As a homeschooler I use more ink than the US Treasury. 🙂 Seriously though, it seems as if I’m always replacing printer ink and paper!
After years of using ink jet printers we finally purchased a laser printer last year. The ink is cheaper but you can only print in black and white. It works for us because I’m usually printing out forms, worksheets or coloring pages, which don’t require color ink.
I’ve shopped around for years looking for the best deal on ink. While there are often sales, when you run out of ink and you need it you are going to have to find the best deal that is happening at the moment.
I’ve learned a couple of tricks to saving on printer ink.
Price the Ink Before You Buy the Printer
So you found a printer for only $39 on Black Friday! That’s great except the ink is going to cost you $75 each time you replace it! Before you purchase that super cheap printer check the ink prices and how many sheets a cartridge will print. It is often better to buy a more expensive printer if it means saving on the ink.
Stock Up
I try to keep at least one extra ink cartridge in the office. Once I install that cartridge I start looking for deals. When I find a good deal I always buy three or four cartridges so I don’t have to pay a premium when I’m in a bind. Printer ink can be stored for up to three years so you probably won’t have ink go bad.
Buy Remanufactured Ink Cartridges
I’ve been buying remanufactured cartridges for several years now. I’ve never had a problem with them, ever. They are about half the price of name brand ink cartridges so they are a great deal.
Refill Your Own Cartridges
I’m not frugal enough to try this tip, but if you buy the right kind of printer you can refill your own cartridges for pennies!
Buy Ink Online
This is my number one tip for saving money on ink! Last year I found discovered ClickInks.com. They offer ink (included remanufactured cartridges) at good prices. They often run sales and offer free shipping. Today I was able to order ink for my printer and save almost 45%! Here’s how I did it.
If you are a member of Shop at Home or Ebates log into your account. If you aren’t a member join one of them (they are cash back shopping sites) and then search for ClickInks.com on their sites. Each site is currently offering 12.5% cash back when you shop through their link.
Once you search for ClickInks.com on Shop at Home or Ebates you will find a link to the ClinkInks.com website. I ended up grabbing a 30% off coupon, plus the additional 12.5% cash back for a total savings of 42.5%! With the already discounted ink price at ClickInks.com I was able to get three cartridges for my laser printer for about $50 with free shipping!
I’ve been purchasing ink this way for about two years and have always been satisfied with the quality and price.
How do you save on printer ink?
Photo credit: Jenny Cestnik
Stephanie says
We bought a color laser printer (HP LaserJet Pro CP1525nw) about 5 months ago. I watched the price on it go up and down for months. It finally hit a down point, then HP had a special $50 off promotion, and I just couldn’t pass it up. I feel it’s been one of my wisest homeschool purchases.
Since we’ve had it I’ve printed numerous items for homeschooling, including four huge workbooks (bought as pdf’s for a significant discount from the print workbook plus I can print multiple copies from one document rather than have to buy a workbook for each child–allowed per the author, btw). I finally got the low black toner message a few weeks ago but have still been able to print 100s of pages since then. The color prints beautifully and is not even close to getting low.
For now, I’m watching to find a good toner deal. I search the Slickdeals and Fatwallet forums every week or so for deals. I have a Staples Rewards card and every so often they send coupons or have special Rewards deals on toner.
TheHappyHousewife says
That’s awesome Stephanie! Isn’t it crazy how much we print as homeschoolers, lol! I’ve purchased several pdf’s too so I can print for multiple kids. It’s convenient but I go through a ton of paper and ink!
Lori says
Ink is one of my biggest nemesis. I no longer homeschool, but I work for our church, and we go through some serious ink! We recently switched to the HP CP like the previous reply and it was a tremendous blessing! The toner lasts a good long while, so I’d second that as an option if someone needs to purchase a new machine.
Also, I wanted to give a word of caution on the “refilling” of cartridges. I did this for awhile with a Lexmark that I had, and I believe it really messed up that machine. I don’t know what happened, but the cartridges got real gunky and the machine never performed right again. Just thought I’d add that word of caution.
Happy Printing!
Anna says
Thank you so much for this post! I just order five XL cartridges for my HP printer and spent (after my ebates credit) 39$!!! That is only about $8 for an XL cartridge…AWESOME!!! I was also able to get free shipping. Thank you soooooooo much for posting this site…I’ve been to clickinks.com before! 🙂
Anna says
Ooops..I meant to write that I’ve never been to clickinks.com before :-).
