Printer suggestions for Marketing Materials?

[InkBlotAquatics]

Hello,

My personal printer, although a "decent" quality home printer usually prints images like crap. Maybe because I use the cheap ink instead of the name brand.

I wish to buy a printer to print my own business cards, flyers, and other marketing materials. No huge images, and no actual photo quality or glossy paper needed. But it must print images and text crisply.

Experience printing on refilled cartridges?

Im just starting up, and am very low budget right now. I would say my max is around $200, but lower is nicer! If it prints 2000 flyers and 2000 business cards it has paid for itself.

[Harold Mansfield]

Kind of a "get what you pay for" scenario. I don't know of any brands under $200 that come with enough ink to print 2000 items or that print great images. The best value and performance for me would be the Epson Ecotank lines. They cost more but I like Epson printers and the ecotank line comes with 2 years worth of ink. The lowest model I've seen is around $279.
EcoTank Supertank Printers - Epson America, Inc. (http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/Landing/ecotank-super-tank-printers.do)

[PZagotti@ZnBcpa.com]

Ok so first, its not just about the printer and the ink it is also about the quality of paper you use.
I remember when my partner and I first started our business years ago we spend time picking the right kind of paper for our mailing and flyers.
All these years later we still print our own letters and flyers, (about 8,000 a year).
We use HP OfficeJet pro 8000 series printers for this task because the ink cartages have a large print capacity and are cheaper per page then laser jets.
Now those printers will cost more like $300 to $400 but you make it up with the cost of the ink.

Now lets talk business cards.
If you are out there networking and pushing your new business like a new business owner should then you will be at multiple networking events every week. You will usually give out 3 to 10 business cards per event. this means that you should go through roughly 100 cards a month.
The cost of printable business card stock is very expensive and over a few months will cost much more then if you just go to vista print or one of the other printing companies and spend a few dollars to get some cards printed.

Hope this helps.

Good luck!

[Harold Mansfield]

I agree with the above. Besides, self printed cards always look janky. Cards are really cheap these days. It's not a good impression if you can't even spend $40 for a batch of cards. It's an important marketing tool and it should look at least basic level professionalism.

[turboguy]

If I recall correctly Vista Print has a deal for 500 cards that are something like $ 8.50 and if that is too much they also have free cards but they have a vista print ad on the back. I don't think you can print up 500 cards as cheap as you can get them printed at vista print.

I think you could also get your flyers printed cheaper than you can print your own as well. I would not recommend Vista Print for that but rather Conquest Graphics. The more you order the cheaper they are but 100 flyers are $ 51.00 plus a few bucks shipping or if you need 500 they are $ 126.00 which works out to about 25 cents a page and I believe the ink cost to print a 4 color page is about twice that. Conquest does great work and used 100 weight glossy paper that would look professional which a home printed page never does.

You could get 500 flyers and 500 business cards that look professional for less than the cost of the printer before you by the paper and ink.