The size of the phones has decreased and the size of my bill has increased in proportion.

I don’t even use my cell phone all that much, so why is my bill almost $75 a month?  How did that happen?  I thought I was signing up for a $29.95 a month plan.  Oh yeah, there’s the system access fee, 911 fee and taxes. Don’t forget the text message fees. Who is sending me those text messages anyway?

A few months ago, I spend almost two hours on the phone with Customer Service (?) with my service provider to get to the bottom of who was sending me text message spam. Guess who it was? You get the prize! It was my service provider!

Okay .. that mystery was solved. Now to stop them. Not so easy .. I had to raise my voice  and refuse to hang up until someone promised to make the text messages stop. One more phone call and they stopped. Am I the only one that they did this to, or do you just ignore it?

Mistake #1 .. I wanted a Blackberry … Dumb, dumb and dumber! I’m often away from my home office and being able to access my e-mail 7×24 made sense at the time. I’m a geek and geeks like toys. My service provider wanted me to pay full retail for a Blackberry because I still had 15 months left on my contract. Okay, I’m not that dumb.

I went onto Craig’s List and found a Blackberry 8703e for a reasonable price. Met the fellow at the cell phone store to ensure I was able to activate it. Only an extra $15 per month for unlimited e-mail. Nirvana!

Well .. not so fast .. first off .. it’s a terrible phone .. Well, they don’t actually say phone do they? Just Blackberry wireless handheld .. It’s damn inconvenient to key on that teeny tiny keyboard with my chubby thumbs. Why didn’t I notice that BEFORE I bought it? The one more or less full sized e-mail message I sent was full of typos which I didn’t notice on the tiny screen.

I’ve owned the thing for 4 months and still haven’t figured out most of what it does. Yes, I know I have to take responsibility for that .. BUT .. it’s a phone .. when did it become okay to have to spend 4 or 5 hours learning to use your phone? Shouldn’t it be more or less intuitive?

The software that came with it was out-of-date (not so unusual), so I downloaded a newer version. Had to go to my service provider’s site and sign up for yet-another account. Took almost 25 minutes to download on fast broadband. HUH? .. I thought there must be something wrong .. apparently not .. Installation took another almost 15 minutes on an almost-new laptop. HUH?

Didn’t sync automagically, so I spend 20 minutes on the phone waiting for a support person to tell me to delete a folder. How much trouble is it to add that to the FAQ? Okay, it’s syncs now, sometimes. All this so I can replace my paper calendar and have all my contacts telephone numbers (and e-mail addresses).

I do have my Google calendars syncing to my Outlook calendars, so I do have a very detailed calendar on the Blackberry. Overkill maybe?

This is a lot of overhead for very little convenience. Did I expect too much? Am I cheap? (well, yes) Do I really need to be that connected?

Blackberry will be going up on Craig’s list soon.  Saga continues, stay tuned.

Do you have a “smart” phone? Is it worth signing your life away for 3 years and paying the monthly plan fees?

Just a note of caution: There is the potential to waste a lot of time on this task. Set a budget for your time as well as money. If you’re comfortable being online and you have the business cards you’ve collected at networking events all in one place, set aside a half an hour. Set a timer .. put a clock in front of you and stick to the time.

The first time you create a business card using Vista Print, or other service, it will take a bit longer. If it seems that it will take longer than a couple of hours, you should find a printer that you can afford to do it for you.

When you read the title of the post, did you think “oh, those awful cards with “Vista Print” on the back?
They look something like this.

The reason you see this card all the time is because it’s the card that displays when you click on ‘Free Business Card”.

Using my instructions, you can create a  great looking card in about a half an hour. I you can save $$ on small jobs like these, you’ll have the budget to hire a graphic designer when you need one (for a logo for example).

Let’s get started.

If you’re not creative (that would be me) quickly look through your box/drawer of business cards and find some that appeal to you. Don’t spend a lot of time, but find cards that you like and that are appropriate to your business. Got one or two?

