Has This Ever Happen to You? It’s happened to all of us way too often. We are in a rush to print or copy a document and we look at our printer or multifunction printer/fax and see the blinking lights of "Ink Out" or "Please Replace Cartridge". We look right and left, then in the nearby drawers, secretly hoping to find an extra printer cartridge, which only secretly we admit that we don’t have because buying a backup ink just seemed too expensive at the local store.

This is the reality of the $21 billion printer ink market, where manufacturers sell inexpensive printers but then charge prohibitively expensive ink. While black ink printing usually involves only one cartridge, printing in color can involve between one to four cartridges, depending on how the printer is set up.

Are You Printing the Right Things?
Are you someone who prints out everything and barely looks at it? Then think again before printing. Are you printing out a 4 page web page in color, just to read the article and then throw it out? In that case, if you don’t want to read it online, print in BLACK DRAFT mode rather than in color and high res mode. Are you someone who likes to print out a lot of pictures? Then at least know that your average picture can often cost $.50 in Ink + the cost of the paper. If you want to print a lot out, it is usually much easier and cheaper to just find a local company where you can email in the images and the pictures are professionally printed. Here in Manhattan, I pay $30 - $.38 a print and have a choice of glossy, matte, and other option for 25-40% less than the cost of printing it myself. Are you using your inkjet printer to make 100+ copies of something. Often Kinkos is a better bet.

Saving on Ink
But the ultimate way to cut your costs is to purchase generic ink that is specifically designed for your printer, copier or fax. This is not a small nascent business. This is a highly developed and competitive business that is approaching 20% of the market. So that means, there is a very competitive market in both quality and price. There are 2 ways of buying generic inks. The absolute least expensive way is to buy bulk inks and literally inject the ink into your cartridge.

This tends to be messy, but if you are used to getting your hands dirty, do a lot of printing, are fine with buying a lot of volume at one time and like getting 90+% off in value compared to a standard cartridge, this may be right for you. For most people, however, the best deals are just to replace your current branded cartridge with a generic cartridge which was designed to fit your printer. These will save you between 25-75% off, so often you get 3 cartridges for the price of one. I have used these for years and not once have ever had any issue with quality or technical issues. In fact, I recently read a comparison study a student did for a state fair, and in that test at least, there was a tendency for people to actually prefer the Generic ink to the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) ink. What also was revealed by more scientific tests is that some generic inks tend to fade more over five years, especially in photos. So if you are primarily printing photos, you might want to stay with the OEM cartridges or send them to be professionally printed.

There are several good places to get inks. As mentioned before, we at BeatTheRecession.com are always on the lookout to give you, our members, not good deals, but only the best deals, so we were able to negotiate a 10% OFF and FREE SHIPPING for orders over $49 for those who purchase generic ink from 101 Inks. Please Use CODE CB4308 for the discount, as this is not available if you log on directly. Another good company to compare prices is InkjetPlus.

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The Bottom Line

So you don’t get stuck like last time, it is always better to order a few extra cartridges at the cheaper generic prices – and keep them around the house, so when that “Out Of Ink” panic comes on, you are not scrambling to the local store and cringing when you are paying full price.