How to Design a Business Card for Free with Canva

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how to design a business card for free

Do you like attending networking events but you don’t have a business card to share with people? Want to learn how to design a business card for free?

Having a business card with your name and your services is not only an excellent way to network but it also makes you feel more professional and official.

Today we’ll learn how to design a business card for free using one of my favorite free design tools, Canva. 

I recently decided to make a business card, and I already sent the design to a print shop, the card should arrive in the next few days.

I’ll take you through the same steps I took to make my own business card for my freelance writing services. I admit, the design is not perfect, but its not too bad considering its the first card design I ever made. I’ll edit this article with pictures of my card once it arrives in the mail.

So to start off, we’ll need to open Canva, it’s completely free, and I don’t receive a commission fee for promoting it.

how to design a business card for free

Once you open Canva you’ll see the design dashboard.

Scroll down the design templates until you see a design for “Business Card”.

P.S. You can use Canva’s Business Card templates or you can make your own custom templates, like I did.

To be honest, I didn’t even notice Canva has its own Business Card templates when I made mine, and I probably could have saved a lot of time if I used their templates.

But if you want to make your own, hit the “Custom Dimensions” button and select Inches for dimensions. Most business cards are 3.5 x 2 inches. Canva’s Business Card templates are 8.5 x 5 inches.

We’ll walk you through using Canva’s Business Card templates as well as using custom templates.

Let’s start with Canva.

Making a Business Card with Canva’s Pre-Made Templates:

To make a design, hit the Business Card template, and you’ll see a bunch of pre-made templates in the left-hand sidebar.

how to design a business card for free
Some free templates you can use.

The pre-made templates are petty nice, and they’re definitely worth looking into.

Just hit the one you want to edit, and it will appear in the work-space.

Next, edit the filler content in with your details (name, title, etc) and then do the same on the other side of the card.

Once completed, save it as a PNG and send it off to your print shop! 

Yep, it’s that easy!

A fun little feature I added to my card is a QR code.

My QR Code!

QR codes are becoming quite popular so I figured it would be fun to include on my card.

To make your own QR code, visit a QR code generator, I used this one. 

Enter your website address and hit “Create”.

Download the QR code and upload it to Canva so you can edit it into your card.

You can make the QR code point to your portfolio or wherever you want – it’s a neat little feature.

So if you’re wondering how to design a business card for free, that’s how you do it. 

With a Custom Template:

I used this method to make my card, it’s a little slower but you can edit more elements.

Once you choose the dimensions (3.5 x  2 inches) choose a background or leave it blank for a white background.

how to design a business card for free
Just some of the many backgrounds you can choose.

For examples of business card templates, Google “Business Card Examples” and you’ll see some simple ones that you can use as a reference.

In most cases, a business card doesn’t need to be overly fancy – a white background with your name, title, and contact details is usually enough.

Write your name in bold and larger letters, in whichever font you prefer, and center it.

Under your name, write your job title and align it with your name.

Next, scroll down in the work-space and hit “Add New Page” this will be the other side of the card.

Here you can include your contact details: name, email address, phone number, website, etc.

Update: Cards Arrived. 

I added my QR code in this section just for fun.

 

Then, hit download, and send the files to your print shop! 

So now you know how to design a business card for free, and its much easier than you thought.

I highly recommend creating a business card, even if you’re a new freelancer or marketer.

Even if you don’t give it to anywhere and it sits on your desk all day, at least it will make you feel professional.

And when you feel professional you tend to act professional.

Hope you enjoyed this short tutorial. 

P.S. If you want to make a website for free and start advertising your services, hit the image below and use our recommended website builder.

Or if you would like to take a look at my favorite online business training center…

Read This Review. 

Until next time.

Leave a comment if you enjoyed the article!

Timothy Gagnon.

How to Make Promotional Social Media Content with Canva in 1 Minute

Business, Tips and Tricks

Every marketer should have a social media presence, even people who are not marketers have social media accounts.

