Cheap Card Stock for Printing Your own Postcards

[Shaun Reilly]

Bouncing around ideas and one I had was printing off my own postcards and sending them out using EDDM.

The USPS has some weird rules about the sizes so I am trying to figure out what makes sense. 12x12 seems like a size you can get without much trouble and a 6x12 piece seems to fit the EDDM guidelines so I was thinking of getting 2 pieces per sheet on something like this.

I should note I do want to do a saturation mailing which is why I'm thinking EDDM. I also WANT the pieces to look kind of cheap so printing them myself works for that. :)

However the point if for minimal costs. Most things I have quickly found online for cardstock is over $0.10 per piece which is way too much. That would put the total with postage at like $0.26 a piece minimum without accounting for ink. Looks like you can get a mailing house to do a run of slightly smaller cards, do the EDDM packaging, and with postage for only like $0.10 for runs in the 2,500 piece range. That is a lot of work to save for $250!

Anyway I think I would want the price per piece to be topping out around $0.20 to consider it possibly being worth it. Anyone have ideas on getting cardstock that might make this possible?

[Aaron Norton]

You can try blanksusa.com. They sell printing materials and have sheets of postcards. I know that they sell a package of 250 sheets that are 5.5x4.25 for about $75. However, you will have to account for the printer that you are planning to use. Most of the disposable printers that you buy off the shelf have costly inks that make it expensive to bulk print yourself. You will want a laserjet printer that is capable of printing on multi-weight paper (and sized including 11x17) for card stock so that the message does not rub off in the mail as they are being shuffled around. The toner cartridge should be rated for 5000+ copies. They generally run around $150 each. Ultimately, cutting out the middleman on printing is going to be an investment that you may not see a savings in right away, but best of luck.