This man gathered up several hundred bushels of the apples that were going to waste, rented a cider press, and turned out the cider in immense quantities, late in the fall when the weather was freezing cold. The concentrated product he shipped to the city and sold it at big profit, the first netting him nearly $1,000.
PLAN No. 305. SELLING EGGS AT A HIGH PRICE
Even in those times when eggs were selling to the middle man for 20 cents per dozen, a man who lived in the suburbs of an eastern city, and kept hens that laid large, rich-looking, golden brown eggs, worth twice as much as the tiny white ones in the dealers’ stalls, always sold every egg he could produce for 60 cents per dozen, or a nickel each.
The way he did it was to advertise in the city papers that he would send eggs by parcel post the very day they were laid, and guaranteed them to be strictly fresh and safe for sick people as well as robust persons.
That brought in the orders, and the way he kept them coming from the same people, year after year, was by making good—by actually shipping the eggs the day they were laid—and strictly fulfilling every promise he made. These facts, once duly impressed upon the minds of his city customers, made the eggs he sent them worth three times the price of ordinary market eggs of small size and uncertain age. Anyone, situated as he was, can do the same thing and make money out of it.
PLAN No. 306. FREE RECIPE BOOKS TO FARMERS
In order to interest city merchants in the possibilities open to them for country trade through the parcel post, and to interest the farmers in the goods carried by the city merchants, an advertising man in a western city thought out a plan that would do both.
First, he secured the name of every farmer within fifty miles of the city in which he lived. Then he got up a little 16-inch page booklet, with an attractive cover, and filled one-half of every page with interesting and useful information for farmers, such as recipes, methods of gardening farm, garden and orchard products, etc.
He then went to merchants in various lines, showed them the plan of the booklet, exhibited his list of farmers’ names, assured them that he would send a copy of the booklet free to every farmer on that list, and got them to fill the other half of each page with an advertisement of those goods especially for farmers’ use. The front of the cover he used as a title page, while the three other cover pages he sold for advertising purposes at good rates.
That little booklet netted him over $250, after he had submitted affidavits to the advertisers that copies of it had been sent out free to all the farmers, as he had agreed. He prepared another booklet, using the same matter, except the ads., and these he obtained from another set of advertisers. The matter already set up for the first booklet saved a great deal on the cost of composition, and at the end of the year his profits amounted to more than $2,000.