First off, let me make it clear, I'm not offering anything for sale in this thread. I am only trying to offer value in the form of advice and resources. If you need additional help, post in the thread or PM me to discuss, but I still will not offer anything for sale. This is a "help only" thread, not a "make money" thread.
After reading a recent progress thread by Scot, I saw that there might be a need for entrepreneurs on this forum to know how to get their printing done more cheaply. Whether it's inserts for your ecommerce product packaging, business cards, flyers, or just avoiding getting ripped off on your promotional materials for a product launch, it's helpful to know how to get printing done cheap.
In one of my previous businesses, I was a printer. No, I didn't own any printing equipment other than my desktop inkjet. Instead, I used what are known as "trade printers" to do my printing for me. That's right, I didn't have to own any equipment in order to fulfill my customers' orders. I was able to sell and provide yard signs, postcards, postcard mailings, restaurant menus, banners, promotional magnets, and other printed items without anything more than a laptop and a credit card. Heck, I don't even know *that* much about printing, just enough to get it done (I'm even color-blind).
So what are trade printers? Trade printers are a little known printing industry secret. They use both the internet and massive efficiencies of scale to offer low-cost high-volume printing or specialty printing capabilities to local print shops, who then re-sell it to their own local customers.
For example, if you want special business cards with a velvet-feel coating on them and a glossy patterned overlay, your local print shop may not have the equipment necessary to get the job done. They'll still take your money, then outsource the job to a trade printer. The trade printer does the work, ships to your printer, and charges them wholesale prices (likely less than 30% of retail price). Your printer keeps the difference between what you paid and what the trade printer charged. And most customers think the whole thing was done by the local print shop.
On the trade printer's end, they can charge the local print shop less because they batch multiple similar jobs together so they all get printed at once, and separated afterward. So, for example, they will group twenty business cards jobs together, run tens of thousands of business cards per hour, and their prices will reflect those massive efficiencies of scale, but you can order in quantities as little as 500 or 1,000. You can thank the internet and technology for this.
You can find trade printers for many different kinds of printing -- just search for "trade printer" and you'll get a ton of results. From flexible magnetic signs that go on the side of a car, to restaurant menus, to political yard signs, to giant 8-foot vinyl banners, almost any of these items can be sourced from a trade printer at massive discounts. There are some specialty printers that only do one thing, but they do it super cheap (e.g. pizza takeout menus). Regardless, most items can be printed by trade printers.
You can even order die-cut print jobs, where the finished product is in a particular shape like a circle or a triangle. Not all, but many trade printers can handle those kinds of jobs. Same thing for labels - many trade printers can produce these in custom shapes.
If you do mailings, you can even use a trade printer to print & mail your postcards. If you do Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) to promote your business, they do postcards pretty darn cheap.
What's the catch? Well, if you're not a local printer, it can be difficult or impossible to get a trade printer to work with you. They are called trade printers because they print "for the trade", i.e. other print shops. I'll show you how to overcome that hurdle later.
Also, if you aren't familiar with CMYK (4-color) printing, you might get a bad product back from the trade printer. They won't hold your hand on your print job, because they assume you're a printing professional and that you know what you're doing when you submit your files for printing. You can't just send them a JPG image and say you want that on 1,000 postcards...it just won't work.
A good designer will help you out by giving you finished files in a print-ready CMYK format, but you'll still need to know how to submit the files to the trade printer. Many trade printers offer templates to help make the submission process easier, but you'll still need to know what you're doing or you might end up with one side of your flyer or postcard upside down. It's easy to learn, but also easy to make a mistake.
Fortunately, most trade printers (the ones I used) will offer some sort of "soft copy" proof, or a virtual rendering of what your finished product will look like. That makes it much easier to catch layout and orientation mistakes before your product gets printed.
I learned all this stuff after reading a massive 20+ page Warrior Forum thread and buying several courses on the topic of printing and mailing. I won't post the names of the courses or the "guru" here, but if you want to know, just PM me. Keep in mind, you don't need to buy anything to learn this stuff. Just ask me in this thread, and I will answer to the best of my ability. The basics of printing are simple, and for most print jobs, the basics are all you'll really need.
