Printer / Publisher / Business web-to-print

The only service you pay for is when a printing order or an ad booking is placed.

The base price is US$1.7 per order. Other countries and currencies are available.

Full pricing information for:

• Printers
• Publishers
• Businesses

Free services include Pre-press file transfer, Quoting service, Directory listing and more.

Designer web-to-print account

Designer accounts are FREE. More over, we PAY YOU!

• A base commission of US$5 per page is paid to you every time your design is used.
• Many of our customers are hiring designers to help manager their web-to-print sites.
• We occasionally buy designs from freelance designers to fill a particular niche.
• More about payments …
  

Consumer prices

Prices for products and designs supplied by our customers (printers/publishers) is regulated by them.

Prices for designs supplied by our design community are set at $10 per page. 50% of that amount goes to the author as a commission. E.g a personalized poster is $10, a double-side business card is $10 x 2 = $20

All designs from our design community are FREE while we are “in beta“!

Get a free one now!

No booking - no charge

The only service you pay for is when a new ad is submitted for publishing.

• Australia - $2.2 or less per booking
• EU - €1.3 or less per booking
  
• New Zealand - $2.5 or less per booking
  
• UK - £0.85 or less per booking
• USA - $1.7 or less per booking
  
• Other countries - US$1.7 or less per booking
  

Contact us with your volume requirements over 1000 orders a month for special pricing.

Free services

• Pre-press file transfer
• Quoting service
• Directory listing

Our price promise

We will try adjust the price so that the overall annual cost for you is lower than of any other similar service or software.

Payment options

• Credit card
• Direct payments to our bank account
• PayPal

All charges are billed monthly to you as a printer / publisher. Read more in the billing section.

Free unlimited trial

We offer free unlimited use of the website until it really works for you. Get those ad bookings rolling in first. Free assistance for setting up and artwork conversion is available on request.

Account features:

• A standalone web-to-print site
• Custom domain name, custom branding
• Add users / designers
• Manage web-to-print orders
• Full control, unlimited usage, unlimited number of users, unlimited number of catalogs and templates
• Pay per order

Designer web-to-print account

Account features:

• Create web-to-print catalogs
• Upload web-to-print designs
• Work for printers, publishers and businesses on their web-to-print sites
• Free unlimited usage
• Get paid per order
• More …
  

User web-to-print account

This is an end consumer account and does not require registration at this stage.

Just get started.

Design types

We buy almost any designs as long as they are practical and can be converted into templates.

Some common web-to-print designs inlcude:

• business cards
• greeting and postal cards
• calendars
• leaflets, brochures, booklets
• posters
• logos
• print advertisements
• illustrated books

Practical: the web-to-print design is a complete product for an end user, not just a pretty picture. E.g. an illustrated book where users may type in their own story is practical, but a single book illustration is not.

Convertible: the design was produced using vector application (Freehand, AI, InDD, CorelDRAW, Quark Xpress, etc) and the variable texts are stored as texts, not images nor curves.

Buying process

Email your designs as images to admin@zetaprints.com for consideration. We may also need to see the vector files to ensure they are convertible.

Option 1 - sale as a design

We can purchase a design before it is converted into a template and give it to another designer to do the conversion. Your authorship will be acknowledged, but the commission on sales will be paid to the other designer. You get paid within a few days after the designs have been checked.

Option 2 - sale as a template

You convert your designs into templates and upload them to ZetaPrints website. We pay within a few days after the template has been tested by us. You retain full copyright and our standard commission on all sales.

This is the preferred option. We will give you necessary assistance to understand how to convert your designs into templates.

Payments

We prefer to pay via Paypal upon completion of your assignment.

The prices range between $3-$10 per page of design or per single item.

Sample design prices (option #1):

• Simple logo - $3
• Really cool logo - $5
• One-side business card - $5
• Double-side business card - $5 x 2 = $10
• A4 leaflet - $7
• A4 double-side tri-fold brochure - $7 x 6 = $42

Sample template prices (option #2):

• Logo - $5 to $7
• Everything else - $7 to $10 per page

Free: you do not need to pay us anything, but we will appreciate a donation to a charity of your choice as a token of appreciation and good will.

Websites for printers

Websites for printing companies have several essential features, like this demo site:

• Information about the business
• Large file upload
• Quote request
• Link to web-to-print service
• Downloads library

We have several options based on a very popular open source platform - WordPress.

The website is easily customizable. New features can be easily added by anyone, any time. The look and feel of the website is based on themes you can purchase on the Internet or download for free. There are literally thousands of them.

