[Killian]

Hi, i recently discovered a company that makes cd business cards, dont know if i can name the company but if u google "cd business cards" it comes up with a variety of results, i was just wondering if its a worth while investment for a company to use along side traditional business cards and peoples general opinion on them, would you be impressed if someone gave you one?

Killian

[Karen]

How pratical are they? (Mind you I have never seen one so I may be off base here)

I would think if someone hands you one then you would want to look at it... would you not? In order to look at it you need to load it into a drive? Is this correct?

If so, then having it handy to reference the phone number is pointless.... since you can even look at it.

Karen

[mediad]

CD business cards usually have your general contact info printed on them, but on the disk is usually a flash presentation (commercial), power point, or PDF files showing off your business. They are really good for giving out at trade shows, cold call sales where you just want to leave some info, or direct mail. They certainly aren't for everybody, but if your target audience is tech savy, they might appriciate the "cool" factor.

D.

[bigpund]

Im going to have to agree with D here with this one. If I were to get them made for my web development business I would have some sort of flash or powerpoint presentation on it telling about our services as well as giving a full run through of our portfolio which could be controlled by the user.

If you were thinking about them for everyday use, I dont think it would be worth the money to get them made up. The cost between custom made and printed CDs and some paper cards is a huge difference.

But if you had a special event such as a trade show or somewhere that you would be able to hand a bunch out in a short amount of time (somewhere that would require you to repeatedly tell about your business, services, etc) then they would be a good idea.

I had actually looked at this once as something to try out but minimum orders were way above what I was looking to do. I instead just made my own up using the mini-cds that hold like 200 mgs. I got the mini labels for them and printed them myself. Only made about 10 because thats all I needed. They seemed to work fairly well and people seemed to like them.

I am thinking about doing it again to. Lately I have been putting together a lot of information to send to different clients of over 20 paper pages that costs upwards of 3 bucks to send via the post office when I could get a bunch of the mini cds and send them out for much cheaper.

Did you have a certain business/venture that you would use them for? It really just depends on the type of business and how you will be giving them out I suppose.

Best of Luck

[GSchubert751]

Thier great for trade shows our to send out to somebody who wants information on your business, send them that instead of a huge packet of things.

[evolvingentrepreneur]

My initial reaction is that you would not get the return on investment necessary to cover your costs on the CD's. I feel that most of them would end up in the garbage unless you had something really, really riveting to share on the CD.

[fivemiledesign]

In my experiance with the little disks, the computer wouldn't read them.

I fix a tax ladies computer and the company who makes her tax software (Dunphy) gave her the updates this year, and last year, on a little disk like you are talking about. Last year it took forever to get her Dell computer to read it, and this year I had to put it into her other (custom built) computer, then transfer the files over the network to the Dell in order to get them to install.

Her Dell is around two years old.

I also remember in high school, about 4 years ago now (wow!) that we created a portfolio and burned it onto a little CD. I never used it.

Compared to the cost of a full sized burned CD and the little CD, I would think if you have something good to show that you would just accompany your business card with a full-sized CD containing your portfolio and advertisement. Half of my customers wouldn't know there's a smaller slot for the little thing in their CD-rom drive.


Eric

[mpnetwork]

A company that offers digital business cards is http://www.imediapro.com/. The system seems to work reasonably well for realtors and financial planners.

They are full-size CDs, animations are Macromedia Flash, so they will work in almost all computers. The cases are very professional.

Of course, the company recently went through a major financial crisis, from what I understand they a) underestimated how long it would take to make custom CDs (so they switched to more generic presentations) and b) the realtor customers we're defaulting on their payments.

The final product is very attractive however, and reasonably priced when all things are considered. Of course you have to be in one of the industries they cater to...