Upping the ante - printing from home

dazzer21

I'm a graphic designer and am lucky enough over the years to have been very busy. Things have tailed off of late and I'm looking at ways to try to make up the shortwall. I'm a little old-school in terms of the way I work (ie quality over quantity!) but the new kids on the block are stepping up with all their quick-start web-wizardry etc...

However, I've been bequeathed an A1-sized printer/plotter which I'm now resurrecting, in order to try to get behind doing something with it over the Christmas period for the New Year.

Now I have no money to throw at this so I'm looking at how to get things off the ground as cheaply and as effectively as possible. I have the Macs and the software as well as the printer (HP DesignJet 500) and a few consumables (some paper, some cartridges).

Has anyone else started up something similar? I'm talking just printing for profit from home as a small-scale business. If so, do you get consumables from anywhere inparticular, how do you handle delivery, packaging etc... Where do you get your prices from, how do you compete with the cheap online competition... so many questions!

This could work quite well - if only I knew what I'm doing!!! Can anyone help out? Thanks...