Time to go D.I.Y. ?

The times of paying big money to a web design company for hosting and maintaining a basic website are over. You or any of your computer savvy staff can do it with ease at an annual cost of under $90.

Read our free printer’s website manual on how to build and maintain a website. It is not for “geeks” or “nerds” any more - anyone can do it.

D.I.Y. - some computer knowledge and a few hours of your time will buy you a great looking and fully functional website. Read the manual.

ZetaPrints assistance - find hosting and a skin for your new site, give us the access details and one of our web admins will install and configure it for you for free*. Takes about 15 minutes. We get you started and you pick it up from there. Read the manual.

Full service - even full installation, configuration and customization service should not cost much. We have some good trusted partners to help you with that. Still, read the manual first.

No copycat content ever

It makes no sense to have a website with the content identical to someone’s else as many “websites for printers” type companies do. Search engines recognize duplicate content and mark such websites as spam or mirrors. They will never come up high in search results as a consequence. What’s the point of having a website if no one can find it?

We help you set up a great looking and functional website, but you need to spend some time telling the world about your business. it easy, it’s fun and no one can do it better than you!

Basic websites

A website for a printing company should not cost you any more than a few hundred dollars, depending on how much custom design work you need. Read about our free website for printers project. The time of paying thousands of dollars for it are in the past.

• How do you manage the content?
• How much storage do you get?
• Monthly traffic allowance?
• Can you add new functionality later (widgets)?

File uploading

File uploading is simple, but can be quite limiting if not done right.

• What’s the largest file size?
• How much storage?
• How long will the file be retained?
• What are the traffic limits?
• Will the transfer resume from the last known point If a connection breaks?

Quoting interface

The main question is usability. Ask a friend unfamiliar with printing and publishing to fill in the form. Most of those quote request forms are way too complex for the average print buyer. Potential customers will not even try to get a quote from you if the form looks complex.

Template preparation

The cost of preparing a template should be no more than the cost of making a design. Existing designs should be easy to convert into a template. Making templates can quickly become an impediment and a major cost center.

• How much work do you need to do to turn a design into a template?
• If you make changes to the design, do you need to start it all over with the template?
• How many different applications do you need to prepare a template?
• Do you need to start over if you give the design to someone else to make changes?
• What are file size limitations on the template file?

Pre-press

The files you get from your web-to-print site should be press-ready. The proofs users see should be a user-friendly representation of what the final product will look like, not a 6-up imposed PDF with crop-marks and densitometer scales.

• Do you have full control over color spaces and spot colors?
• Can you separate proofs shown to the customer from the imposed files you get for pre-press?
• What choice of PDF versions and features do you get?

Design limitations

Can you go beyond simple business card designs with straight lines and rectangular images?

Most simple web-to-print systems have very limited design capabilities. The business card demo may look good, but few real life designs are that simple.

• What parts of design can you make variable?
• Can you use gradients, transparencies, drop-shadow, custom outlines, perspective, distortion, text on path, lens, blending, filters, clip-paths and other essential design techniques for the variable part?
• What are the maximum and minimum canvas sizes?
• What resolution can be used? Is it fixed or flexible?

Fonts

You will need to upload your own fonts sooner or later, no matter how many fonts are already installed on your web-to-print server.

• Can you upload your own fonts?
• Do you have to pay for uploading your font?
• Do they need to be manually installed?
• What if you upload two different looking fonts with the same name?

Rules and constraints

Templates need to have a certain level of flexibility for user input variations. Corporate designs require constraints to preserve the branding. On the other hand, making the rules too strict will mean lost business for you in special cases when the rules do not apply because the system will not accept the data and the user will give up.

• User image quality control: resolution, size, color space.
• Lengths: minimal, maximal.
• Automatic formatting and validation: phone numbers, emails, web addresses.
• Casing: automatic case change to lower case, UPPER CASE, Title Case, Sentence case.
• Drop downs with predefined values.
• Will the rules and constraints stay if the template is re-uploaded?

Some software is made smarter than the users. It will not let the user do something it thinks is wrong, even if the user is right. For example, it wants to see all phone numbers as (area code)-phone number and the user wants to enter 1-800-number.

Cost of maintenance

How big are you going to grow your web-to-print service? Will it be 20, 200 or 2000 templates?

How many users?

The maintenance of the product database, prices, user lists, discounts and other details becomes prohibitively expensive as soon as you get over a certain volume. There must be some ways of applying changes in bulk or through

Vendor consulting

Consulting services offered by software vendors are a sure sign you will need them to get their solution going and maintained. Add it to the cost even if you don’t expect to.

