PAFOA Informational Cards

[str8shooter]

Since it's my understanding that "The Club" was started as a means of supporting members to help improve the site, I started a new thread here rather than trying to whip the dead "business card" horse in the public thread.

A suggestion:

For each subscription, the contributing member could receive x number of informational cards, as pictured in Soberbyker's rendition. Or an electronic image version with permission to reproduce for distribution.

If the card is something extremely simple, such as Soberbyker's rendition of what the cards could look like, there's no indication of authority, membership status or really any personal association at all with the organization. It's just information in a wallet size form.

If this is another been there, not enough time idea, so be it. I'm not trying to rally support for the idea, just presenting an alternative that may pass the legal litmus test. I know a lot of closet gun folks who have the means of supporting the site, but if I say hey, go to pafoa.org, their mind is off on other things and they forget. If they pull a card out of their wallet while paying bills online, they may get curious enough to check it out and decide the site is for them.

[crakkajakka15]

Im all for this and think its a great idea......Id even be willing to possibly front some of the costs.

This is something i threw together real quick....simple...yet tell people what we stand for.



Front or Back


Back or Front

[danp]

Just to be clear, the pictures Sober posted are of actual cards, I have about 5,000 of them sitting on my desk. I just don't currently have a reliable distribution system for them. That project is on my list of things to do, but it's just not at the top of the list. Promoting PAFOA is important, but my focus right now is on expanding the services PAFOA provides.

My #1 priority right now is launching the PAFOA Blog.

[crakkajakka15]

Just to be clear, the pictures Sober posted are of actual cards, I have about 5,000 of them sitting on my desk. I just don't currently have a reliable distribution system for them. That project is on my list of things to do, but it's just not at the top of the list. Promoting PAFOA is important, but my focus right now is on expanding the services PAFOA provides.

My #1 priority right now is launching the PAFOA Blog.

Just asking Dan...define what a reliable distribution system is to you?

[danp]

Just asking Dan...define what a reliable distribution system is to you?

The first requirement is a system that can take, track, and handle the orders in an organized manner. This could range from emails/PMs (very poor system as it is easy to lose track and does not scale to more than one fulfiller, I really don't want to do this again) to a full blown ecommerce system (expensive)

The second requirement is at least one person to process the orders who can fulfill all orders within a reasonable amount of time, won't get bored of it after a month once realizing it's actual work. This could be me (if the amount of requests are low enough) or any number of other people (if required.)

Problems:

Email-based requests do not scale, it is very easy to lose track of who needs what, and who sent what to who. This system falls apart quickly as the number of orders increase and the number of people who fulfill the orders increase

Free eCommerce solutions: Suck, simply put they are absolute garbage and will cost us more money in wasted time and headaches than they will ever be worth.

Paid eCommerce solutions: Will cost us at least $50/mo + commissions. May not be able to handle free orders (such as free promotional cards, etc.) PAFOA can probably afford this, but we need to finish doing the research.

The reason I have such a hard time getting this up and running is because this is what I do for a living. My job is to design and program eCommerce systems for managing and distributing large amounts of inventory. I am almost TOO aware of how easily the system breaks down when you half-ass it and don't plan for growth.

Right now the question is: "How do we distribute free business cards and stickers?". But in a few months it will be "How do we sell t-shirts?" and then it will be "How do we sell all sorts of other stuff?" I don't want to end up running 3 different systems and I also don't want to end up jumping from one system to the next each time our needs change. The ideal situation is to dedicate the time to finding a solution that will handle our current and expected needs for the reasonable future. Unfortunately right now my time is dedicated to researching solutions to other problems

[crakkajakka15]

Although there are great companies out there that specifically specialize in business cards and other stationary on the web that allow you to publish your card with them and then people can visit said companies website and place a order and they take care of tracking and shipment of the order in an end to end process. Unless you are wanting to make a profit off these informational cards. Seems like it would just be alot easier of a process. Rather than trying to design and implement your own system.

To your question on how to distribute these free cards.....how about just making an official design and putting it into a downloadable format, then the user can print their own to take it somewhere to have done professionally.

[danp]

Although there are great companies out there that specifically specialize in business cards and other stationary on the web that allow you to publish your card with them and then people can visit said companies website and place a order and they take care of tracking and shipment of the order in an end to end process.

Problem is then the company will charge people for them. I don't want to charge people for the privilege of promoting us, that's silly, haha.

Unless you are wanting to make a profit off these informational cards.

Absolutely not, in fact I'm trying to find a system that WILL let me give them away for free while ALSO supporting the ability to charge for things like t-shirts once we sell them again.

To your question on how to distribute these free cards.....how about just making an official design and putting it into a downloadable format, then the user can print their own to take it somewhere to have done professionally.

I'd like to do both in the end. Make professionally printed ones available, but also post the templates in PDF form to allow people to print them out.

All on the TODO list, it's just a mile long!

[gunga]

I'd like to do both in the end. Make professionally printed ones available, but also post the templates in PDF form to allow people to print them out.

I bet that many members (myself included) would be happy to spend $10 to buy a pack of print at home business cards for $10 (like these), download a PDF from this site that is built for the specific avery business card template number, and print themselves off some info cards to give away at the range, shows, shops, LEO's, etc.

No reason IMO to build a big payment, order processing and distribution operation if all people want is a simple card to pass out. After all, whether I donate $10 to PAFOA and you buy the cards and mail them to me (hassle), or I spend the $10 myself and print them at home, the result is the same.

[crakkajakka15]

I'd like to do both in the end. Make professionally printed ones available, but also post the templates in PDF form to allow people to print them out.

All on the TODO list, it's just a mile long!

OK so putting them up in a downloadable format is still on the table?


Thats sound like it could be done fairly quickly and easily. I say throw the templates together and post them up....I think thats what most of us wanted from the get go anyway. That way they would be "free" but if the user opted on their own to get them printed for theirself that would also be a viable option they could partake on their own.

[danp]

Thats sound like it could be done fairly quickly and easily. I say throw the templates together and post them up.

That's easiER. I have them somewhere in illustrator format but no longer have illustrator and I doubt many people who will download it will. I'll need to find a way to convert it to a PDF people can easily print. It'd probably take a good few hours to get done unless I can find someone else with the tools/skills to do it (which would also take time) Those few hours are booked for a bit unfortunately with higher priority stuff. That's all I'm getting at. Nothing is "easy" unless you have unlimited time and resources