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Handwritten Postcard System Module 4, Video 1, Setting Up Your Cards To Print

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All right we are back. This is Rick Ginn with Handwritten Postcard System. We are in

Module Four.

Remember we have a total of four modules with the Handwritten Postcard System.

We’ve completed Module One, which is an overview of the direct mail system. In

Module Two, I walked you through how to acquire your mailing lists. In Module Three,

we actually set up your computer for preparing your postcards.

We are in Module Four. Right now we are going to be teaching you how to do the actual

printing and the settings and the mailing and follow up. Specifically in this module I’ll be

walking you through setting up your cards for prints. We will walk through the settings

and actually how to get your postcards printed. I will follow up with a second video in

module four. We’ll talk about the mailings and the follow up of your handwritten

postcards.

Let’s go ahead and get started. Let’s talk a little bit about the paper and the ink needed

for your postcards. Obviously your question should be, “Rick, where do I actually get the

postcards? How do I do this?” This is actually one of the easiest parts of the system. It’s

really simple. You are looking for paper with a 90 lb. to 110 lb. weight. The weight is

indicated on the side of the package, your average regular copy paper. The stuff you

use at home on your computer is 20 lb. to 24lb. weight.

I’ve experimented with every weight and size 90 lb. to 110 lb. is ideal. You can push it to

60 lb. but I’ve had much, much better results with 90 lb. to 110 lb. That refers to the

thickness of the card.

Let me go back here. The thickness of the card and the paper is usually referred to as

card stack, but as long as the paperweight is at least 90 lb. to 110 lb. you are in good

shape with it. The size is the same as you have as regular paper, 8 ½” x 11”.


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The color that works the best is absolutely white. I’ve played around with pastels.

Obviously we want to stay away from yellow. I’ll let you guys play around with it. White

will make your handwritten postcard pop the most, so I recommend not messing with it.

Here is a little snapshot. It looks just like a regular rim of paper. The information we

talked about above here will be right here on the side. You just read it. It might say card

stack sometimes it doesn’t but 90 lb. to 110 lb., 8 ½” x 11” and white.

I know you’re thinking, “Rick, the postcards are not 8 ½” x 11”.” This is real simple.

Refer to my diagram here. We’re going to cut the paper in quarters. When I say we, not

us, we’re going to have someone do it for us. They’ll do a cut across the middle and a

cut across here. I highly advise you not doing this. The cuts have to perfect and precise

because you have to load them in your printer. Each card will be 5 ½ “ x 4 ¼ “, give or

take.

We’re taking the ream. We are going to cut it in quarters. It’s the cheap and effective

way to get postcards. I’ve tried it every different way. Do not, and I repeat, do not use

the prepackaged index cards they sell in the office supplies stores. They’re way too thin.

Your machine will eat them up. If your machine doesn’t eat them up, I promise you the

post office will. The machines are set for a certain thickness for postcards.

Always make sure you use a matte finished piece of paper that means its regular

texture. The glossy print the ink will actually smear off of it. If you do that, you have to

get special types of inks, which are going to cost you a fortune. It will not look like it’s

handwritten.


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We basically take the reams of paper or, “How do I get a cut?” Just take it to your

nearest office supply store or like a Kinko’s and they’ll cut for pennies on the dollar. Just

tell them you need nice perfect precision cuts and leave it to them. It’s well worth it. It’s

very, very cheap. I wouldn’t worry about it.

As far as the ink, let’s first review it here. We’re going to be using an Inkjet printer. It’s

what I recommend. It’s what I use. A lot of people ask me, “Rick, what type of printer do

you use?” I like HP printers. They’re relatively inexpensive. They’re somewhat

workhorses for the real estate investor. I use a 6600. I also use – I believe it’s an 86000.

They come out with a new model almost every other year. These printers are like $99.

They do an amazing job.

I’ve used Cannons. I’ve used Brothers. They all seem to work well. They all have a little

bit different nuances. I’ll walk you through on how to get them set up. An Inkjet printer

as far as the ink colors let’s stick to what works. Think about what comes out of a

fountain pen: blue, black and red. Those are the colors I use 100% of the time. I’ve tried

green. I’ve tried purple. You missed the mark if you start trying strange colors.

Stick to blue, black and red. There’s a reason they work for the Handwritten Postcard

System because that’s what commonly is going to come out of a pen. You don’t see

many green or purple pens. Your motivated seller might think you’re a bit off the wall by

using those colors. What do we buy? The paper really simple – you can actually go to

the big box office stores and buy the reams of paper. I’ve seen them anywhere from $12

to $16.