• Can you realistically install their software yourself?
• Do you need their help with template development?
• Do you need them to be involved every time you want: a new font, new template, new library image, new user, new something else?

Web-to-print & new customers

Having a fancy website without good sales people and smart marketing won’t bring new customers. The technology is only one of components of the service a printer provides. Do not oversell it. Price, quality, delivery times, etc are more important to the customer. Web-to-print adds convenience to the overall process and reduces costs at both ends. The technology is only beneficial when both price and time are a priority consideration.

End consumer products

The competition in this market is fierce. Several established players like VistaPrint, Click Business Cards, 123 Print and many-many others have large scale operations, rock-bottom prices and huge advertising budgets. It will be very difficult for a small player to get noticed.

Google search results

“business cards” - 36,400,000 results

“business cards plumber” - 479,00 results

The first 10 pages are taken by old, well-optimized websites. It will take time and effort to move your website to the top of search results.

Google advertising

Search engine advertising is very expensive for popular keywords.

Assume that optimistic 10% of clicks result in an order.
284 clicks * 0.1= 28 orders a day at a cost of $127.5 per order ($3,570 / 28).

Corporate products

Web-to-print is an excellent sales tool. It gives your sales people a good excuse to call a potential corporate customer because you can offer what others cannot. Businesses with large number of customer-facing staff or those who order and re-order often are your best bet. Remember that their time spent ordering a product from you costs them money and lost productivity, but don’t be surprised if they don’t like doing it online. There are plenty of people who prefer the old way.

Charging a premium for your online services is risky, because your competitors don’t

The effort of setting up a template is roughly equivalent to processing 2 orders manually. Will they order often enough?

Brands and franchises

A deal with a franchise head office or a brand name holder is an excellent opportunity to get high order volumes at very little customer acquisition cost. Web-to-print is perfectly suited for this type of customers. The technology does make a big difference here.

Brands and franchises - partisan approach

A lot of master franchises and brand name holders neglect the printing and advertising aspect of their business or demand exuberant prices though “preferred suppliers”. It leaves the franchisees unhappy and looking for better alternatives. Usually it is not difficult to identify individual franchise holders and approach them directly with your offer. It should be very easy for you to beat the prices demanded by the “preferred supplier”.

A good service, low prices and the convenience of web-to-prit will quickly bring you more franchise members through word of mouth. You can achieve the same low customer acquisition cost and web-to-print technology makes all the difference.

Consider copyright and trademark issues. Their head offices may not like your approach.

Niche consumer products

We see some incredible examples of web-to-print being used for niche products of all sorts and kinds. It is all about knowing that niche market and having access to the customer base. A simple example - greeting cards. Who would think that apart from a few big players there are successful printers servicing tiny micro-markets where good service, right price, excellent designs and the convenience of web-to-print bring very good order volumes.

Conclusion

Web-to-print is only a tool and will not replace your sales and marketing. You can extract only as much value out of it as you put into promoting and selling your services.

No matter how good your web-to-print software is, but if the price is too high or the quality is too low it cannot not help you get more business through the door.

Who’s behind the hype?

The vendors. We get on average 1 email a week with offers of web-to-print software of all sorts and kinds. Usually they promise a rosy future as soon as we buy and install their software. It is understandable - they need to sell. Read on to find out why this statement from one of the promotional emails is misleading:

Web-to-print flavors

There is no exact definition what web-to-print is. It presumes a website with some feature set to facilitate transactions between print buyers and a printing company or advertisers and a publication. Web-to-print solutions can be categorized by their features:

• Basic: Website for a printing company
• Useful: File transfer and quoting
• Fancy: Design it yourself
• Advanced: Template based

Read more what is behind each of these types and how to get them for FREE.

Build it and they will come

One of the main misconceptions about web-to-print is that it’s a magic technology to boost your sales the day you buy it. At least this is the picture software vendors portray to the industry, but nothing can be further from the reality. Read what it takes to make your web-to-print a success.

Web-to-print is a growth tool

There are only 2 real benefits of web-to-print:

• convenience
• cost reduction

Everything else is a flow-on effect. The real value of web-to-print technology is in supporting your growth, because you can do it at a faster pace without increasing your design and administration resources. The cost reduction benefit depends on the Cost Per Order.

Is web-to-print right for you?

Answer these simple questions and decide for yourself if web-to-print software can help you.