But to engage your fans and keep them coming back for more, we need to find content to share with them.

Often, social media marketers run out of content to share on their social media profiles because they have to hand-pick content, and that can take time.

Searching for quality posts to share on your social media profiles can be a hassle. 

Especially when you need to publish something everyday!

Well, I’m going to let you in on a little trick I have been using to create promotional posts for social media.

These posts serve three purposes; to promote your social media accounts, to provide you with content that you can include in your articles, and to increase your brand exposure.

As we know, articles that don’t include any form of media are – let’s face it – boring to read. 

We need to spice things up with related images and videos to make the article pop and leave a lasting impression the reader.

So learning how to make social media posts is not only beneficial for your social media marketing efforts; but it can also improve the content on your website.

Before we begin, we’ll be using an online image-editing tool called Canva, a completely free platform.

If you have been following me on Twitter, then you have probably seen these posts.

Head over to Canva and open a free account.

Using Canva to Create Media-Rich Content:

Hit the “Create a Design” button and you’ll see a list of templates.

 Then, select the “Social Media Template”.

You’ll see a blank work-space.

On the left sidebar, there are plenty of templates to choose from.

I like to use the quote templates. 

For this example, I chose “A Cup of Tea…” template.

And now all you have to do is remove the sample text and include your own.

Select the sample name and drag it down.

Then, click on it, and enter your name a long with any links you want to include.

I included my website and Twitter handle.

Next, fill in the main text.

You can either write something off the top of your head or copy a sentence from an article already on your website.

I chose the later option in this example.

Play around with text size and color until you find something that works. 

When you’re satisfied, hit the download button.

Now, head over to your social media profiles, and upload the content.

On Twitter, open the Tweet tab and simply drag the image from your download tray into the Tweet box.

Fill the box with hashtags to boost exposure. 

And hit Tweet.

Now find the Tweet on your profile, select the little drop down arrow in the right corner, and select “Embed”.

Then, copy the script into the text section of your WordPress post.

The final result should look like this: 

And that’s it.

The best part is you can save your templates in Canva so the next time you want to create a picture it can be done in a matter of seconds.

I recommend creating at least one of these pictures and uploading it each day – it’s an awesome way to bring in more impressions and fans.

Keep at it and you’re social media accounts will GROW faster than you ever imagined.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article. 

If you have any questions, leave a comment below.

Until next time.

How to Use Twitter Direct Messages for Affiliate Marketing Without SPAMMING

Marketing, Tips and Tricks

Several years ago, I bought a course that was supposed to show you how make $100/day from Twitter.

Yes, it was a foolish mistake.

The entire course can be summarized in one sentence.

It revealed an amazing secret.

The “secret” was replying to Tweets with your affiliate link. 

That’s it.

You look for people asking questions related to your product, and then reply with an affiliate link.

I admit, it’s not a bad idea, but the sales data is very exaggerated.

With this method you’re supposed to be able to earn hundreds of dollars a day.

Well, I did manage to get a few clicks on my affiliate link, but no sales.

I imagine if you did this on a massive scale, some sales would come in.

But nobody has time for that.

Finding Clients with Twitter Direct Messages:

Still, after spending some time on Twitter, I realized that you can use the platform to promote affiliate products.

To promote products without spamming threads. 

I have written about marketing on Twitter before, and it’s an area I’m still trying to improve on.

Recently I tried a simple direct messaging campaign to find clients for my writing service. 

I sent about 100 custom pitches via Twitter direct messages to specific people.

The results?

4 clients. 

It might not seem like much, but each of them hired me for a second article, and I’m sure they’ll provide me with regular work.

Regular work is much better than one-time jobs.

I sent 100 custom pitches in about 4 days.

That’s not too bad. 

If I dedicate an hour or two to pitching on Twitter each day, it won’t be a long until I have a nice amount of clients.

Since then, I cut back a bit to focus on writing the articles, but I’ll start another campaign in the near future, when I have more time.

