Free Business Cards are Jokes

Oh my! Free business cards! I want ‘em!

Alright alright, hold your horses! There’s no such thing as free business cards. I don’t care if they say they’re free, I don’t care if they guarantee they’re free, and I don’t care if they really are free- they’re NOT free! Allow me to take you through a theoretical journey to support such a claim.

The Pop-Up

So naturally, us consumers would click on it because… hey, it’s free business cards, right? So let’s proceed!

Disappointment #1

Okay… so if you want to limit yourself to their preset templates, then you’re still getting free cards! Woohoo! But, if you want to put your own business logo or design on your business cards, we’re up to $19.99. So, let’s assume you’d probably want to put your logo on your business cards (I mean, it just makes a little sense to put your own logo on your own business cards). Let’s continue!

Disappointment #2

Okay, so you’re still good for 250 free business cards, but don’t be too upset when one of them disintegrates into thin air! You can usually upgrade to the 100 lb. Cardstock option, but that will bring your free business cards up to $27.98 (assuming you’ve uploaded your own logo).

Also, for those who aren’t too familiar with paper stock options, 100 lb. still isn’t very durable (comparable to an index card). What you’re probably looking for is a 13 pt. or a 14 pt. Cardstock which is rather comparable to the thickness of a credit card. Let’s carry on!

Disappointment #3

Now this one is controversial… On one end, making an account with a printing company can be very useful for reordering your things quickly, but for stuff like getting some free $27.98 business cards? Completely annoying. And when you make an account, make sure you don’t sign up for special VIP offers. Unless you want to delete 10 extra emails every day, go for it!

The Recommended Products

Oh. My. Goodness. If I want something else, I’LL GET IT MYSELF! Nobody needs to go through 20 pages of offers when all they want is some free business cards that are costing almost $30.00 dollars now! So after 15 minutes of neglecting every single offer, dare we continue?

The Shipping

Holy crap! 2 Weeks for shipping?! We’ll at least want 1 week shipping (it’s considered priority for no reason at all) because although getting it in 3 days would be awesome… it’s almost $22.00 dollars.

Let’s Review Our Order

250 Free Business Cards - $0.00
Your Logo - $19.99
Not Tissue Paper - $7.99
Priority 7 Day Shipping - $12.99
Total: $40.97

Now… you might be saying “Well, you selected options that cost more money.” This is true, but let’s try the bare minimum… just for the fun of it.

250 Free Business Cards - $0.00
No Logo - $0.00
Toilet Paper - $0.00
Half a Month Shipping - $7.99
No Land Tortoise - $0.00
The Printing Company’s Logo Watermarked on the Back - $0.00
Total: $7.99

Alright! The bare minimum of free business cards still costs about $8.00! You could just buy 12 rolls of 2-ply toilet paper for 8 bucks!

To Sum it Up

If you want some durable, great looking business cards with your complete design on it… don’t mess around with this free stuff, get some legitimate business card printing, your business deserves it. Otherwise, you’ll end up spending a ton of time and money customizing “free + $40.00″ business cards that will just end up disappointing you in the end.

Cheers!
Aaron

Shmoggo
Design&Print