Sunday, January 08, 2006

Fun, yet shameless self-promotion

A few months back, I discovered a pile of blank business cards left over from some half-baked venture of mine. When I worked as a contractor for the federal government, I traveled a great deal, representing the office for which I worked. Despite going forth and saying that I was with X Agency, I was forbidden to have real business cards from X Agency. The Sasquatch (who is a kick-ass designer), eventually designed really cool cards for me (thanks, buddy!) But, before that, I just printed up my own at home with all the basic info on them. Practical, but ugly.

I ended up with a big bunch of blank cards left over, and, for a while, I just printed up some to give to friends or acquaintances with my name and e-mail addy on them. Some of them just said:

Merujo likes e-mail!

merujo@yourproviderhere.com

It was cute, but after a while I just forgot about them. Then, during the Great Employment Drought of '05, I rediscovered the blank heap o' cards. I was spending a lot of time in coffee shops back then - job hunting, blogging, overcaffeinating... So I printed up a bunch of guys with my little off-kilter devil horn photo and the URL for the Church of the Big Sky. I pinned them up on coffee shop bulletin boards all over the place and then watched to see if I got any increase in hits. Amazingly, I did. It was a hoot. I mean, heck, I'm always checking the info boards at coffee shops. If I saw someone advertising their blog, I'd go check it out. Why not? And hey, if you're trying to build readership, at least on a local basis, it's a fun little experiment to try. I might do it again, just for kicks.

You can get freebie business cards from VistaPrint.com (you just pay the postage for 250 cards) and have some fun. Actually, I could have used them at the two Blogger Meet-ups I've attended. I had to pull random scraps of paper out of my wallet to write down my URL for folks. Maybe it's a little over the top or egotistical, but it's fun and it saves you the trouble of repeating your URL over and over again when people say, "Oh you have a blog? What is it?" And, if you do pin yourself up on a bulletin board somewhere, let me know! I'll be looking for you!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's so cool. I would definitely have fun spreading around my cards . . . you know, if I ever left the house.

Reya Mellicker said...

That is a kick-ass card!

Merujo said...

Isn't that fun?!? I love the design. 250 of those babies for just the cost of shipping. I've used VistaPrint several times - speedy and efficient company.

gadgetgrl said...

Was shipping freakishly expensive?

Merujo said...

The last time I ordered cards from VistaPrint, I think the processing/shipping was something like $8.50. That was a couple of years ago. I bet it's $9.99 or close to it now. You get the cards in just about a week, delivered in a very sturdy box. Pretty dang good deal. :-)

Claire said...

I still have some cards I made from my freelance film days in LA, as well as some sheets of blanks left over.

Hmm.... tempting. Makes me wish I'd picked a shorter URL though.

Merujo said...

Long URLs are always a challenge on business cards. I did luck out with my fairly short one.

If you have blanks from Avery, you can use their online templates now and add one of your rockin' photographs in the background.

Claire said...

Oh that's cool. I didn't know they had templates online. Thanks for the tip.