dealing with one company to do everything for you will increase your efficiency and give you time for other more important projects than ordering more business cards. Naturally all businesses want to get more bang for their buck, so the best solution is to go somewhere with great quality and low prices.
PsPrint, one of the first online printing companies and the only online printer with facilities on both coasts, is a one-stop-shop. Offering exceptional quality at bargain prices, PsPrint offers everything from business cards to presentation folders, professional graphic design services to mailing services. They can take care of your printing needs from start to finish. It’s a great online resource to have in your back pocket. Ordering online has never been easier: just upload your artwork, pick out what you want, and associate the two. BAM – you’re in business.
Don’t take my word for it… head over to PsPrint and check out the selection of products and services for yourself. You’ll wonder why you went to any other printer before.
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