If you like to create pictures, design, write or even spend time looking at greeting cards at your local store, a greeting card home based business could be the opportunity you are looking for. The greeting card business is experiencing phenomenal growth and income potential for those who take the leap.
There are several areas that you could pursue in a greeting card home based business. One part of the greeting card business is drawing or creating pictures for the greeting card. Another part to the greeting card is writing the blurbs found inside of the greeting cards. You will need to decide what part of the greeting card business you want to focus on before you start.
A freelance greeting card artist has the opportunity to focus directly on the designing of the greeting cards for other companies. The costs associated with a freelance greeting card artist could include the purchased of graphic art software and a computer whether it is a desktop computer or a laptop.
A freelance greeting card writer would focus on writing the content that is found inside of greeting cards. Your needs for this position would be a computer, word processing software, and a rather quick turn around time. As a freelancer, you do have the option of being a greeting card writer and artist.
In order for you to gain jobs as a freelance greeting card writer or artist, you will need to contact greeting card companies for freelance positions that are available. Many of these greeting card companies offer $50 up to several hundred dollars per assignment. One thing as a freelance greeting card artist or writer, you will want to build a portfolio of your work, but at times freelance greeting card jobs can be hard to come by.
You can purchase a vending route from larger greeting card companies as another option of having your own home based greeting card business. Being a greeting card vendor, you will be required to keep current clients stocked in greeting cards, replace out of date greeting cards with new greeting cards, and gain new clients to build your income. Your start up costs can range from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars depending on the inventory that is needed for your clients. The upside of owning a greeting card vending route is that your clients will pay you up-front for your greeting card service.
For those that are industrious, you can start your own greeting card home based business. Your greeting card business plan will focus on every aspect of the greeting card. You will be in charge of designing and writing each of the greeting cards inside and out. The best part of doing all of the greeting card work yourself is that your own creativity will not be hindered by depending on others telling you what they are in need of with their greeting cards.
Starting your own greeting card home business from the ground up requires research before you begin to create your own greeting cards. This is due to the fact that you will need to price printing services of companies that will be able to print your greeting cards and research greeting card software that you can use in the creative process of your greeting cards. You will also want to insure that your computer is up-to-date in order for it to be able to handle the greeting card software, having a cd burner that you can burn your greeting card to after you have created your greeting cards for your printer or a printer that can handle the printing of the greeting card you wish to have printed. You will also want to think of a name for your greeting card business and create a website for your greeting card business.
Websites are very easy to create, even for website beginners, depending on the website host that you choose to host your website. A basic class at a local community college on website design can help you in creating your website or you can purchase a how to create your own website books can help you further in creating your own website. You will want to research domain registries and website providers so that the costs fit into your home business budget. The cost of your website host will mostly depend on how much space you will need to have for your website. Greeting card pictures, depending on the sizes, can take up quite a bit of your webhosting space. You will want to consider that when choosing your webpage hosting site.
Once you have your website ready, text wise, you will then want to add your greeting card pictures by uploading them to the webhosting site through the file transfer protocol. Most webhosting companies have a tutorial on how to use their file transfer protocol. You will also want to have your website optimized for search engines. By optimizing your website for search engines, this will enable internet surfers who are wanting greeting cards to find your website. Be sure to visit the Search Engine Optimization site in the resource area at the bottom of this article for more information.
Many people like to be able to feel the quality of the card before purchasing their greeting cards. You can offer a free sample greeting card for your customers so they are able to actually feel and see the quality of your cards. You can do this by offering a “limit one card per household” offer. This is a great way to get your cards on the market in front of consumers and drive traffic to your website. The best part about doing this is you can insert a business card into the greeting card for the requesting customer for repeat business. You can also have the website printed on back of the greeting card as well.
You can have the cards printed as they are ordered through your website which will keep your overhead at a minimum. You will want to have plenty of designs for each of your categories for your greeting cards, but you will not want your website to be cluttered with to many greeting cards either. You, as the website owner, have the option of taking the greeting cards that do not sell off the website when adding new greeting cards to your website.
While there are several more options of owning a greeting card home based business, the options that are listed in this greeting card home business article should help you decide if a greeting card home business is for you and which route you would like to take.
