Certainly the cheapest way to get business cards is to make your own.

The above example is not intended as an advertisement for my activities but to show you what can be done, very quickly and easily, with simple software, the right stationery and a decent printer. The photo unfortunately suffers from the effect of flash on a white card at close range, but, if you allow for that, you might be able to appreciate that the quality is not far short of what you would get from a professional printer. I have used this card for some time, and nobody has so far commented that it looks amateurish.

To make a decent card, design it using Microsoft Publisher (there are other programs you can download or install for this purpose, but as Publisher is part of the Office suite that you might already have, why not use what you've got?). Publisher will suggest a number of possible templates and colour schemes, so you can experiment with several of these until you get it right. You then tell Publisher that you want to print the right number of cards for the stationery you have (ten at a time in my case) and you must also make sure that the measurements are correct for the borders of the card and centring of the design.

I incorporated a small image that took a bit of cropping and tweaking to get it in the right place, but that wasn't a huge task. The wording was simple enough, including all my address and contact information and a "company slogan" for good measure.

You can buy business card stationery at any good stationery store--mine comes from W H Smith, but Staples also has this in stock. At £4.00 for 100 cards, you can't complain about the price. You simply insert the sheets in your printer, press the button, and then tear off the cards ten at a time.

It's a good plan to check that your cards are centred properly on the sheet. I suggest that you run a few paper sheets through first to check that the alignment is perfect before risking your card sheets. Make sure that your printer sheet feeder is gripping the sheets properly--if they don't go in straight, the cards will be off-centre. Also check that you have the card sheets the right way round.

Once you have everything set up, the next time you want cards you can print them off in no time at all. Another advantage of DIY is that you can print as many as you need for now, and more later. This could be important if your details change, as you don't want to be stuck with hundreds of unusable cards, which is a risk if you need to order in bulk from a commercial supplier just to get a decent discount.

And if you don't have Publisher, ask a friend who has if they can run off a few sample designs for you. You can ask me if you like!