Small run cards - advice appreciated

[OldRoy]

Something I'm currently involved in has generated a request to produce, initially, some postcards. I've had some previous experience of short runs of high quality folded cards (@ 100-off of 10 variants per run). The results looked really excellent - I packaged them in glassine-type German envelopes, creating a cross between a postcard and a conventional envelope/card. But there was no profit, although the exercise was interesting.

I met someone last year who is doing OK with her own greetings cards printed on-demand using her Epson printer (unknown model.) It occurs to me that this might be a good way to go initially as a large range of variants might be a much better pilot than trying to produce even modest bulk. I have an Epson 2400 at the moment and I'm not about to replace it unless it's obviously profitable, even marginally, to do so.

Has anyone had any experience along these lines and could offer advice? If one could source postcard blanks two issues occur to mind immediately. How to establish a profile for that particular stock? And would printing full-bleed on the cards result in a lot of mess on the printer transport, resulting in spoiled output?

I'm in UK so sources of blank stock available here would be helpful if anyone's done a similar project. Any other practical advice would be appreciated.
Roy

[JeanMichel]

Perhaps not exactly what you want to do, but I do something similar, although normally not for sale. I print images on 4 by 6 inch luster paper and attach them to 5 by 7 inch cards from Strathmore (available in a few styles together with envelopes, in 100 packs). Not cheap, somewhat time consuming but very well received.
I print those on an Epson R2400. I make quite a few 4 by 6 prints for a "pictures of the day" project. The number of prints made so far has very recently resulted in a message warning me that some components of the printer were approaching end-of-life. A quick search showed that this is about the waste ink pads. I gather that there is a print counter in the 2400 and when the counter gets to whatever count Epson figures makes for an end-of-life event you can no longer print. Epson has an utility to reset the counter but it does not work on Mac's. I found one from a third party vendor and reset the counter. I guess that it does not matter if you print 13 by 19 inch prints or 4 by 6 ones, each print triggers the counter by one. My waste pads did not look that bad, I did mop up some ink with absorbent paper.
Jean-Michel