Growth:

• Do you want to grow?
• Do you want to increase your market share?
• Do you want to explore new markets?

Product types:

• How many orders are alike?
• How many are repeating orders and re-orders?
• How many designs can be templated?
• Are most of your jobs unique or one-off?

Resources:

• Do you have sales and marketing capacity to promote your web-to-print service?
• Who will convert customer designs into templates for you?

Customer types:

• Do your customers need personal assistance and advice with every order?
• Are your customers capable of using the Internet?

Reasons to skip

Many printing and publishing businesses are quite happy the way they are and don’t want to grow. Some others do not see the Internet as an avenue for expansion.

Not every printing business can benefit from what web-to-print has to offer at this stage of technological development, but watch out for your competition. They may figure out how to use the web and take over some of your customers before you realize what is happening.

Value for money

Purchasing a piece of web-to-print software is only one of many expenses a printing or publishing businesses will need to incur before any return on investment. Read about hidden costs and many pitfalls to avoid.

Website for printers

It’s the most basic offer you can find. In the nutshell, it’s an informational website about your printing business. It would have information about your business, equipment, capabilities, contact details and so on.

There is no need to pay money for something as simple as this because you can get it for FREE. We have detailed D.I.Y. instructions on how to put a really cool website together in a few hours and host it for $5 a month.

File transfer and quoting

File transfer and quoting can be bolted on top of your basic website structure. Customers can send you their files or fill in a form to request a quote. The price for this service has fallen through the floor and you can get free file transfer and free quoting in minutes.

Design it yourself

Anyone who can produce a design already has tools to do it. Most users do not want to design. They prefer to find a design they like and personalize it. This type of web-to-print software is only suitable for low end consumer products. The price for a design-it-yourself solution can be as low as $5. Get one now.

Template based

Template based web-to-print is ideally suited for business printing.

1. Corporate customers have to adhere to their branding.
2. They re-order often enough to justify the investment in making a template.
3. The simpler and quicker the ordering process is the more corporate customers like it.

There are many flavours of template-based web-to-print software, but the essence is the same: choose from a list of templates, type in your text, upload images, press the button and it’s all done for you. The fundamental difference for the business is in the technology used to prepare the templates and the cost per order.

PDF templates

PDF is fixed layout format designed to present the final output. Using PDF as your template is very limiting. Web-to-print systems have all sorts of PDF editing interfaces to make them usable as templates, but nonetheless there are too many limitations. This type of web-to-print is more than enough for simple products with straight text lines like business cards. It gets more difficult with creative designs where the variable elements undergo transformations like gradient fills, transparency, drop shadow, etc. The time it takes to explain what is what in your PDF to the web-to-print system may be more than what you save on taking a few orders.

InDesign and Quark Xpress templates

InDesign and Quark Xpress are the most advanced application used in pre-press and layout work. The cost of deploying their server solutions is very-very-very high. It is affordable to large printers or publishing houses only, but the ROI can still be questionable.

CorelDRAW templates

CorelDRAW is another well-known and respected vector graphic application. Our hosted web-to-print software accepts CorelDRAW files. The great advantage is that all the field names, layout rules and other constraints are right there in the file. You simply upload it and it’s ready to go. The cost of building the templates is brought to the minimum. E.g. you can convert a PDF file into a CorelDRAW template in about a minute.

CorelDRAW templates provide the best value for money with minimal design limitations.

Interface

It’s not always possible to make the site look exactly the way you want. We offer some extensive customization features, but it may not be enough for you. An alternative is for you to produce a custom web-to-print interface linked to our back-end.

Workflow

The workflow for preparing a book using web-to-print is slightly different from the one for postcards or internet banners. Our web-to-print workflow is generic enough and is designed to be as simple as possible. An alternative would be for you to develop your own web-to-print workflow connected to our back-end. An easier options is to tell us what is missing from our web-to-print workflow and we may add it in for you.

Cost

A large business may see purchasing and installing their own web-to-print system as a more viable option because they can afford it. Whether they are going to be better off going that route is another question.

Data security

Keeping your data on someone’s else server may be a frightening proposition for some. Many software vendors have unfair privacy and copyright policies where they become the owners of any data uploaded to their servers.

Anything you upload to ZetaPrints belongs to you. We will never share your data with anyone else, nor we will ever contact your customers, except for technical support matters.
See our privacy policy.

“Not under my control”

Some business managers need the absolute control over their operations and cannot delegate it to anyone. We will appreciate a chance to prove our worth as a trusted partner you can rely on. There is no expense in setting up, so why not give it a try?