Next click on “Premium Business Cards” and then “Browse Our Designs” on the Vista Print Site. You can search quickly by “Keyword” or “Industry” or “Style” or you can simply browse.

I’ve chosen this style because the information is on the right and there’s a graphic on the left.

The Color is wrong and the graphic needs to be replaced.

Click on “Select Design” then “Advanced Editing” just below the photo of the business card.

Time to change the color palette (bottom left hand corner). Click on “Change Color Scheme” and pick colors that were used in your web site, or other print material.

Enter your Information. You don’t have to worry about “coloring in the lines”. The field names are suggestions only and we’ll be making changes.

Got more information that there are fields, or want to group two or more lines together? Just hit the Enter key to create a new line in the field box.

Don’t worry about Font, Size, or justification at this point.

Now let’s replace that graphic. If you have a logo you want to use, you can upload it now. Vista Print often offers free uploads, otherwise there’s a one-time charge. For this exercise, we’re going to use a graphic from Vista Print.

Right click on the graphic and select  “search our image library” then enter relevant keyword for the search. In this case, I used “woman on telephone”. I moved the fields around, changed the font, size and color and added 4 lines of text in one of the fields.

Here’s my finished business card. (it’s a real business card  – one of my secondary businesses) I just changed the telephone number for publication)

Initial the front side and click on “Next” and then click on “Blank Back Side INCLUDED”, initial and click on “Next”. “Glossy Finish” is the only extra I’ll order. It’s about $5.99.

Now you will be bombarded with upsell offers. This is why the business cards are free. Be brave and careful you don’t order anything you don’t really need.

Shipping is the next big decision. If you’re not in a hurry, choose 21 days. It rarely takes that long and it’s the cheapest option. If I want the cards in a hurry, I choose the 14 day option. Again,the order rarely takes that long to arrive.

Okay, it took you longer to read this article than it would take you to create business cards. When you need to re-order it takes 5 minutes. (it takes time to wade through the upsell screens).

Fill in your credit card/PayPal information and you’re good to go. They take one last opportunity to upsell you after you’ve completed the order.

It’s my opinion that these business cards are as good quality than the “super special” from your local print shop. The main advantage of Vista Print is their design software. It’s very easy to use and I get exactly what I want.

If you have a requirement for a high end, die cut business cards then this service is obviously not for you. For the rest of us, Vista Print and services like it, provide a polished image on a shoestring.

So, how easy was that? What’s your excuse for not having great looking business cards?

Not so.

I assumed the cost would be more or less the same, since there’s a ton of companies that are selling domain names.

I did a Google search and clicked on the first entry (SEO consultants everywhere are cheering now).

I checked the domain name was available and my Firefox plug in entered my information. I chose the 2 year option. I wasn’t paying much attention, because I buy on-line all the time. I was reaching for my credit card when I noticed the charge was $70 .. okay, I must have chosen the 5 year option.

No, I chose 2 years .. $70 divided by 2 is HOW MUCH ??????? (the answer is way too much). Guess that SEO optimization cost them a lot of money and they want me to subsidize it.(SEO consultants are now throwing tomatoes at me).

My almost-ex web hosting company charges $10 per domain name.
I may be angry with them for their up-time issues, but I’m only buying a domain name. They won by default. I’ll leave these domain names "parked" there for now. There is no charge for parking domain names and there shouldn’t be a charge for transferring them either.

When I choose my new hosting company, I’ll ask them to move over these domain names, as well as my blog and two existing web sites. Most hosting companies will do that for you when you sign up with their service.

<Canadian rant on> I bought the .com and not the .ca because dealing with CIRA is a hassle. CIRA is the organization that’s mandated to administer .ca domain names. It’s a not-for-profit, but I swear it’s run by gold ex-bureaucrats. I just want to register a domain … not become a CSIS agent! <Canadian rant off>

How much do you pay for domain names?