What I like the best about this method is that you don’t have to invest your own money, you will collect the payment first and then pay, without spending even $1 of your money.
Without wasting any more time, let’s get started.
First thing you have to do is navigate to Canva (https://www.canva.com/) and create an account there, it’s super simple & free + you can register/login with your Gmail account.
You’re going to click on create a design button at the top left corner and you’re going to find Business Card under Marketing Materials
Now you’re going to go to Craigslist (it doesn’t have to be your local one, it can be whichever one you want) - https://www.craigslist.org/ for
this example i’ll use Milwaukee (even tho I’m from Europe) and you’re going to navigate to Services -> Skilled Trade
We’re going to take advantage of that.
You’re going to pick a random business owner and you’re essentially going to create a business card for him & his team. It sounds hard but it’s actually pretty easy.
For this example i’ll use Jeff and his drywall & woodworking services and we’re going to go back to Canva and create a simple business card for him and his team/business.
Now all we need to do is write them an e-mail and attach the business card that we made in the Canva. I’ll post example e-mail below but I’d highly recommend that you write your own e-mail!
Subject: Hey Jeff
I saw your ad on Craigslist.
I couldn’t find any website for you guys online to learn more about you and your business/services.
I’m a new designer building up my portfolio so I decided to design you guys some business cards for free.
Could you please give me some feedback on them and let me know if you’d like anything else added to them.
I’d be happy to make any changes for you since it helps me sharpen my skills and I’m helping you guys too.
Looking forward to speaking to you Kind regards,
- Luke
Now, the catch here is that, when they reply to your e-mail, you will offer to print & ship business cards to their home or work address.
And that’s how you’re going to make money.
Personally I use https://www.docucopies.com/ but you can use whatever site you want, it doesn’t really matter.
Now choose to upload your own design (aka Canva design)
As you can see, it’s around $26 + shipping for 250 business cards or $36 + shipping for 500 business cards.
Now that you know the price for the cards you’re going to e-mail back the business owner and talk about prices (if they are interested in ordering cards, obviously).
I usually charge $100 + shipping for 250 cards or $150 + shipping for 500 cards. I sometimes throw them 1000 cards but I recommend that you give them at least 2 options, maybe even 3.
So let’s say you sell them 500 cards for $150
-$36 for printing & -$11 for shipping, it gives you around $100 profit for almost no work.
Now, if you think my prices are expensive (or if business owners think that way), explain to them how they are paying for a business card design and printing & shipping cards to their home/work address.
As you can see, designers on Fiverr are charging $50-$325 for a business card design without printing or shipping!
x
The reason I like to use that section is because people who mostly post there are just getting started and they haven’t got their ‘business’ established yet, for example; website, logo, etc.
Search thru Business Card section until you find a nice looking business card that is matching the craigslist ad.
I went with a simple but modern style for Jeff and his services (as you can see in the image above). It took me less than 5 minutes to create that business card.
Now what you need to do is e-mail (or phone??) business owner and offer them your services. I prefer to phone them and explain them over the phone what I’m doing and then ask for their e-mail but you can just e-mail them, it doesn’t really matter.
You can search for their e-mail and other business info thru Better Business Bureau (https://www.bbb.org/) or you can contact them thru Craigslist list if they have that option enabled.
As for BBB, you can simply search their phone number on the site and if anything will come up.
