I always enjoyed just reading through greetings cards and thinking I can do this. It seemed quite simple just thinking up meaningful verses and add some graphics, etc. etc. I remember before graduating from community college sharing the idea of beginning a greeting card business with an intern and his fiance. It never happened though but I often think about it. My neighbor threw this suggestion out to me last summer and that never came about either. My enthusiasm for this idea has resurfaced now that I'm not working outside the home any more.
A few years back I thought as you did and I tried my hand at it and sent some greeting card messages to make money with to bluemountain.com at the time they were accepting greeting card messages and if accepted you'd be paid. Not one of my greeting card messages were accepted. It seems easier than it looks. You could make your own personalized greeting cards online with a color printer and thicker paper. http://www.webweaver.nu/ has free clip art and designs you can put on your paper. Good luck if you're going into business!
There are a lot of greetings card sites on the net now, so would be very competitive @Von Jones, maybe opening a local card shop
My thoughts too @Alan Long. I believe it would be better to establish a line of greeting cards without relying on the internet initially. @Krissttina Isobe what kind of response did you receive from blue mountain? I did that once and never received any word back. An after thought I had was that I would see my suggestions on a greeting card on day. That was a discouraging realization.
From what I learned back then is to have copyrights of everything you create. Of course there is a cost involved.
I think it would be difficult to come up with ideas or sayings that have not been used before or even to prove your idea was original. Even the now use of digital photography makes it harder to prove a picture is yours or even to keep your photography safe from being hacked. I tried the greeting card idea years ago and never sold anything. Writing in it's self is a bit easier as in writing about events that have happened in your own life as opposed to say national events.
It's funny, I asked elsewhere whether people send cards anymore. I still send some, but have cut back significantly. When e-cards were first developed, they seemed very popular, but nowadays, with gifs and memes, it seems cards aren't as popular as they once were. I've seen jobs listed over the years, mainly gigs, writing text for greeting cards, but I agree, it seems as if it's a very competitive field, and it would be difficult to establish that you'd actually created specific wording, since cards have been around for so many years. If you're going to pour your time and money into developing a local business, you might try to develop a survey ahead of time, and administer it to those who'd possibly be interested in the service, to see if there's a demand.