You get 250 pieces of paper in the ream. If you do ¼ cuts you cut them in fours, you

wind up with 1000 postcards. You could see how this is extremely cost effective. I will

tell you this, if you want to go online and you’re a little bit patient, between Amazon and

eBay I get them as cheap as $8 a ream if you buy four or five or if you buy a case. Make


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sure you find the ones with free shipping, because the shipping can cost as much as the

paper.

Really simple, but sometimes when you’re in a hurry and you got to get them out, just

go pick them up at your local office store, hand it to the guy at the cut. Say, “Listen, I’ll

be back in a couple of hours.” Do your business, come back and they’re usually ready.

You pay for the paper and a couple of dollars for the cuts. You are all done with that.

As far as the ink yes, I know the actual ink cartridges you buy from HP and stuff they’re

an outrageous number. My opinion is I use remanufactured ink cartridges. You just plug

and play. I don’t want to get into complicated systems. Yes, you can use refillable ink

trays but it gets really mess. Quite frankly just go on eBay and you can buy a case of ink

specific for your computer. I recommend doing the remanufactured cartridges. They’re

safe on your computer. You can get them for as little as $2 to $3 a cartridge.

Really ink is not a big budget when I’m printing these cards. A lot of people think, “Oh

my gosh, the ink is going to cost a fortune.” I’m going to tell you. If you stick the

remanufactured cartridges, ink is really, really cheap. All you have to do is when it runs

out, you plug it under your cartridge and you’re done as opposed to a refillable system.

They’re really messy. You got to buy big giant things of ink. You won’t go through that

entire bottle in a fiveyear period. Keep it simple. Do what works.

Let’s actually walk through the printing of your postcards. We have two different types of

prints that we’re going to do. The first one is the Front Mail Merge. I walked you through

this one. This is our ten prints we did. I can look through. I’m looking to make sure all

the addresses fit on the paper, everything looks good. See how that Y got cut off there a

little bit, because we made it a little bit big. I’m just going to make sure that looks good.

Look it over carefully. Make sure if your return address make sure you got the correct

address and we’re good to go.


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The first thing I’m going to do is walk you through the settings in Word. What I’m going

to do is first go over to file, click file and go down to print. I’m going to walk you through.

Obviously you want to pick your printer. I have an HP 6600. Print all pages, one sided.

Most of these are defaulting. Go down here and make sure you pick landscape

orientation. As far as the side of the card they have so many options here. 4x6 works

the best for this setting.

Even though just to let you know your print might be 4 ¼ x 5 ½ . The 4x6 printing size

works the best. The margins just leave it alone. The one per page sheet, leave it alone.

That’s it. These are the actual settings that are in Word. The main thing is this will all be

set up for you. Make sure you have the landscape orientation and the size too set to

4x6.

If I go up to printer, and just below your type of printer you’ll see a little link there called

printer properties. When I go into this and click this, this is going to be specific to the

actual printer you’re using for printing your postcards. You’ll see up here HP Office Jet

6600. This is my printer. This is actually going into the drive and setting my settings for

my actual printer. Keep this is in mind, this works right here if you have an HP, if you

have a Brother, if you have a Cannon.

This is going to be just some general information. It might be a little bit different on your

computer, but keep in mind the same philosophy still applies. The most important thing

here is paper size. See all these crazy, crazy options I’m just going to click four by six.

You have to set the paper size for your printer and for Microsoft Word.

Media, it’s usually the default setting is plain paper. You want to go down and find an

option that says cardstock and click that. If they don’t have card stack, you can use

photo paper because it’s going to be about the same thickness. Don’t panic if you don’t


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see a card stock option. You can use photo paper. It should yield you about the same

results as card stock. I have card stack. I’m going to go ahead and choose that.

If you just do that you’ll have no problem printing the postcards. If you’re a little bit more

advanced, and you want to get the absolute maximum results, we have one more option

for you. Bear with me, you only have to do this once when you do it. If you clicked

“advanced” in your printer settings it will go to another box for you. Keep in mind this is

for an HP printer, which is what I’m using. It might be different for other types of printers

if you’re not using it.

The main thing you want to set is C resolution. Remember, we’re trying to lay down the

most ink we possibly can to make it look like a human hand wrote our postcard. Always

keep that in mind. I’m going to click that. I’m going to dropdown. I have draft mode,

normal mode, clean best, photo best, maximum DPI. I know you’re going to think, “Let’s

put it on 1200.” No, don’t do that. You’ll just smudge through a bunch of ink.