But the same principle can be applied for affiliate marketers. 

Making Affiliate Sales with Twitter DMS

Maybe you don’t have a service to promote, but if you promote a product, there’s no reason you can’t use the same technique.

The idea is to find people on Twitter who are interested in your product. 

Hot leads.

Then, craft a custom direct message for them, and include an affiliate link.

I tried this method on a smaller scale than my pitch campaign, and the results we’re better than expected.

I sent about 50 custom direct messages, and got two re-occurring commissions. 

I will test out this method on a larger scale in the future.

I’ll edit this article with the results.

If you want to try the same method, it’s quit easy, and I’ll explain how to do it in the next section.

The Method:

Twitter has a a search bar where you can enter any topic and see the Tweets and people that match the search term.

This is where we’ll find our leads.

Keep in mind: Most of the time, Twitter accounts won’t allow public DMS. 

In other words, to direct message someone you’ll either need to follow them or they’ll need to follow you.

But I noticed a lot of people do accept DMS from anyone.

If an account doesn’t accept DMS, then follow them, and move to the next account.

If they follow-back you’ll be able to message them later on.

So let’s say I want to promote my recommended online training center. 

This course appeals to a wide range of people, so we have a lot of possible search terms.

First, we’ll head over to Twitter, find the search bar, and type in something related to the product.

For me, I decided to use a broad term. 

It’s better to target job titles as this will lead you to actual people in those positions.

I started with the term, digital marketer.

Type the search term into the Twitter search bar, and you’ll see the top Tweets in that section.

Next, click on the “People” tab and you’ll see all the accounts. 

These are our leads.

Leave this page open.

Right click on a profile, and select, “Open Page in New Tab”.

Do this for a few rows of profiles. 

Now, head over to the first opened tab, and search for contact information.

If they don’t allow DMS (most people don’t) then look for a website link.

Most people include a contact form on their website. 

If not, look at the content they share.

Does any of the content have a writers bio with contact information?

Look for Linkedin profiles too.

Most people leave their email addresses on Linkedin.

Creating a Pitch:

 

Next, we need to send them a pitch.

You can send people the same pitch but edit a few parts to make it seem custom.

Here’s a simple pitch I used. 

It’s very basic and you can definitely come up with a better one.

Hello [Name]

I noticed you work as a [Job Title] and I wanted to get in touch because I found a really cool product you might like.

This product is an online training center and business community. It shows people how to build a successful website completely from scratch. I have been a member for over a year and I love it.

It could really help out your clients who struggle to create successful websites.

Anyways, it’s totally free, and I hope you check it out.

[Link]

When it comes to pitches, I have found the shorter the better.

Most people don’t want to have to scroll through a message.

Keep it casual and to the point. 

So as you can see in the pitch above, the parts in brackets are the only things we need to change.

Of course, feel free to make it even more custom.

The more targeted the better. 

The most important is the person’s name.

Address them by their name. 

Don’t address them by their Twitter handle, that’s what spam bots do.

Write their name in the message, a first name works fine.

Then, change the Job Title to what you entered into the search bar.

I searched for “Digital Marketer” so I would use that term. 

You can also link people to a review of the product.

There’s a lot of different ways to edit the pitch to make it more effective.

Be creative. 

So all you have to do is copy and paste that message, changing the two small parts, and send it out to people on Twitter.

Don’t wait for replies or results.

Just set a goal and reach it.

You can aim for 50 like I did, or you can aim for 100 or 200 or more. 

It’s up to you.

I can send 20-30 of these emails per hour.

So it really doesn’t take a long time to reach 100.

When you start sending messages you’ll start receiving replies.

Answer them. Provide clear information.

Once you reach your goal, some patterns will emerge, and you’ll be able to see if it’s worth pursuing on a larger scale.

And That’s How We Make Money from Twitter:

So that’s it.

One simple strategy to making cash from Twitter.

