I am starting my new career as both a notary public and realtor. Last night I purchased 500 business cards from vistaprint.com for my notary. Total price was $9.99 plus tax and shipping. Anyway, I would like to know if there are other places online where can purchase marketing tools at whole sale prices at very reasonable cost. #1,business cards for my real estate #2, good deal to purchase pens to include my name , realtor, phone number, email address and license number. #3, good place to purchase hats, mugs, shirts and etc. Thanks for your help.
Congratulations on your new career! In terms of business cards, I've had great success with moo.com (and you can probably find some promo codes online). As far as hats, mugs, shirts, etc., I'm not sure there's a lot of value in those items. You might be better off investing funds into your website, a direct mailing campaign, or some other strategy.
Think local businesses for these items. You avoid shipping costs and probably will end up paying about the same per piece price for these promotional items. You also will have more control over the process and someone to go directly to if there are any problems. That said, I tend to agree with @PhiladelphiaIM in that after you have business cards for both businesses, it may be worth waiting a bit on the little marketing value promotional items. Consider a cheap ad in your local daily or weekly newspaper to start. Put up flyers on community bulletin boards and see if you can leave a few business cards with local businesses to leave out for their customers. Try to establish relationships with other businesses and people who might be able to refer you business. These are practical things that you can do to develop your customer base.