I'll post more later, when I have time. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please reply below and I will try to answer them.
After reading a recent progress thread by Scot, I saw that there might be a need for entrepreneurs on this forum to know how to get their printing done more cheaply. Whether it's inserts for your ecommerce product packaging, business cards, flyers, or just avoiding getting ripped off on your promotional materials for a product launch, it's helpful to know how to get printing done cheap.
In one of my previous businesses, I was a printer. No, I didn't own any printing equipment other than my desktop inkjet. Instead, I used what are known as "trade printers" to do my printing for me. That's right, I didn't have to own any equipment in order to fulfill my customers' orders. I was able to sell and provide yard signs, postcards, postcard mailings, restaurant menus, banners, promotional magnets, and other printed items without anything more than a laptop and a credit card. Heck, I don't even know *that* much about printing, just enough to get it done (I'm even color-blind).
So what are trade printers? Trade printers are a little known printing industry secret. They use both the internet and massive efficiencies of scale to offer low-cost high-volume printing or specialty printing capabilities to local print shops, who then re-sell it to their own local customers.
For example, if you want special business cards with a velvet-feel coating on them and a glossy patterned overlay, your local print shop may not have the equipment necessary to get the job done. They'll still take your money, then outsource the job to a trade printer. The trade printer does the work, ships to your printer, and charges them wholesale prices (likely less than 30% of retail price). Your printer keeps the difference between what you paid and what the trade printer charged. And most customers think the whole thing was done by the local print shop.
On the trade printer's end, they can charge the local print shop less because they batch multiple similar jobs together so they all get printed at once, and separated afterward. So, for example, they will group twenty business cards jobs together, run tens of thousands of business cards per hour, and their prices will reflect those massive efficiencies of scale, but you can order in quantities as little as 500 or 1,000. You can thank the internet and technology for this.
You can find trade printers for many different kinds of printing -- just search for "trade printer" and you'll get a ton of results. From flexible magnetic signs that go on the side of a car, to restaurant menus, to political yard signs, to giant 8-foot vinyl banners, almost any of these items can be sourced from a trade printer at massive discounts. There are some specialty printers that only do one thing, but they do it super cheap (e.g. pizza takeout menus). Regardless, most items can be printed by trade printers.
You can even order die-cut print jobs, where the finished product is in a particular shape like a circle or a triangle. Not all, but many trade printers can handle those kinds of jobs. Same thing for labels - many trade printers can produce these in custom shapes.
If you do mailings, you can even use a trade printer to print & mail your postcards. If you do Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) to promote your business, they do postcards pretty darn cheap.
What's the catch? Well, if you're not a local printer, it can be difficult or impossible to get a trade printer to work with you. They are called trade printers because they print "for the trade", i.e. other print shops. I'll show you how to overcome that hurdle later.
Also, if you aren't familiar with CMYK (4-color) printing, you might get a bad product back from the trade printer. They won't hold your hand on your print job, because they assume you're a printing professional and that you know what you're doing when you submit your files for printing. You can't just send them a JPG image and say you want that on 1,000 postcards...it just won't work.
A good designer will help you out by giving you finished files in a print-ready CMYK format, but you'll still need to know how to submit the files to the trade printer. Many trade printers offer templates to help make the submission process easier, but you'll still need to know what you're doing or you might end up with one side of your flyer or postcard upside down. It's easy to learn, but also easy to make a mistake.
Fortunately, most trade printers (the ones I used) will offer some sort of "soft copy" proof, or a virtual rendering of what your finished product will look like. That makes it much easier to catch layout and orientation mistakes before your product gets printed.
I learned all this stuff after reading a massive 20+ page Warrior Forum thread and buying several courses on the topic of printing and mailing. I won't post the names of the courses or the "guru" here, but if you want to know, just PM me. Keep in mind, you don't need to buy anything to learn this stuff. Just ask me in this thread, and I will answer to the best of my ability. The basics of printing are simple, and for most print jobs, the basics are all you'll really need.
I'll post more later, when I have time. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please reply below and I will try to answer them.
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