It worked for me, on a small scale, and I will pursue it further when I have more time.

If you have a service, this is one way to find some fast clients.

Most marketers need virtual assistants.

If you work as a virtual assistant, it won’t be hard to find clients with this method.

Just remember, always address the person by their name.

Learn More:

If you want to join me in my favorite online business community, hit the link below.

Test it Out with a FREE Trial. 

Or…

Head straight to premium.

Thanks!

Don’t forget to leave a comment. 

How to Get Website Traffic for Free: 3 Simple Tips to Unleashing a Wave of Traffic

Business, Tips and Tricks

how to get website traffic for free

Wondering how to get website traffic for free?

Gone are the days when you needed to pay top-dollar for website traffic.

It’s possible to unleash a tidal wave of traffic to your website with just a few simple tips. 

In this article I’ll reveal my simple formula that brings in a steady stream of traffic to my website.

It’s really simple and anyone can do it. 

In a nutshell, it involves finding keywords, writing articles that target those keywords, and then marketing those articles as best as possible.

Doesn’t sound too complicated does it?

It’s not. 

Let’s dive in.

How to Get Website Traffic for Free:

In my previous article, How to Write a SEO Article, I discussed three factors that can determine if your article will rank, and I briefly mentioned keywords.

In this article, we’ll expand on the keyword section, and I’ll show you exactly how I use my favorite keyword research tool to find low-competition keywords that don’t take much effort to rank.

Keywords.

Most people get stuck when it comes to keyword research.

I’m sure that you need to find keywords for your articles but you’re not exactly sure how to find keywords.

Well, there’s a free tool that you can use, one that I use for all my keyword research, and I highly recommend. 

Go ahead and create an account now, as I’ll show you how to use it to find keywords in just a moment.

Create an Account Now.

With a free account your searches will be limited, therefore I recommend upgrading to a premium account because not only does a premium account unlock additional features, it also removes the search limit.

When you login you’ll see the main search area, this is where you’ll type in all your search terms. 

Chances are you already have an idea for an article floating around in your head and all you need now is a keyword to target so you can start writing the article.

So head over to the search area and type in something related to the topic of your website or business.

For example, I’m interested in writing articles about online marketing and blogging so I’m going to enter a simple search term.

how to get website traffic for free

When it’s done, a list will appear, and there are few things that you need to know to fully understand the data shown in the results.

So there are five labels that you can see above the search results: AVG, Traffic, QSR, KQI, and SEO. 

AVG represents the average searches that keyword receives each month.

Traffic is the estimated amount of traffic that you’ll receive if you rank in the first position for that specific keyword.

QSR stands for your competition; the number of websites or articles that already target that exact keyword.

KQI is a color-based indicator to show you which keywords are good and which ones are bad. Green means good and red means bad. It’s best to avoid red keywords as they’ll be extremely difficult to rank.

SEO is an average of all the a stats and represents the ranking difficulty for that keyword.

It’s a value between 0 – 100 and the higher numbers means it’s easier to rank for that keyword while the lower numbers means it’s too competitive.

So now that you know what these terms mean, we can begin looking for a keyword to target.

Let’s take another look at the search example below:

how to get website traffic for free

The first result, an exact match, receives a lot of traffic but it is marked red.

That’s because it has a QSR of 369.

What does that mean? 

It means there are about 369 other websites that already include that exact keyword.

Can your brand new website beat 369 other websites, websites that have probably been around a lot longer than yours?

Just out of curiosity, let’s search for that term in Google and see which website takes the first spot.

how to get website traffic for free

I don’t think we can beat those authority websites at the moment. 

It wouldn’t be worth spending all this time and effort on writing an article to target the above keyword if it doesn’t have a chance to rank.

Let’s move on to another keyword. 

The next keyword has much less traffic and it’s marked green, but the QSR is still quite high.

For new website owners, I don’t recommend targeting keywords with more than 50 QSR because they’re too difficult to rank, unless you have some amazing search engine optimization skills.

