On the photo-business side of Wood Islands Prints I have for several years gone to selling postcards to the local gift shops. The market in SE PEI is not very crowded with local image products. The challenge is to find an affordable route for very small runs (100, say) so there can be a limited stock of each picture but have a wide selection. I started with home ink-jet printing but the costs of ink and card stock was high and the result was not very water resistant. Then I found Vista Print. They have printing operations in the US and in Canada, so the duty/agent fee is not an issue. Their focus is on marketing products for small businesses, but they are quite willing to print photo products as well as reminders to “Come in for your automotive service.” If you follow the special sales notifications by email, you can get sometimes get 100 cards for the cost of shipping, and sometimes even save the upload fee as well. Even at worst case I can produce cards for less than $0.25US. I then go around letting customers pick a mix of whaterver cards I have in stock.
The production challenge is to obtain images with just the right resolution and pixel count. This is quite easy in Photoshop and probably in most image-editing software. I have developed a system to make up postcards with colored borders and captions…it is easiest if one develops blank templates that are just the right proportions for the image and for the overall card. My own cards all have blue backgrounds and gold-colored captions on the front as well as B&W description on the back to make it a ‘real’ postcard.
The process is ‘better felt than telt’ and I am going through the steps in a class I’m teaching this coming Saturday (May 19, 2012) for the Photography club that meets at the Montague (PEI, Canada) library at 1PM. If any of you reading this are close you’re welcome to come…there is no charge. Contact me at (902) 962-3335 for information.