I just read a post by Jeff Turner a few minutes ago. While Jeff's writing is always good, the thing that really caught my eye was a graphic he created. (Digital photography and art is just one of Jeff's many talents.)

Anyway, Jeff had a graphic that had some printing on it and it really caught my eye, because it wasn't your standard "Times New Roman" or "Arial" font. Isn't everyone sick of reading the same old fonts day after day? (Like this blog-- "Arial"-- yuck.)

Jeff's font just looked like really cool handwriting. The picture of "Tom's Handwriting" above, is a messy version of a handwriting font, but you get the point.

Now, "handwriting fonts" are no big deal in and of themselves; they've been around for a while. I'm sure many of you have been tricked into opening junk mail because the front of the envelope appreared to be "hand addressed." In fact, a couple of years ago, I sent out about 5,000 letters to people that "needed to refinance" and I used a handwriting font on the front of the envelopes. I swear, all of the other mortgage brokers in Arizona stole my idea after that, but that's another story...

It was pretty effective and a neat experiment in direct mail technique. I had a much larger percentage of call-backs and sales conversions. If you would like to try using handwriting fonts for the purpose of marketing (or whatever), I would suggest Googling "free handwriting fonts" or maybe checking out this page:

http://www.free-fonts.com/handwriting_fonts.html

But I wanted to share a pretty neat custom font service with ActiveRainers. I think this is just super neat and super cheap at only-- get this-- Nine Bucks! ($9.00 US) This is really the way to go as far as handwriting fonts go-- your very own!

Visit Fontifier.com right now. (No, I have no business interest and I don't think they could afford to pay a commission for only $9 per customer.)

1. Print out the Fontifier template sheet.

2. Write all of your characters on the template.

3. Scan the template and upload it.

4. Preview your font online and buy it for only $9.00!

5. Now download your font, put it in your "fonts" folder and it will be ready for use by Microsoft Word (or any other program). Your very own handwriting as a choice in your fonts pull-down menu!

If you are like me and send out 1000 holiday cards every year, this makes your cards look so much more personal than "Times New Roman" and a postage meter.

Oh yeah-- regarding postage meters-- I would combine your personalized handwriting font with a genuine, old-fashioned stamp as well. Makes all the difference in the world when seperating junk mail from the good stuff.

Good luck!