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When you are first starting out with a business, it can be daunting how expensive printed materials such as brochures, business cards, postcards, and other paper goods can be. This is especially true for real estate business professionals, since many rely on printing services to keep their clients happy as well as personal marketing.
Recently while discussing a brochure I designed for one of the agents I work with, the agent had asked me if there was any way to get around the expensive print costs of using our local print shop. He was hoping to be able to print them off his printer at home. Thankfully I was able to talk him out of that – nothing screams “unprofessional” more than a home print job!
It didn’t dawn on me until now that he was unaware that he could take advantage of online printing services and probably do it for considerably less than he is paying me now to design his marketing materials and have them printed at the local print shop.
One such online printing company I had a chance to check out today is PSPrint.com. They offer most of the things a small business professional want: templates you can download and customize (they have a really nice selection of real estate ones), various printing options for colors and papers, as well as fast turnaround times if you’re in a hurry. Most appealing to me is their hard copy proof you can order and their offer for a free sample kit so you can know exactly what to expect before ordering. They’re affordable also – if the agent I worked with were to fire me and use them instead, he would save about $35 each job!
What do you think? Are you using online printing? Why or why not?
4 Comments
i don’t use it, but then again, i don’t think it’s even begun to penetrate our local market. i think the main hurdle would be gaining the trust of prospective clients, as they’re not able to simply stop by the branch and view the product being created. still, people here weren’t used to online shopping that long ago either, so it’s a process which takes time.
Great topic. I hear lots of online chatter about using print in real estate or not. The last year has brought great services and low costs to using print in this area of business. I review online print services on my website as well as promote offers and coupons for everything from business cards to postcards and more. If you are looking for ways to use online print to promote your services and save save some money try http://printedproof.com. Please feel free to contact me through the site for any help on using online print services!
I have used online printing several times. Actually I have used several, PrintPlace, VistaPrint and PsPrint. But one of them start spamming my email and I somehow accidentally signed up for some fee-based rewards program I never wanted to sign up for. So I started to choose my vendor properly. And now I am happy with PsPrint too!
I go back and forth between using local and online. Sometimes online is cheaper but it takes longer to get to you so you have to plan ahead.
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[...] a blog on Upstart Agent: Real Estate Marketing Blog, entitled “Are You Using Online Printing?” the author talks about the benefits of partnering with an online printing service. While [...]