Melania Crespi says
You can reduce the need of ink by selecting the proper font. The most funny and innovative project related to font is the ecofont, a font with little holes in it, which you can download for free and it allows you to reduce the use of ink http://www.ecofont.com/. Personally I like the brand of it and the impression that gives you to spend less money. The realty is that the font is quite large so you probably spend more in paper.
Another suggestion is the gentium font: it’s a beautiful font, available for free, a very nice project indeed and it works probably in the same way of the ecofont to make you reduce ink. Maybe those are worth trying.
Fran Wolfe says
I love my laser printer, got it over a year ago and I am still using the original toner. I am not a heavy user. About two months ago my printer told me I needed more ink and STOPPED printing. I searched for a good buy and in the search found out something AMAZING. The companies have a nasty little trick up their sleeve. The printer senses the level of ink with a little clear window on the side of the cartridge. The window becomes “clear” before all the toner is gone. All you have to do is put something black over that window (like tape with permanent marker) and VOILA, the printer suddenly is working again!!! It uses up the last bits of toner in the cartridge. My printer (Brother MFC-7340) is printing like new again, and I have not replaced the cartridge.
Give it a try, I bet it’ll work for you too!!
Carrie says
I save ink by printing everything in draft instead of best quality. It looks fine and uses less ink. I have used draft setting to print everything, even airline tickets and have never had a problem. I also use the HP XL ink cartridges. Sometimes staples will have a deal on them if you buy 2 at a time.
TheHappyHousewife says
Yes, I print in draft too. Especially for the homeschool stuff. The only thing I print in high quality are report cards and paperwork I have to send in.
Danielle Z. says
Ok, I just got back from a crazy fast road trip, spent a few days recovering and today started scrolling through the 1000+ posts backed up in my reader and this EASILY takes the cake for best thing I’ve read in a VERY long time! Thank you for sharing!
I’ve been praying to eek a few more pages out of my current ink situation just to get us through the week because we also homeschool and live an hour from the ink refilling place we buy our cartridges from. Even refilled it costs me about $50 to buy one each of the 5 cartridges I have to have.
Using the Ebates link and the 30% off coupon I am getting three of the large black, 3 of the skinny black and one each of the 3 colored cartridges for $41 and free shipping! I called my husband at work I was so excited!!!!
I’ve always loved your blog but I wanted to say a very big thank you for sharing something that will save my family real money! As long as I love the cartridges and they work well I’ll be sharing with my readers as well and will make sure to link back to you. 🙂
K. says
I have had good luck with inks that I order from Meritline. Just make sure to choose the cartridges with a new chip. I just got a whole set of new ink cartridges for $13 including shipping. Woo-hooo!
Trish says
I also use meritline and recommend it!
judi says
This is an old post so you may not see it but you need to help my do this!! Talk to me like I’m 5, lol! I have an MFC 9120 and it stopped printing. I’m sure there’s still ink because it still had great print quality on the last page I printed.
Joe says
I no longer use remanufactured cartridges. Had one that simply would not give good quality printing and the store would not take it back because it was remanufactured. Had another one leak and basically destroy a perfectly fine HP printer. These 2 incidents cost me a lot more than if I had just used the HP brand cartridges. I’ve never had one of those mess up. You get what you pay for. Another ink saving trick, switching from the Arial font to the Century Gothic font will save you about 30% of the ink used.
Fran Wolfe says
Pull out your toner cartridge. On both sides of the cartridge there is a circle shaped window made of clear plastic. All I did was put a piece of standard tape over both windows and then used a black sharpie to black out the tape. You could use anything that is small and sticky as long as you use a black marker of some sort to cover it. That tricks whatever is in the actual printer into “seeing” ink. Pop it in and VOILA! works like a charm. I hope this helps!!
Fidencio says
Love your post, Amazon has great deals on ink toner and printers.
judi says
Thanks, I tried it and it seemed to work for my black toner but not the colored ones. 🙁 Someone gave us an HP black only laser printer and I’m hoping it works so I can use it for most printing and save the color printer for those things I want in color. My husband lost his job and I’m having a really hard time getting started with school without a functioning printer. It’s very frustrating. I feel like I made a poor choice in my printer since the toner doesn’t last as long as I was hoping it would.
Fran says
I didn’t even realize there was color toner!!! Sorry about that. Maybe try printing a square of that pure color and taping it over the respective windows.
Anita says
If you don’t print very often (like me) the problem I had was the ink drying up instead of using up. I found that if you keep the seal that comes on the cartridge, and take the cartridge out of the printer and put the seal on and then seal it in a zip lock plastic bag, then it will not dry out. (if the cartridge dries out you can’t refill it or trade it to be refilled). Just keep the bag close to the printer to be ready when you want to print.