Look at the QSR for now and search for the keywords that have less than 50 QSR in the list. 

If you’re wondering how to get website traffic for free, targeting keywords with less than 50 QSR is your best option.

Notice the keywords I found, these are okay keywords but we need to filter out the junk.

how to get website traffic for free

You probably noticed that a lot of these keyword don’t really make sense.

We want to avoid keywords that we can’t include naturally in sentences.

So let’s take out all the keywords that don’t make sense.

Well, actually most of these keywords don’t make sense.

The phrase, “How to Make Money Blogging in 2014” is okay, but it’s not 2014 anymore, so that wouldn’t be a good keyword to target.

Therefore, we need to move on, and look for some better keywords.

Jaaxy has a cool feature on the right side of your work space that provides a bunch of keyword suggestions, click on one the interests you.

On the sidebar, we see all these suggestions. 

how to get website traffic for free

Most of these keywords are grammatically correct and could be excellent.

Unfortunately, most of the keywords in that specific suggestion box don’t have much traffic.

Sometimes it’s still a good idea to write an article that targets a keyword that does not have much traffic because people might start searching for that term in the future.

Who knows where trends will begin.

Let’s search for another term. 

how to get website traffic for free

After reading this article, can you find the best keyword in the list above?

Yes, it’s the second last one, “Make Money as a Blogger”. 

That is a prime example of what a good keyword should look like; not too competitive and easy to use in sentences.

The traffic is low but there are only a handful of websites competing for that keyword.

And since it makes sense, it’s easier to use in sentences, which means you’ll use it more often in your article, and that will improve your chances to rank.

So don’t shy away from keywords that have low traffic stats, those are the easiest to rank and the traffic is consistent.

If you manage to target multiple low competition keywords and rank first for all of them, that’s plenty of traffic for you.

So that’s how to get website traffic for free! 

Of course, there are other ways to get website traffic that does not revolve around keywords and writing articles.

You can market your existing articles for free too.

How to Get Website Traffic for Free: Network

This is a fun method that I have been using to not only boost traffic on my website but also build relationships with people in similar niches.

But before I show you how to do that, do you want to learn how to use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to boost website traffic?

Enter your email address below to subscribe to my newsletter and receive a free BONUS marketing report.

how to get website traffic for free

If you’re not sure how to get website traffic for free, simply sharing your article with your friends on Facebook is one way to do it.

Comments for Everyone!

This is one simple and fun strategy that I use to bring in traffic and comments to my website.

What I do is a find a website related to my niche, and click on an article that has a lot of comments.

Then, I read the article and leave a comment. 

Ideally, the comment should be well-written and at least a few sentences, the longer the better, and don’t forget to make it genuine.

Next, click on all the other people who commented and open their websites in a new tab.

Then I start with the first website in my tab-bar, head to their latest article, leave a comment, and close the tab.

Open next tab, and repeat. 

That’s a fun and simple way to drive traffic to your website!

And it brings you to all sorts of interesting websites!

Combine that with the tricks mentioned in my free report, and your website will be booming in no time.

So that’s how to get website traffic for free! 

Want to Learn More?

I happen to be a member of an awesome online business center that teaches all sorts of topics related to building an online business.

The training is really in-depth and organized into bite-sized lessons so anyone can digest the information and learn how to build an online business.

You can click here to read my in-depth review. 

Or…

Click here to head straight to the sign-up form. 

It’s free for the first 14 days!

I hope to see you in the member’s area! 

How to Write a SEO Article: Follow These Guidelines

Tips and Tricks

how to write a seo article

If you are wondering how to write a SEO article then you came the right place.

As someone who has been working online for the past 6 years, I learned a few handy tricks that will make it easier for you to write search engine optimized articles.

Learning how to write a SEO article is important because there are plenty of people out there who need search engine optimized articles and you can also apply the tricks to your own projects.

In other words, it’s a useful skill and one that can bring in cash. 

