When parents are getting ready to welcome a new baby into their family, it is one of the most exciting and magical parts of their lives. They just cannot wait to let the world know about their future baby and celebrate this once in a lifetime event with their friends, colleagues, and loved ones via pregnancy announcements. Instead of settling for the boring average card found at their local drugstore, they want to announce the new life in a special, fun, creative and cute way!

This is where you come in! If you are an imaginative, creative person, you most likely can come up with lots of unique ways to help these people announce that they are expecting. You can create cards with your own personalized sketches, drawings, cartoons, or silly rhymes. You could also use a program like Photoshop to alter a photo of the very pregnant mommy-to-be and make cards that are truly unique for the couple who is expecting!

You should sell the personalized cards in sets, starting with sets in increments of 10 for about $12 to $20 dollars per set. The cost would likely range between these prices to cover the time it will take you to personalize the card design and any special paper or ink requests. Offer your customers many design options. Some will want something along the line of a postcard and others will want something more elaborate like a wedding invitation with a glossy, colorful design on the front of the card and a foil-lined envelope. Having a selection of pre-made cards on hand for your customers to choose from can help them get a good idea of what they can potentially have created for themselves or allow them to choose a design that you have already created that will fit their personality and style.

You should create a website to help your potential customers find you and to allow them easy access to samples of your work. You can also use your website to provide them with pictures of the different grades of paper, envelopes, fonts, and inks available to them.

If your customers decide to have you create a card featuring the expecting mommy showing off her growing belly, encourage them to submit several clear photos taken at different angles so that you can create a selection of options using the photos along with different background options.

You could offer the expecting mother a wide range of theme backgrounds for the pictures of her with her growing belly. You could even use sonogram pictures. A few minutes of creative thinking would provide you with many more ideas, but here are a few to get you started:

- The mother sitting on the edge of a bird's nest and surrounded by eggs

- The mother standing with an image of a flying stork carrying a bundle in the background

- The mother sitting on an oversized flower, surrounded by petals

- The mother holding a bunch of balloons and drifting into the sky surrounded by clouds

- You could also come up with lots of creative one-of-a-kind designs to decorate the cover of other cards

- Draw a little cartoon of the baby flying its own little plane with a banner flying out behind it

- Seat the baby in it's very own little director's chair with a movie clapper and bullhorn handy announcing, "I'm coming!"

- Create a background resembling a sports trading card with family information and the due date in the place of sports score averages

The options really are endless. Use your imagination and offer the new parents something new and creative. No one likes to be boring and especially at such an exciting time in their lives, couples will want to create a pregnancy announcement that will potentially adorn the fridges and note boards of their friends and family.

In addition to the website you will be creating, you should also initially print up a flyer of some kind to help you spread the word about your new service. You can post these flyers in any location that groups of people generally frequent but especially in places such as hospitals, obstetricians' and pediatricians' offices, day care centers, preschools, playgroups, local photo labs, toy stores, and stores that sell baby products and maternity clothing. Don't forget about other places like grocery stores, medical services buildings, health food stores, libraries, and community center bulletin boards. Once your business is established, your amazing products and word-of-mouth sales will help your business grow and you will have a huge client base in no time at all!

Resources:

http://www.surfingbaby.com/

http://www.babycachet.com

http://www.birth-cards.com

http://www.fetalgreetings.com

http://www.littleangelannouncements.com