Discount Cards

How to Start a Profitable Discount Card Business While Helping Charitable Groups in Your Community

The objective of this report is to show you how to produce a simple discount card for merchants and consumers in your community. We will show you how to get the merchants to participate, how to get your cards produced, and how to market your discount cards to people in your community.

Getting a Sponsor

The best starting point when producing a discount card for your community is to get a sponsor who will be the beneficiary of the project. Local youth groups or any other charitable group will prove worthy and would mutually benefit from a project like this.

Getting the Merchants

Discount cards work. Whether a merchant will admit it or not, they love discount cards. It brings new customers to the business, and brings old customers in more often.

When producing your discount card, you have to decide on a format or theme for your card. You have to decide what types of merchants to feature. (restaurants? hotels? retail stores? ) You have to decide how many merchants and the amount of discounts each has to offer in order to participate in your program.

For many merchants, participating in a discount card program is the cheapest, no-money-out-of-pocket way to advertise their business. All they have to do is offer discounts to customers who are already willing to purchase something -- the people who have your discount cards.

15 Restaurants 15% Discount

For the purpose of this report, we will produce a discount card that features 15 restaurants offering a 15% discount on meals. These restaurants can range from the low-end family diner to the most expensive restaurants in your area. In fact, it is the more expensive restaurants that like discount cards the best!

Once you have decided on your theme or format, it is time to start writing the restaurants in your area. You can mention to the restaurant owners that only 15 restaurants will be featured in your discount card, and that the sale of the discount cards will benefit the local youth club or whichever your charity sponsor may be.

You must prepare a simple one-page agreement where the restaurant owner or manager can sign, agreeing to participate in your discount program and promise to extend a 15% discount to anyone who presents your discount card when paying their bill.

Printing Your Cards

Print your cards the size of a business card or a credit card. On one side, put the name of your card and the name of your sponsor. For example, you call this card the "dine-around-town" discount card featuring 15 restaurants offering 15%. Use a colorful design to make it attractive and difficult to duplicate.

On the reverse side of the card, list all the 15 restaurants that are participating in your program and have their phone numbers and a brief description of the type of cuisine they serve. (Continental., French, Italian, Greek, Chinese, etc.)

There are two details you must attend to when producing your discount card: (1) Get your cards numbered. You can use a numbering machine which you can buy for around $60 each, or you can have them numbered by your printer. (2) Get your cards laminated after they are numbered. Not only will this prevent pilferage, it will also make your cards last longer.

Altogether, with 2-sided printing, a second color ink, numbering and laminating, expect to pay around 25ยข for each card. This means that if you ordered 2,000 cards, your cost is $500.

15-15-15

Get 15% discount at 15 restaurants for only $15. That's the slogan by which you can promote and sell your discount cards. But here's the clincher... You don't do any selling. This is where your charitable group/sponsor will come into play.

By selling the cards for $15 each, you can offer your charity sponsor to split the sales 50-50. You've done all the work, now it's their turn to market the cards to offices, other merchants and to consumers.

Getting Your $15,000 in 4 Weeks

For every card they sell, you get $7.50. You and your charity sponsor must mutually decide and agree how often you will do your accounting and how often will they have to give you money.

In general, if you have an influential group as your charity sponsor, they should be able to sell all 2,000 cards in a matter of 4 weeks. If such were the case, you can make an arrangement where they remit money to you every Friday. With a share of $7.50 per card, 2000 cards would bring you $15,000 - possibly within a short four weeks.


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