A young man in an inland city of the Pacific Northwest, who had a few hundred dollars, fitted up a neat little down-town office—after securing a subscription agency for a number of leading periodicals, made a list of the same in alphabetical order, with columns for the regular price and the price at which he could supply them. If his commission was $1 on a year’s subscriptions, he advertised to send a $4 magazine for $3.60. Where his commission was 80 cents, he deducted 25 cents to his subscribers; if his discount was 40 cents, he would deduct 15 cents from the rate and so on.
He issued an attractive circular showing the various discounts he would allow on each subscription to any of the magazines or other publications listed, and sent these circulars to those answering his ads. in a number of papers covering his territory, and was surprised at the number of subscriptions he received through this system of discounts. While each subscription thus saved 10 per cent or more from regular subscription prices, it still left him a neat profit on each, and as the lists he was thus able to send in were quite large, he received enough in bonuses besides the discounts to himself as agent, to make a very comfortable income.
PLAN No. 196. PUBLISHING PROGRAMS
There is always more or less money to be made in a good advertising plan, and here is one way an elderly newspaper man turned his knowledge of printers ink to good account.
Whenever a church or social organization in his town proposed to give an affair or other form of entertainment he would offer to get out a good program for it free of cost to the parties planning the affair, and this offer was always gladly accepted. Sometimes he even offered a percentage of the proceeds for the privilege, and this too, was acceptable.
He would get the best figures possible from a number of printers, and let the contract to the one who could do good work for the lowest price.
Then he divided the program into small spaces for advertising, which he could easily fill at fair rates, and usually came out with at least 50 per cent profit on the undertaking.
There were so many of these programs to be obtained in his town, that he continued this as a regular business, and made an excellent living out of it.
PLAN No. 197. CHURCH POST CARDS
Any plan that will help to raise money for a church is always gladly welcomed, but a plan that will do this, and at the same time make a fair profit for the originator, must be a “good one.”