Business cards are an essential element of marketing. They are often the first interaction a customer has with your brand, and influence how the individual views and remembers you and your business. They flesh out your image, contain important information about your company, and are a business necessity for most people.
Whether you’re just starting your professional career or have owned your own company for many years, business cards can be invaluable in helping make a good first impression on potential clients and employers alike.
You can design and print your own business cards at home, if you know what you’re doing. Unfortunately, though, the monetary costs you’ll save doing this may not outweigh the potential downsides of having a business card that may be viewed as unprofessional.
Today, we’ll share the pros and cons of printing business cards at home, so that you can make your own mind up.
There are some advantages to be had by printing your own business cards.
If you are on a budget and cannot afford to get your business cards printed professionally, printing your own cards can be cheaper. If you’re prepared to spend the time designing the cards, feeding paper, printing and slicing, this might be an enticing money-saving option.
Unfortunately, though, printer ink can be extremely expensive – and if you want more than a dozen or so business cards, you’ll waste so much ink (and time) doing this that often it is cheaper to get cards professionally printed.
Another positive aspect of printing your business cards at home is that this option gives you the chance to create a completely customised design that will accurately represent your brand. This means you don’t have to worry about not having enough options available to choose from when creating something that looks good.
(However, many sites such as 123Print also offer completely blank templates, to allow you to create a fully personalised business card design from scratch – and, as it’s professionally printed, it will probably look better than something you’ve fashioned yourself.)
When you choose to print your business cards at home, it means that you can hold your cards in your hand straight away – well, as soon as you’ve finished printing them all off, anyway. On the other hand, getting business cards professionally printed and shipped to your home or place of work can take weeks, depending on whom you order from.
That being said, professional stationers such as 123Print aim to print and dispatch all orders within 48 working hours – so if you compare this to how long it will take you to print and trim all of your cards, you might not end up saving that much time overall.
Unfortunately, there are more negatives to printing your own business cards than there are positives. Here’s what you need to know:
First of all, to even start designing your business cards yourself, you’ll need professional design software, such as Microsoft Publisher. This isn’t cheap, and also takes a lot of time to learn how to use. By contrast, if you use a professional printer such as 123Print, you can quickly and easily edit a template in-browser for no extra fee.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that, if you use your basic inkjet printer with craft-shop cardstock, you’ll end up with a professional-quality business card. It’s simply not true.
Unless you invest in thick, expensive cardstock and a full-colour laser or photo printer (which can cost hundreds of pounds as a bare minimum), you’ll likely end up with grainy, streaky and unprofessional-looking business cards. This will be particularly noticeable on any images you may use, such as your logo.
One of the biggest cons of making your business cards at home is that there is no quality control when looking over the finished product. If you are printing on your home computer, there is every possibility that you may skip a step in the process and not realise it until after you have already printed out your cardstock.
This can result in typing errors or printing errors (such as a loss of colour, or the cards being cut off by the printer margins) – all of which will render the cards unprofessional and unusable.
Another con to making your cards at home is that they usually do not have an additional design feature, such as rounded corners or cut-outs for a corner punch. If this is something that you want when it comes to your business card, you’ll probably need the services of a professional printing company.
Most printers that you will be using at home will not support specific printing needs. In essence, if you’d like your business card to have a special finish such as gloss, texture or embossing, home printers typically will not have the ability to produce them.
This can limit your options when it comes down to buying printer supplies for your cardstock, and could end up costing you more in the long run (as well as taking up your time).
Another disadvantage of making your business cards at home is that in most cases, printing on both sides of the paper may not be an option – especially if the only printer available is a smaller one sitting on your desk in your home office.
A professional printing facility can more effectively utilise the free space on a business card by printing on both sides of the cardstock, which results in less waste as well as a more professional design.
In addition to not being able to print on both sides of the cardstock, more often than not, when making business cards at home, you will have a hard time printing them consistently. This is especially true if this is your first try at it.
This may mean that the final product comes out slightly off-centre or has some smudges on it that weren’t visible until they were printed out. While this does happen from time to time with professional printers, you typically don’t have much control over how it looks during the design process when printing cards from home.
And with a professional printer such as 123Print, you’ll receive a full refund if the finished product isn’t perfect – whereas with home printing, you’ve wasted money on paper and ink.
Another disadvantage to make your business cards at home is that glossy ink may bleed through the back of cardstock – especially if you are using it for a logo, photo, or another element on the front side of the card in addition to printing out some basic information on the reverse.
If this happens and you do not have any protection from ink bleeding through, then most likely, you will be throwing away good card stock that you could have used for another purpose if you had just used a professional printer instead.
As with most things in life, there are pros and cons to each approach. The best thing you can do if you plan on having your business cards professionally made is to visit our site at 123Print and see what we can do for you. We have an entire staff of designers, printers and quality checkers to help you with your design and card layout, and our customer service representatives are second to none.
With thousands of templates to choose from (all of which are fully customisable), as well as the option to create your own design completely from scratch, what’s not to love? Our prices are extremely competitive, too. Visit our site today to get high-quality, professional cards designed and delivered to your door!
