Has anyone looked into producing pamphlets before - and what was the cheapest method you found?
Looking at just black text, on paper not card, and say 4 pamphlets out of an A4 sheet. (So A6 in other words.)
Cheapest Method of Producing Pamphlets
[Deactivated] on 09/10/2015 - 15:47
Comments
Get them printed/photocopied at Officeworks. Cut them into A6 youself. Easy, quick and probably the cheapest.
If you are doing a few hundred or more, VistaPrint
Vistaprint are not competitive at quantities 500+. And I won't even mention their terrible products - whoops!
Get yourself a "Brother HL-2130"
Funny guy… ;-) As you know, I have one - as a paperweight atm!
I think they have been discontinued..only found some on eBay.
Yes, annoying. After buying a new toner cartridge too. (From an op shop - so no refund possible.)
First, you need a mummy pamphlet and a daddy pamphlet.
Ok, I can see I need to put some more thought into this.
It's only me at the moment, so I'd be delivering one suburb at a time, one or two days a week. I'm considering doing the same suburb three or four times, with a different theme each time. i.e. On each 'edition', maybe some humour - a kind of running series - to spark people's interest/memory. Then move onto the next-nearest suburb and do the same thing.
It would be a trial to start with, to judge it's effectiveness. Figured I could do this instead of my usual exercise.
Inkjet would be too expensive, I think? Getting a guillotine is a good idea. I only have a paper slicer atm, that cuts 4/5 A4 sheets at a time.
So do people think a laser printer, and cheap toner refills, would be the best/cheapest method to do this as a trial?
No idea on quantity, but maybe I'd set a goal of delivering 2,500 homes - 4 times - which would mean 10,000 pamphlets to start = 2,500 A4 sheets.
Oh - and does anyone happen to know if there's a source of how many mailboxes are in a particular area?
Back to the first problem though. I haven't photocopied at Officeworks for years, but isn't it something like 15 cents a page? Would laser and cheap toner refills be about the best/cheapest I'm going to get this to start with?
Auspost has broken down suburbs by 'delivery points' for how they handle junk mail…er….'unaddressed mail'. Might help you understand the mailbox per area question. Here: http://auspost.com.au/business-solutions/localities-and-post…
My suggestion is to print a couple of hundred at Officeworks or similar, test out your idea, then judge whether spending on infrastructure is warranted. Their self serve copying is 8c per side for A4, and they should have a guillotine for customer use.
After all, better to spend $16 at Officeworks to determine your $40 spend on a guillotine is now not needed, because your idea sucked!
And you could be out testing your idea tomorrow, rather than stalling waiting for toner etc. to be delivered.If you end up doing more, I would buy an old HP workgroup size laser that has ultra cheap consumables and a really high duty cycle. You could conceivably produce A4 at under 1c per print plus paper costs.
http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/Print-And-Cop…
a4 3000-5000 is 5cents a page.
I would find a printer though and get a price for a4 and also for a6 as thats a lot of cutting you need to do.This crowd does 2 sided full colour a6 on 150gsm (double thickness of normal paper) 4 cents each for 10000 lot but also have a deal $460 for 20000. http://www.bullprint.com.au/flyer-printing/a6-full-colour-fl…
where are you located?
Commercial printer here. Hopefully I can shed some light on some of your options:
1) Commercial printing
If you are decided on 2500 per run then using a commercial printer will set you back ~$140-150 per run. My own cost is near $100 (assuming you want a decent 150gsm stock with 2 sided printing - note black & white vs colour at this price point is negligible) so you won't get it cheaper than $140.
But a smart thing to do if you know what the four runs artwork will be in advance is to get all four printed together. i.e. 2500 x 4 kinds. That way you don't have to pay the printer to get out of bed four times, just once. So for the total 10,000 flyers you'd be looking at ~$450 delivered to your door. Any printer will do this 4x kinds service for you, you just need to ask.
If you're trying to promote a business then avoid Vistaprint at all costs. They aren't competitive at this quantity anyway but the horrible stock, sh!tty presses and down right embarrassing processes (like rasterising all vector artwork to 300dpi) all result in a terrible end product. Any other printer in Australia is fine, we pretty much all use the same presses and certainly buy our stocks from the same sources anyway - other than Vistaprint, of course.
EDIT: I just had another thought, check on eBay and Aliexpress for Chinese printers. It certainly is cheaper to print in China, HEAPS cheaper and if you can wait the 4 weeks for delivery it might be a good path for you. The quality of Chinese printers is excellent. Not at all like Vistaprint… seriously. They use the same presses and stock we use in Australia and they conform to the same ISO certifications too.
