It has always been said that what you don’t know is beyond you, and there is no falsehood as to this statement. It’s easy for people to look at at a project from afar and assume this will be very hard and difficult to do. But sometimes, when you get closer enough, you’d find out that those assumed obstacles are not as difficult as you’ve perceived it to be. It’s the same when it comes to the printing business.

The good news is that you no longer need long training to go into this business, and gone are the days you’d need to get all your body stained with ink to get a printing job done! The continuous improvement in technology has removed a lot of stress that getting a printing job out is just at your finger tips. All you need to do is to have the knowledge of the basic need.

Digital Printing Machine

It is my humble wish that you start good business this year that will transform the way you make money and I think this business of printing is one solid and sure means of doing that. One thing funny about this is that it is ridiculously simple and easy, and you don’t need any formal training to be in it.

Now, let me explain step by step and you will see why I said it is ridiculously easy and simple, yet makes more money than the average business of it’s type.

Basically, you need two group of people to work with to be in the printing business; The Graphic Artist and The Printing Press. Let me explain what they do which will indeed will be almost the whole process.

Get a good Graphic Artist

Who are graphic artist? The computer people who does the designing and art work of the printing work before it goes into the printing press. Go any near by computer center and you’ll see one or two. Always make sure you look for good ones. Not all graphic designers are creative and you need a creative designer who would not just design but use his imaginative instinct to bring out the best in his design.

With the job of a graphic artist, you can get all your art work designed. If you want the job to be four colors, it will be designed in four colors, if you want it in three colors, it will be designed in three colors, if you want it in black and white, it will be design thus. Having got the graphic work done, the next thing will be the Color Separation. The color separation is also done by the graphic artist and it’s almost the same thing with slightly different process.

The Graphic person does your designing and color separation, and save it in Flash drive or CD for you which you’ll take to the separating system. They in turn, transfer the work into their computer and run a cross check on the work. If there is any error, they’ll make amendment before transferring  it to the separating machine. Within some minutes, that will be done and the and job will come out in Photo Film with different sizes. When that is done, next will be plate making.

Plate Making.

Depending on how you want the job done, at the end of the color separation, the next step is plate making. The plate making is the transferring of what’s in the film into a plate that will be used to Run Impression. Now, this also depends on the number of color you want your job to be in. If you’re printing in four colors, you’ll make four plates, likewise there’s going to be four films because, it’s what is in the film that will be transferred into the plate.

After the plate making, the next thing is to look for good printing machine with good operator who will carefully run your printing work through the machine.

Get good Printing Machine.

Based on the size of the work, each machine has size of plate they run except for the giant printing press that runs multiple plates, and digital press that doesn’t require plates or film, but their work may be more expensive. Now, back to the normal printing machine, we have: Cord, A-4 Size, A-3 Size, and so on, it is the size of the work that will decide. Any form of printing job you want to do. there is always a machine to match the job. So, be worry less about type of machine.

Now that you know the people you’ll be dealing with at any point in time, let’s go proper into the business we’re talking about. Or rather, “How do you use these process of PRINTING to generate money?” Here we go:

Step One: Look for customers. This is where your N6,000 start up capital will come in handy; run a publicity with the money to let people know that you render printing services to willing clients. The best publicity is “Classified Advert” A Classified Advert is that small box where people post their change of names or do small advertising in Newspaper publications. Pick up a punch, guardian or any other newspaper and you will find such boxes.

As small as those boxes are, it minimizes the cost of advertising and also surprisingly reach out to people quickly as the headline speak for the product advertised. For a business person who don’t have the financial resources to place a full or half page advert which cost as much as N500,000, the Classified Advert is the best place to advertise. So also it applies to you. And more conveniently, it costs as little as N5000 to N6000 (in the newspapers).

Make sure you include your phone number for prospective clients who see the ads to contact you with. Now that you’ve set the business rolling, make sure you’ve done your research about cost. The materials that the job will be printed on, there are different materials that is available for printing. Suppose you want to print a book, there are different sizes or thickness of sheet of paper you want to use and the kind of job also you want to print. Take for example you want to print a Complimentary Card or Wedding Invitation, there are different kind of paper for complimentary that you can use.

There are ready made cards you can just buy and print on, there are also available sheet of paper you can buy, print on them and use sheet cutters to cut them to size. It is therefore, wise and reasonable for you to take a survey of the market price of the materials in advance to enable you make your job quotation properly when you’re giving prices of work to your customers as they starts coming.

As a beginner, it will as well help you to ask questions from the sellers of the material, the operators of the printing press, and others that are experienced in the job of printing. Before you give price to a customer, make sure you know the cost of the material that will finish the job.

Step Two: Charge your customers and let them pay you some money in advance, the money they pay you is what you will use to buy the materials and finish the job, the balance should be your gain.

Step Three: Buy the paper that the work will be printed on ( don’t forget the correct price of papers before you quote for the job you will do so that you don’t give wrong price.) Take the paper to the printing press to run the impression. When that is done, take the work to the cutter to trim the paper to neat size.

It is after all these that the job can be delivered to the customer, and if the delivery requires extra cost, add it to the total cost of the job. Don’t be too emotional, and do not do a guess work when giving prices because your clients wouldn’t listen to your complains if you fail to give them the type of quality of job they want.

If the total cost of delivering the job is N20,000 and you charged you client N35,000. Your profit will be N15,000. Multiply that by 20, you’ll be making N300,000 from that number. Remember, some printing jobs do run into hundreds of thousands or million. The potential is just unimaginable. So, go ahead and take this opportunity now! You only need N6,000 to start.