600x600 DPI, which is the best mode, will give you the best quality handwritten

postcards for your printer settings. If you see output quality it’s on best. Leave it on best

because maximum DPI tends to overdo it. That is it. Our resolution we’re doing 600 by

600. Output quality we’re setting to best. This is only in the advanced options. If you

didn’t touch the advanced options you’re still going to get a good quality print but this

puts your postcards right over the edge and really make it look like you have people

sitting in your house handwriting these postcards. Click ok and we’re all set. Our

settings are set.

Now we’re actually going to walk you through printing these postcards. We’ve done a lot

of work to set these up. I promise you, once you get the settings set and you have a firm

grasp on printing these cards, you can upload a list, load your paper, click print and be

done. We have 10 cards, so we’re all happy with them. What I do is I click through to


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review to make sure they all fit. I’m going to go click finish and merge, everybody see

that.

It’s going to give you three options. You shouldn’t have to edit individual documents. If

you do that you probably go to edit them all. Stay away from that. We’re obviously not

going to send emails with this. It would defeat the purpose. We want to click “option

two,” print documents. Merge to printer. You have a choice. You can click all, current

record or say you had 500 you want to print. My recommendation would be to first test

one.

Go ahead and click current and click okay. Print one print and make sure it looks of high

quality. If that’s okay, you can click all just like that. Make sure it’s set to your printer and

click okay. Now I’m printing 10 postcards. You see what actually happens. Say I’ve got

500, and my recommendation is you first print a test postcard. Once you’re comfortable

with the test I would print one through 25 to make sure they all look really good.

It’s really simple. Just take a piece of scratch pad and write down 25. What that will do

is print the first 25 postcards. I’m going to print again. Once you’re comfortable with that

and they’re coming out good, depending on how much paper you can load in your

printer you can step it up. Say you’re going to the second half, now we’re going to do 26

to 100 and just click okay. That’s the first part of that there.

Let’s go on to your second type of print. Remember, this print is for your mail merge on

the front of your postcard. Really simple just walk through your finish and merge and

select the print documents option and pick which option works the best for you.

Let’s talk about the back of the postcard. This is how we set it up with Sally Smith is the

real estate investor. She set up her personal information here: her name there, the

county, the phone number and her name.


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Once we have this all set it’s basically like doing a photocopy. This is even easier.

Simply go up to your file tab. Click print and what you’ll do is print it once. Take a look at

your postcard and make sure it looks a high quality. If you like the quality, just if you

want to print 25, click 25 and print. If you want to click say 100 and you want to put them

on your shelf, click print. What I recommend you doing is since your back print is pretty

much the same, if you switch counties.

Obviously you want to go in here and switch county. Maybe you’re going to Brevard

County instead of Orange County make sure you change that. If it’s a different area

code I recommend you changing the phone number. It will help you track your results

on your campaign which we’re going to go over in the next video. You can do that, but if

you stay ahead of it remember this is a twopart process the front and the back since

the back is pretty much the same.

Say you’re an investor who really only deals in one county then go ahead and print 500

cards and have them ready to go. When you have your lists you’re just uploading your

mailing list into the front of the postcard mail merge. It’s a onepart process. You stick a

stamp on it and it’s done and over with. The only difference here is click one for a test

print. Then print the desired numbers that you want to get done ahead of time.

I like to preprint 500 and keep them so I’m way ahead of the curve. That way if you get

in a jam and you got to print out postcards Monday morning, you can get them out by

the afternoon to get your phones ringing in the next few days. Real simple, just

remember on this one you’re clicking file, print and print. It’s that easy. Your settings

would have already been set in the previous front postcard print set up that we did.

They should all be about the same on this one.


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The only change I put on this one is I stretch it out a little bit more. You can put on there

a narrow margin setting, so it’s narrow and just click that. The only difference in the

settings for the back of a postcard is we make the margins a little bit wider. Obviously

you can put a little bit bigger print. That is it. You are absolutely ready to print your

postcards.

Remember print the back of your postcards first. That’s what I recommend. You can do

them ahead of time. You can click the print button. When you upload your mail merge

for the front of the postcard, get those in there. Click one test print first. Then allocate

how many your printer can handle. You decide how many your printer can handle by

how many postcards you can load into it.

My suggestion is don’t put like 300 and stick them in there. Start out light. Try 10 or 15.

Then you can find out the limits of your personal printer as you go through this process.

This is it. This is Rick. I am signing off on Video One and Module Four and Setting Up

Your Cards to Print, dealing with the paper and dealing with ink for the Handwritten

Postcard System.

I’m going to come back in the second part of video in module four and show you how to

do the mailing and how to do a simple follow up process. I will see you then.


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