If you go to a local car lot and look at sticker price of a car, you’d see some of following items: base price of car, cost for each additional feature or package, number of miles per gallon for both city and road, and cost of gasoline for one year under normal driving conditions.

What if you got this same type of information for your printer? Would you still buy same inkjet printer? How would you feel if you knew you would pay more for gas and oil, in first year you owned your car, than you paid for car?

Well fact is, unless you do very little printing, you will pay more for your paper and inkjet cartridges in first year than you will pay for your inkjet printer. This is especially true for low cost inkjet printers. In some cases, cost of one inkjet cartridge is more than entire purchase price of an inkjet printer.

If you look at an inkjet printer advertisement, you’d learn about some of following items: number of pages printed per minute in text and color, time to print a certain size photo in black and white or color, number of inkjet cartridges or tanks printer holds, near perfect quality of photo reproduction, outstanding resolution you’ll get from (so many) inkjet nozzles and a packaging list of items that come in box when you purchase it.

However, in most inkjet printer advertisements, you will not see cost of premium paper needed to achieve that outstanding photo reproduction. The replacement cost for a black or color inkjet cartridge is nowhere to be found. About only thing you will see with a dollar sign is low purchase price of printer and possibly rebate. (They also don’t tell you all steps you have to follow to get your rebate and how it may prevent you from returning printer to store if something unexpected happened… but that’s another story.)

Most of major printer manufacturers have adopted same marketing model as razor blade, TiVo and cell phone industry. Simply stated, they sell you printer for cost or less in order to sell you printer ink and toner cartridges at huge markups. In many instances, they charge seven to ten times what it costs to manufacture these products.

In addition, these major companies spend thousands of dollars trying to convince you to purchase only their products. They strongly criticize printer ink and toner cartridges offered by third party companies. However, did you know that many of these major companies are now selling their own recycled cartridges… and you’re still paying full retail price for them! As someone once said, to get a real education, read fine print on label.

With advent of online marketing, consumer have more choices than ever. There are a large number of reputable companies that sell printer ink and toner cartridges at significant savings. It is very common to save 50-85% when purchasing your printer supplies. In addition to substantial savings, you'll get a money back guarantee and your order is normally shipped same day.

Ok, here’s ten ways (plus 1) to save on printer ink and toner cartridges:

1. Purchase a compatible inkjet cartridge. These are cartridges made from new parts and manufactured to meet or exceed OEM specifications for you exact printer.

2. Purchase a remanufactured inkjet cartridge. Third party companies collect empty printer ink cartridges. They refill them with ink and test them vigorously to make sure you get exactly quality and quantity you expect from your inkjet cartridge.