So you are an artist with brilliant ability, and you know you have some wonderful greeting card ideas. Or maybe you are a crafter and make scrapbook-style one-of-a-kind cards that the world just has to see...but how do you get them out there? I am a card designer, and have had varied amount success in most of these ways to find places to sell greeting cards.
Instructions
1. Sell your cards at a craft booth.
Check the web for churches and communities that are holding bazaars or market days. Try to find events that seem to have good publicity and aren't too expensive to have a booth. Pick only your best designs, and try to stick to general categories, like birthday, friendship, and upcoming holidays. Blank cards also sell well. You can try selling packs of 6 to 12, or you can try buy 3 get 1 free. After a few events, you will have a good idea about what designs sell better than others.
2. Sell cards at local shops: some stores do craft consignments where you either pay a booth fee or a commission. If you do this, you might want to also have some framed prints or craft items to "fill out" the booth. You can also try approaching store owners of small shops that already carry greeting cards, I sell mine at a local bookstire. Just make sure you have a nice presentation and you either make an appointment to come in or come in at a time that's not busy. If they say no, don't take it as a rejection, they may just already have too many cards at the time.
3. Send your ideas to greeting card companies: For a good list of greeting card companies looking for submissions, check out www.writersmarket.com. It does cost $3.99 per month to use this site for a reference, but you can cancel your subscription at any time. Be sure to check each publishers web site for details on what they accept and the formats they want, Follow their guidelines carefully!
4. If you make 3-D crafty kinds of cards, try selling them on www.etsy.com or another craft website. It's a free site that allows you to post pictures of your craft items. When they sell, you ship them. This is a great way to make sure you don't spend too much time and effort making hundreds of cards before you know there is a market for them.
5. There are several good print-on-demand sites of your cards are comprised of graphic design, photographs, or paintings. www.zazzle.com is free and you can put your creations on everything from mugs to cards to stamps, www.cafepress is similar but they chrage you after a certain amount of items posted. www.greetingcarduniverse.com only does cards but it's the one that I have had the best success in (over 2300 cards since last June). redbubble.com gives you the option to sell your art as prints, greeting cards and t-shirts. All of these sites pay a commission for designs sold. Here is an article that goes more in depth on this subject:http://www.ehow.com/how_4747257_sell-greeting-cards****.html
