this season I'm selling small personalized stickers.

They are vector graphics without any effects or transparencies. but I use clipping mask.  I don't know if it makes difference.  I use illustrator to work on my files

so anyway , stickers are personalized. so each order is slightly different. when I prepare .eps file to print I need to duplicate each sticker anywhere from 6 to 150 + times . and then put them on same sheet. 

It makes my file extremely heavy . and mostly I get smaller jobs 20 -40 stickers per order and I obviously want to print as many orders as I can together. But I can't, it slows down the computer. Can not print together more than 4-5 orders.  

Is there any way to make my files smaller for printing is there any trick ? I tried to rasterize vector. But it didn't help. 

Some one in illustrator community told my I might want to try to convert vector into a symbol and it will make it small ? have anyone tried it.  or they also suggested creating pdf file instead of eps. Is it ok to use pdf instead . I only ever used EPS Files. 

I have versa camm 300i  and versa works software.