Contrary to what you might think, it’s easy to write a search engine optimized article.

Follow these simple guidelines and you will have no problem ranking articles and driving traffic to your website.

How to Write a SEO Article: The Holy Trinity

When it comes to writing a SEO article, there are three factors that determine whether or not an article will rank, and I like to call these three factors, “The Holy Trinity”.

If you don’t include these three things in your articles, then you will have a much harder time ranking in search engine results.

What are these three things?

1. Format.

The first member of The Holy Trinity is Format.

Think of it like this, most people like to read content that is well-formatted because well-formatted content is much easier to digest.

More importantly, it’s easier on the eyes. 

Therefore, since Google’s purpose is to link people to the best content for their search terms, it makes sense that Google also wants you to format your articles.

So format your articles.

  • Break up long sentences into small paragraphs.
  • Include plenty of headers and sub-headers.
  • Bold important text.
  • Include bullet points.
  • Etc.

Basically, make sure your article just looks good.

In a previous article I wrote about how to make your website and content stand out from the crowd. Check it out here. 

2. Keywords.

People often misunderstand the concept of keywords.

For ideal results, each of your articles should target a new keyword, one that you haven’t used before in previous articles.

I use a tool called Jaaxy to find keywords to target. 

I tried a lot of different keyword tools and I stuck to this one because it’s the most user-friendly and provides all the features that I need in a keyword tool.

Click here to try it for free. 

What about keyword density?

As I mentioned in previous articles, I like to write with a conversational tone and I won’t stuff an article with keywords.

Keyword stuffing is a mistake that many new marketers make because they assume that more is better, which is not necessarily the case.


When writing an article, it’s best not to worry about keyword density.

I see too many people obsessing about a specific keyword density and really it doesn’t make much of a difference.

Stuffing articles with keywords tend to ruin the flow of the article, which ruins the experience for the reader, and if the experience is ruined, the reader will leave.

And when people don’t like your content, no sales will be made. 

So it’s better to forget about reaching a specific keyword density but instead focus on writing a quality article that provides value to people.

With the free plugin I mentioned earlier, there’s a helpful keyword density check that will let you know if you mentioned the keywords enough times.

Generally, a keyword density of more than 0.5% is enough to rank well in search results. 

It’s also important to remember that keywords are not set in stone and you might target one keyword only to rank for a totally different keyword.

So it’s difficult to predict exactly where your articles will end up in search results.

But if you focus on writing decent and lengthy articles, there’s a good chance they’ll end up in an ideal location.

3. Pictures.

The last member of our holy trinity are pictures.

People often underestimate the importance of including images in your articles.

Images bring articles to life. 

It’s important to include images in your articles because when someone shares the link to your article on social media, an image will be fetched from your website to display as a preview on social media.

Images can also improve your rank in search engine results because you can include keywords and other information in the description.

So people will be able to see exactly what your article is about, instead of having to click a plain-text link that could take them anywhere.

It also really improves click-through rates! 

In other words, if you want to improve the traffic that your articles get from social media, don’t forget to include images in your articles.

Read More: Two Simple Ways to Boost Social Shares on Your Social Media Profiles

How to Write a SEO Article: What We Learned…

So what did we learn in this article?

Let’s recap. 

  • Learning how to write a seo article is an extremely valuable skill.
  • It’s not complicated. There are only a few simple guidelines you need to remember.
  • Pay attention to text format. Break paragraphs.
  • Target keywords but don’t obsess about keyword density as creating valuable content is much more important.
  • Include images in your articles to improve traffic from social media.

That’s it for now, and remember, if you would like to learn more about how to build an online business from scratch, there’s a really cool online business training center that you can join for free.

Click here to read my in-depth review of my favorite product. 

Or…

Hopefully now you know how to write a SEO article and you can apply these tips to your own projects to boost sales and achieve your online goals.

Thanks for taking the time read this article, and please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or share it on social media.

You can follow me on Twitter here. 

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