How to Write Humorous Greeting Cards

Greeting cards are a multi-billion dollar market. And, as you might expect with a market so large, that means people are getting rich from it.

Hey - if they're getting rich, why not you?

Now, you may have written for Associated Content or for magazines or newspapers. Your family and friends may tell you that you have a way with words and you may have even gotten great grades on your school papers.

But greeting cards? Well, greeting cards are a different beast all together. It takes a different way of thinking - and a different way of writing - to successfully sell greeting cards. If you can master it, though, you'll have a great side business that provides steady income you can rely upon.

The first step to successfully writing greeting cards is not a sexy one, but it is necessary: researching and analyzing potential greeting card markets. It's essential to read through what a particular greeting card company has published before you attempt to write for them for two basic reasons:

1) Your greeting card ideas may not be correct for all markets. Submitting concepts that don't match a particular company's focus is a waste of your time and theirs.

- AND -

2) It gets you in the right mindset. After reading through everything a greeting card company has recently published, you will actually start thinking like their cards. This mindset will help guide you during your writing process.

Having said that, how do you write funny greeting card sentiments? There are a few basic techniques you can use on the same concept. Let's say, for instance, you want to write a few birthday greeting cards poking fun of the receiver's age. Here are a few different ways you can set this up:

Bait and switch. With this technique, you don't want to start obvious; rather, you want to sucker the reader to open the card for the punch line. You could write the inside as: "Happy 29th Birthday!" and for the inside write "Celsius" or "Celebrating 10 years of sending you the same card" or "Again."