Price of InkJet printers are getting cheaper everyday. But the ink cartridge used with it costs a lot. Though it is always advised to use original ink cartridges but sometimes a new set of Black & Color ink set even cost you same of a new printer. You can cut cost using alternate cartridges manufactures by other companies. But here are some tips which will help you in conserving ink ultimately leading to great save in long run.

01. Use Economy Mode: If you want to print documents for draft reading or informal letters then select "Economy" or "Draft" mode in the properties section of the printer before printing. It will use less ink, print fast and dry quicker with a slight lighter printout.

02. Use Black Mode: If your printer supports both black & color cartridges and if you are printing a black & white document, remember to change your printer properties to black-only mode. Some printers automatically mix color & black cartridges to print document and you may find no color ink after few days though you may not have printed a color document.

03. Leave your printer switched On: It is better to leave your printer on, if you want to take a printout after few minutes. Every time a printer is switched on uses a small amount ink during initialization phase.

04. Don't switch off the printer in the mid-cycle: If you switch off the printer while the cartridge is still moving the carriage will stop the same position instead of its normal parking place causing dry nozzle and sometimes the ink may leak.

05. Just Shake it: When you get the low ink warning, don't remove & replace cartridge all in a sudden. Just open the cartridge, shake it gently and place it again. This will redistribute the last bit of ink cartridge and help you to print several pages more.

06. Print Required Portions only: Always print the portion you want to print only. Printing a web page in full you will print a lot of needless links, logos, advertisements and some times in additional sheets. Word processing documents allows to print a range, pages or selection from the whole document. But for printing a web page you can try using "printWhatYouLike", a program that lets you strip out any unwanted content from a web page.

07. Avoid Photo Mode: Don't use best photo mode quality for printing text document. Instead, use greyscale if available.

08. Use Printer Software: Go for any ink saving software (ex: InkSaver, PlugINKSAVEin or Arkitex) which can be downloaded for free online. These programs generally work by optimizing printer data so that your printer uses less ink even while printing at high resolution.

09. Clean Blocked Cartridge: If you have not used your printer for long time, there is chance of cartridge nozzle become blocked. In such situation don't replace the cartridge, but try to clean it using printer's head & nozzle cleaning options. If that does not work, remove the cartridge, put some very hot water into a ceramic bowel and submerge the ink head or nozzle for upto 20 minutes until it clears.

So, don't waste your money for just purchasing ink, better save it for other use.