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When Adrienne Zoble said my
sample brochure was ok, but why wasn't it in color, I
had a ready excuse. For the small operation,
printing full color is far more expensive and far
slower than printing black and white. That was
then.
 Now
all my brochure and mailings include plenty of color,
both spot color and often full color photo images. And
the hardware didn't cost me a cent!
More than a year ago Gary
Grinaker turned me on to the existence of the Xerox
Phaser series of full-color printers. These are
big, powerful office printers that use a series of
solid inks to produce incredible color, incredibly
fast (up to 16 pages per minute).
Here are some of the applications I've been
using the printer for:
- great labels for all my CDs
- full-color calendars for
customers
- fold-over greeting cards
- tri-fold, double sided
brochures for all our services
- duplicate instruction manuals
for older cameras
- Letterhead stationery
- Gift Certificates
- Signs
- Shipping labels
- Invoices for all our online
sales
- Employee manuals
- Postcards
In fact, I've networked all my
computers so that I use the big Xerox for printing
just about everything except paychecks.
The $4500 printer is free for
me, as long as I print enough pages each month
and buy my supplies from Xerox. After 36
months the unit is mine, and I suspect the price
of supplies will go down. Hey, there ain't no such
thing as a free lunch! However, the service contract
is free for 36 months, too.
The program is simple. You go to
the website http://www.freecolorprinters.com
and fill out the form. You have to tell them how many
pages you expect to print each month, and if they like
your numbers Xerox will ship you this big, heavy piece
of equipment that you're going to fall in love with.
Be careful with your
estimates.
If you don't make as many prints as you promised,
you'll get hit with a $100 charge for each month
you miss it. (They do credit you for lifetime page
usage, so if you go over for a few months and then
have a bad month you don't get charged.)
How many does it take?
Apparently at least 1,800 pages per month. I had to
keep edging up my estimates and didn't get approved
until I got to 1,905 pages per month. One month I
didn't make my numbers and got hit with the $100
charge, and that hurt.
That's why you've got to make
sure that all your work goes through that printer!
What else can you do with it? I
had a customer who wanted a couple of hundred high
quality 8x10s and about 800 of lesser quality (i.e,
cheaper). The
high-quality, full priced prints I made on my Konica
QD-21 using RA color paper. The "lesser
quality" prints I printed on the Xerox. Quite
frankly, they looked almost as good but the paper was
thinner, so there was an excuse to charge less for
those prints. Equally frankly, I have to admit that
the "cheaper" prints on the Xerox cost me
more per print than the RA4 prints - but I still made
some money on color Xerox prints, and made a lot of
money on the RA4 prints. The customer was happy, he
didn't have to track down a laser copy special price
at Staples, and I made my print quota with Xerox very
handily that month!
We also use it to print labels
for CDs, which it does very well.
Help me pay for my supplies:
Xerox gives members of this program a $100 credit
toward supplies when they refer new members. Please
mention this referral number if you join the program. 609653
…Chris
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