Are there enough hours in the day to deal with Vistaprint?

Using press and magazine advertising, brochures, mailings - old hat or still cost-effective?
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Alan Knighting
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Post by Alan Knighting »

Mountain Goat wrote:I would kill to know what a professional printer thinks of Vistaprint's business model of everything 'free', and just scratching their humble millions out of the 'postage'.

MG
I’ll say it again – The unavoidable fact is that VistaPrint is an enormously successful international commercial printing company which also happens to offer loads of little free things to non-commercial people like you and me.

Alan
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

which also happens to offer loads of little free things
Free things that aren't actually free, you mean. Shipping charges are pretty outrageous and are clearly meant to absorb the cost of production. They're not doing us any favors; if they were, they wouldn't be so successful.
Brooke
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Partridge
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Post by Partridge »

Well, a quick look at 250 free business cards quotes me £3.27 for the 'slow' 21 day delivery, I'm not up on p&p charges per se but would have thought that was cheap as chips in anyones book.

Maybe the fact that they come with the vista print logo on the back is considered 'free advertising' in itself on the basis that every card is given to a 'new source' of revenue ? Add to that that customers return to what they know and voila, a winning forumula I presume.
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Alan Knighting
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Post by Alan Knighting »

vrooje wrote:
which also happens to offer loads of little free things
Free things that aren't actually free, you mean. Shipping charges are pretty outrageous and are clearly meant to absorb the cost of production. They're not doing us any favors; if they were, they wouldn't be so successful.
Brooke,

I think you are spot on. Their P&P charges are "interesting".

Alan
ashtondav
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Post by ashtondav »

Whatever.

They're still cheaper than anyone else i can find...
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Mountain Goat
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Post by Mountain Goat »

I haven't got time to see what the catch is, but having had a steady stream of 'everything free for 48 hours' from dear old VP, today's eye-catcher was '100% off everything plus free delivery'.

On the other hand, if everything's free, how do you get free delivery on orders over £20? Catch-22.

What does one do? Wait for their next offer? 'If we send you £50, would you please, please, order from us'?

MG
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Giddy Goat
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Post by Giddy Goat »

:lol: Well spotted MG. Are you going to ask them the question?
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e-richard
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Post by e-richard »

Anybody noticed (or tried) their free website builder ?

Using similar design concepts to your business cards, you can build (and host) your website for free (for a limited time, I think).

Its not for me, but maybe someone out there wants to give it a whirl.
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Mountain Goat
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Post by Mountain Goat »

We've given up on extracting compliment slips out of Vistaprint - they're astronomically expensive - same as their letterheads, so we're using colour postcards instead with varying text on the reverse.

Minor technical point - if you're adding text to the reverse of a postcard - how do you centre it? Just trial and error? We've never been able to get a reply from their customer services to answer this.

Their 'free' website offers seems to vary between 1 - 3 months only, BTW.

MG
e-richard
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Post by e-richard »

Adding text to the reverse:
You can always upload an image to be printed on the reverse. So create a hi res image file with just your text in the right proportions. Mind you, there is a small charge for uploading the additional image.
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Giddy Goat
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Post by Giddy Goat »

I'd never have thought of that! :D Must file that away for future ref ...
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

So create a hi res image file with just your text in the right proportions.
"hi res" being the important detail here -- find out what they print at and set your image pixels-per-inch to that number. The image should be very large in pixels, but print at a postcard size -- otherwise the text will look awful.
Brooke
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Post by e-richard »

To follow up on Brooke's point, I did a postcard with LOTS of words on the rear. There were many paragraphs, approx 363 words, and it came out finished looking something like 9pt Arial.

I uploaded a PSD (photoshop) file as follows:

1677 X 1300 Pixels
(approx 5.5" x 3.3")
300 Pixels/inch

The file size was 4.4 mb !
They have a limit of 8mb, so this seemed optimal.

The quality is Good.
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Mountain Goat
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Post by Mountain Goat »

Dorkish question, apologies, e-Richard, but did you do the text in Photoshop or use something else and import into P'shop?

MG
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Mountain Goat
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Post by Mountain Goat »

Today's offer from Vistaprint is Everything Free plus Free Postage and 50% off any upload fee.

I'm sure there's a catch but the offer can be emailed if anyone's interested, just PM.

MG
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