1. How much is your time worth?
Take your annual gross and divide it by 2080 to get their hourly wage. In this example, I’ll use
$20.00 an hour. Now, Christmas card season is coming up. How many hours do you spend
buying the cards at the store, printing out labels, sticking the labels on the envelopes, putting
the postage stamps on and mailing them? I created an estimate of how much time it takes to
send about 100 Christmas cards.
1. Go to the store (20 minutes)
2. Browse the Christmas card aisle (20 minutes)
3. Sign all 100 Christmas Cards with "Love, The Samuels" (40 minutes)
4. Insert all the cards into the envelope and moisten the flap to close the envelope. (1
hour)
5. Update your Christmas card list in Excel (30 minutes) from scratch a little bit longer
6. Set up mail merge in Word to create address labels and return address for all 100
people (30 minutes)
7. Stick the address labels on to the envelope (40 minutes) (Are you tired yet?)
8. Stick the postage stamps onto the card (40 minutes)
9. Take them to the post office (20 minutes)
The total of your hard work is about 5 hours. So if you got paid to send your Christmas cards it
would be $20.00 * 5 hours = $100.00 and that doesn't include the cost of the purchase of the
cards. For a box of 100 cards it will be $60 plus postage of $44.
Okay we have $100.00 for your time, $60 for the cards and $44 for the stamps that equals to
$204.00.
Now remember you would have to spend the same about of time and money next year with
the manual system.
Now, I'm going to calculate the time it takes for me to send Christmas card through my online
greeting card company.
1. Log into www.freeprintedcard.com (1 minute) (See PowerPoint presentation)
2. Purchase $99 package (one time fee) and 200 points (2 points per card)$98 and deposit
$44 for stamps (10 minutes)
3. Create a group (xmas card 2010) (4 min)
4. Edit and upload Excel file with all recipients address information (30 minutes)
5. Create a Christmas card design campaign (10 minutes)
6. Send all the members in your xmas card group the Christmas card campaign you just
created (5 minutes)

2. Assuming that you didn't put a personal picture inside the card (comparable to the above
example) it would cost you 2 points per card (2 * .49 = .98). Plus the postage stamp at .44
each equals each card cost to be .98 + .44 = 1.42 per card times 100 equals $142. Okay now
we add up our time which is 60 minutes at $20.00 per hour. Okay it took about one hour of
our time to send these cards so 20 + 142 + 99 = $261.
My Cost Your Cost
$261.00 First Year My Cost $204.00 First Year Your Cost
$162.00 (minus one time setup fee) $204.00
$162.00 $204.00
$162.00 $204.00
$162.00 $204.00
$809.00 in 5 years ($211.00 in savings) $1020.00 in 5 years
$1619.00 in 10 years ($421.00 in savings) $2040.00 in 10 years
$3239.00 in 20 years ($841.00 in savings) $4080.00 in 20 years
This doesn’t take in the increase prices of postage stamps, increase in retail greeting card price
increase and the increase of value of your time. That time sending cards can now be spent with
your family which is priceless.
Are you ready to send those Christmas Cards? FREEPRINTEDCARD.COM