HOW TO BECOME A PRINTING BROKER

Everyone in any business, especially mail order, needs printing. But being
a printer takes huge, expensive printing presses, long hours and messy work,
right? WRONG! YOU can make money without the mess and expense by being a
PRINTING BROKER.

A printing broker is, basically, an order taker for one or more commercial

printers. You take orders for anything from business cards to circulars to
large printing orders, take your agreed upon commission, then pass on the
order to the printer.

The printer does the job and ships the order back to you or your customer, depending on your arrangements. Because the printer
won't insert any of his or her literature in with the job, YOU will get the
return orders and commissions. You can even insert some of your circulars

for your other products and services with the job, saving your mailing costs.

Here's what you need to do... Prepare a letter explaining your desire to
become a broker and mail it to all the printers in your area. The smaller
printers seem to be the most likely to work with you on this. Set up a time
to meet with any printers who are interested.

During this meeting, explain exactly what you will be doing (selling printing jobs by mail through advertisements in mail order publications). You won't have to explain much
because almost all printers are familiar with brokering. Usually, you
should be able to get a 20% - 30% commission agreement, though it may depend
upon the competition in your area between printers.

You should be able to find printers interested in working with you, even those who already have other brokers. Printing is a very competitive business and printers always
want more work.

So, you should have no trouble setting up connections. One good printer is all you need, however, being set up with more than one may
be an advantage (one may be cheaper for business cards than the other, who
may be cheaper at single sheet printing).

Try to get a price list of YOUR costs drawn up by each printer. This will
help you if someone needs a price quote on a job. Also, you can check the
mail order publications and see what other printers are charging. If you
can undercut them and still keep a good margin (which you should be able to
do, easily), you can make good money in this business.

Another good idea... Instead of a commission, you may want to set up a
"work account" with the printer, and get your printing done for free!

Printers hate to have "down time," where their presses aren't printing

anything.

Work out an arrangement where you will have flyers, circulars, ad sheets, etc, ready to be printed whenever the printer has down time.

Turn over the full amount of orders you receive, instead of taking your
commission, and get your printing done free during this down time! Most
printers will be more than happy to take this arrangement, and you can get
great benefits from it!

Be sure your printer will be able to deliver QUALITY products ON TIME.

These are the two biggest considerations to keep in mind when selecting a
printer or printers to work with. Get samples of their previous work.

Talk to them about the importance of being timely with the orders you bring
in. Most printers will be understanding of your concerns, and will do

their best to keep you happy, as you will be bringing in orders they

otherwise wouldn't have. You have the capability to bring your local

printer orders from across the country... building their business while
building yours! Printing brokering is an easy way to expand your profits

while expending little extra work.