How to Save Money on Printing

Gillette and other razor companies have been hailed as marketing geniuses when they decreased the price of the razor to be very inexpensive and then make the blades almost as expensive as a new razor it self. Printer companies quickly learned a lesson from them and followed suits. An inexpensive home printer would cost around $50, some as low as $30 during special deals, and the ink cartridges themselves would retail for $30 as well! It’s hard to imagine that the ink would cost the same price as the entire printer! If you do a lot of printing for work or at home for whatever reason, you know that it can get quite costly very quickly. Here are some money saving tips that you can use to cut down on your printing bill.

First and foremost, never walk down to the local electronics store or big box store and just buy a new print cartridge. This is perhaps the most expensive way to pay for your printer ink. If you are going to buy a cartridge, it will almost always be cheaper online. The ink selling business on the internet has become very competitive in the last few years, so the prices have gotten very cheap. Do a simple Google search for printer ink and compare a few different sites to see which has the cheapest printer cartridges for your printer. Before you make the buy, head on over to reseller ratings.com quick to make sure they’re an okay place to do business with. Some of the online ink retailers are very professional and high-class, whereas some you probably wouldn’t want to send your least favorite relative to.

You can decrease the amount of ink you use for your printer during each print by using what’s called “draft mode.” It won’t use as much ink for each print, but the text won’t be quite as vibrant and dark. The quality is still very acceptable for every day use, but you probably would not want to use it for your resume or a college paper. In order to access draft mode on your Windows machine, you’ll want to open the control panel, double click on printers, right click on your printer and go to properties. From here on out it’s different on every printer, but look for the words “Draft mode” or “Ink saving mode”.

You can also get kits which will allow you to refill your existing cartridge which has run out of ink. You can usually pick these up for about one third the price of an actual cartridge. You can pick them up at WalMart for around $10.00 or at any of the major online ink retailers. A good printer cartridge will usually through about 4 or 5 refills, but after that it’s probably time to get a new one.

There’s another way you can save on printing besides the ink, get the best deal on the paper you print it at. Buy paper in bulk to get the best deal per page. WalMart and CostCo usually have pretty good prices on paper, a lot of local office supply stores will charge a premium for the same product, make sure you are getting the best deal!

If you’re a business owner and have to do a lot of printing, you’re looking at a whole different ballgame. Some small businesses are able to get away with doing their printing in-house, but for businesses with a lot of marketing needs, they often have to farm out their printing. Some might only compare local print shops, but there are also print shops that will do custom printing as well as some more exotic printing services such as sticker printing, and mail you the printed materials.

Hopefully by following some of these money saving tips on printing, you’ll be able to cut back on the number of dollars that you line HP’s pockets with every month