Business cards are an integral part of professional and personal networking. But let’s be honest: everything about them is a hassle. They are expensive and frustrating to print and update, and there is too little space to cover all the essential details.
And when you collect these physical cards after a networking event, they just end up clutter in your office or even your home.
In the digital age, digital alternates to business cards have become incredibly popular.
The emergence of near-field communication (NFC) business cards has done away with the restrictions in space that traditional business cards are infamous for. They are also much easier to update and distribute than physical cards.
Do you want to know more about NFC business cards? Or the best NFC business cards? Join our NFC business cards review as we discuss them in detail below, including how they work and their pros and cons.
NFC, or near-field communication, refers to the international transmission standard that enables wireless data exchange. NFC technology allows two devices—such as your NFC card and your smartphone—to communicate with each other when they are within a certain distance.
NFC is a subset of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, popularly used to identify objects via radio waves.
It has been used for decades for scanning purchases in stores, luggage on baggage claims, warehousing, tracking goods in transit, and even tagging cattle.
Introduced in the early 2000s, NFC technology uses a specific RFID frequency (13.56 MHz) to enable close-range communications.
And one of the most common uses of NFC technology is identification cards used to enter office buildings and other limited-access areas.
Unlike Bluetooth or RFID, NFC technology has a short range: only four to ten centimeters. This means NFC devices must be close to each other to exchange data through electromagnetic induction that depends on RFID technology.
Today, NFC has become ubiquitous in many industries and spheres.
NFC technology allows two devices to communicate wirelessly when they are within four to ten centimeters. A simple touch will enable links to be shared to a smartphone, including contact details, social media handles, restaurant menus, and more.
When embedded in business cards, NFC technology allows users to tap their cards to a recipient’s smartphone to send contact information and other important business details.
NFC cards – Business Cards with Tags
The key ingredient is called a tag, and that is a small memory chip with a spirally rolled-up antenna. It has a storage capacity of 168 to 2,048 bytes, allowing the user to store a lot of information.
NFC tags can also be personalized per the user’s individual needs, making it highly customizable.
It has two variants:
The first variant has a few disadvantages in that once you store the data on the chip, you can no longer change it later. Individual branding is not possible on this type of NFC business card, and it can be difficult to establish contact with social networks.
NFC business cards come with many benefits, which is why they have become so popular in the business community.
Here is a list of the pros of using the best NFC business cards:
Despite all their advantages, NFC business cards have some downsides that you should not overlook.
NFC business cards offer many features and benefits that traditional business cards do not.
Let’s take a look at how they compare:
Unlike a traditional business card, an NFC business card allows you to transfer your contact details to a compatible smartphone in an instant.
You only need an NFC-enabled business card with your contact information and hold it up to a smartphone to make the transfer.
With NFC technology, you no longer have to worry about losing a business opportunity due to a lost card. You will also save your new contact the effort of typing your data into their smartphone.
You can even include your photograph so that your potential clients or business associates can have an easier time remembering who you are.
If you eventually need to modify your contact details on a traditional business card, you will have to throw away what you have and print new ones—a significant business expense.
In contrast, most NFC cards can be easily modified. You can easily change your information whenever you need to.
NFC cards are usually made of PVC or PET, so they are more durable and look better than paper business cards.
You can add map data to your NFC business card to ensure that your customers and business partners don’t get lost on the way to your office or store. You can provide clear directions to your business address, which is a far cry from the simplistic paper business cards.
If you belong to an industry that involves cutting-edge technology, using an NFC business card over a traditional one helps you walk the talk. You will surely come across a tech-savvy expert that they can rely on.
If you are a creative professional such as a photographer, digital artist, graphic designer, or in an industry where you must showcase your portfolios to gain work, you can link your NFC business card to your online portfolio.
This will ensure that you never miss a gig or job opportunity again. You can also keep updating the destination of the link so that you can present your latest and best work.
Despite the many conveniences offered by NFC business cards, you still need to buy and carry around a physical card. You also need to be close to the person with whom you’re sharing your business card.
Just as paper business cards can be misplaced, NFC business cards can be easily lost or stolen.
While you may have extra copies of your traditional business card somewhere in your office or at home, if you lose an NFC business card, you will have to buy another one and wait for it to arrive in the mail.
This can be a tremendous hassle when you need to attend networking events.
Are NFC business cards the new way forward? Will they make traditional paper business cards obsolete?
The truth is that traditional business cards have not been popular for a few years now. The pandemic only made this fact more pronounced, with more and more business professionals shifting to modern alternatives such as NFC business cards.
But this does not mean the death of physical business cards. There are still many professionals who use and distribute their contact information in the traditional manner.
After all, business cards still come in handy at trade events and other business gatherings, especially for old-school audiences who are not active on social media. For many professionals, the quality of a business card serves as a window to the quality of a business.
However, the wide range of benefits that NFC business cards offer makes them more lucrative and promising in the digital age.
NFC business cards are a great way to share your contact details quickly without the hassle of a traditional business card. Although they may not fully edge out paper cards, they are still a popular networking tool at business and trade events.
Their range of benefits also makes them a powerful solution for all kinds of businesses.
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