2) Print it yourself
Realistically this is the cheapest option, if you have time to burn. The odd deal pops up on OzBargain for $20 printers with full starter cartridges now and then which will give you 600-800 pages, enough for one run of A6 flyers (4 to an A4 page). Buy four printers, plus a cheap guillotine, plus five reams of Reflex when it's on sale for $4 and you're away for <$120. Each lot of 2500 flyers is only 1250 cuts, which if you're getting through 5 sheets of paper at a time is only 250 times through the guillotine. But it takes longer than you might think. If doing it in front of the TV then account for at least a whole night per 2500 run.
Printers at this price range don't do auto-duplex so you will have to factor that in your hours too. Say a printer does 10ppm then running it through twice (front + back) is 500mins (8 hours) minimum just printing one set of 2500.
If you can wait a long time to get these printed then on Gumtree and Freecycle sometimes printers come up for free. Ink costs are varied though and it's not predictable what you might get or if it will even last long enough to get through a run.
3) Don't bother with flyers
While I'm no marketing guru, I have seen statistics showing that with unaddressed mail (junk mail) the absolute best result you can hope for is a 2% conversion rate. That is where Coles & Woolworths catalogues are at. Realistically you can expect a 0.5% conversion rate which means the printing, trimming and walking effort will result in 12 new customers. Now if you're selling diamond rings then go for it, but if you're flogging $5 ties then 12 new customers might not be worth your time. Also, from my own experience, flyers that are on Reflex paper, not colourful and just look like someone printed them at home like the "we buy houses" ones get thrown faster than the others. Yeah, they both get thrown away but at least the heavier, glossy, coloured cards might get more of a look in.
I guess what I'm trying to say in this last point is that maybe there is a different promotion you can spend you time on to get better results. Without knowing your business it's hard to give specific suggestions but I know for my business I get the best results by walking around to other businesses and introducing myself to the owners and starting conversations.
Having said that I quite like the idea of your continuing story week to week, I think it would help with grabbing attention. Anyway, best of luck!
EBay for a cheap second hand printer that can have its ink/toner easily refilled by yourself. I scored an awesome brother printer off ebay with dual A3 & A4 printing and scanning, Also ink cartridges and paper trays were all full ,for 99cents.
Some great info here - got something from most messages, so thank you all.
Using the specs of a Brother HL-2130, I listed every cost I could think of in a spreadsheet. Including a new laser printer (spreading its cost over 18 months in case the first one dies under warranty and only get 6 months out of its replacement), new drum cost (based on their page life), toner cost (based on page estimate they can print), even entered the printer wattage and average eletricity cost (this was neglible), paper, and more.
Time to print: 2 hours 24 minutes. Time to cut: 2 hours 5 minutes. Maybe the printer will pause a lot to cool down though. And I was thinking a big chunk of the printing time I could be cutting. But PBG suggests (and something in me is telling me the same) it should take longer. I allowed 4 seconds for each cut, 3 cuts per page, cutting 4 pages at a time - though!?
Anyway, total cost to deliver single-sided A6, four times, to 2500 mailboxes (10,000 total pamphlets), comes to $43.
4 seconds would be hard to keep up for hours! I think 10 seconds would be hard to keep up for hours when you consider cutting, straightening, aligning etc.
Except for that I reckon your numbers are ok for a business case, I still urge you to do a trial run, however.
If you are really printing thousands of pages a week you will quickly find the printer that accommodates the cheapest generic toner refills and longest developer drum life cycles etc. (hint, my suggestion of older HP workgroup printers wasn't idle!)Points taken - believe me. (Thread is bookmarked.)
With the paper slicer, after you get the sheets under the plastic guide/ruler, you just slide them forward the next two times. First cut is slower, but the next two are really quick.
I've seen a commericial guillotine at work. Thick bar comes down to compress, then slices through phone book thickness in half a second.
Sounds like you've done your numbers!
With the slicing, as mskeggs suggests it will be hard to keep up that pace, but one night in front of the telly is not really that much, certainly when its non-productive time anyway. Plus the setup, shifting paper around, there is ancillary time which will bump it to 3 hours. That's a full night for me (after I get the kids to bed).
If you can get away for $43 then I think its a no brainer, go for it :)
Thick bar comes down to compress, then slices through phone book thickness in half a second.
And only two fingers if you happen to be watching the Bachelor at that moment ;-0
The hinged guillotines from officeworks or similar are a reasonable alternative. They will cut, say, 8 sheets nicely. I notice they are available on ebay and elsewhere under $50.
http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/gbc-cl100-a4-office-guillotine-co9319?cm_mmc=google--pla--Guillotines
Print it at the office then cut them into 4.
Or see a professional printer, and get it cut with a guillotine. It's much quicker that way.
Where abouts in NSW are you? If sydney more specific?