Everybody, of course, is more or less familiar with the ordinary kind of house-cleaning, but it remained for an enterprising young fellow in Nevada, to introduce an entirely new style of the industry. His work was the cleaning, not of the inside but of the outside of houses. There is plenty of it left for other men to do, in thousands of towns in this country.
Plan No. 362. Diligence is the Mother of Good Luck
In his town many of the houses are frame, and he had noticed many of the more pretentious ones showed coatings of soot and dirt that marred their beauty. Arming himself with a bucket of hot soapy water containing some laundry soap and washing powder, a ladder, a soft scrubbing brush and a sponge, he went to one of the houses, owned by a man he knew, and asked permission to try an experiment on a small section of the siding at the rear of the house. It was granted and he proceeded to scrub it well with the soapy solution, until the dirt was well removed and then he washed it with a sponge dipped in clear, cold water.
Calling the owner of the house, that gentleman was so amazed at the improved appearance of the cleaned spot that he asked our friend if he hadn’t given it a new coat of paint. Being answered in the negative, the house owner asked what he would charge to go over the entire exterior and treat it in the same manner. He named a sum that would amount to about $10 a day and was at once engaged to perform the work. The result was so surprising that a dozen other property owners in the same neighborhood gave him orders. His earnings from this method of house cleaning averaged $50 a week. If the paint is in good condition, washing is as good as re-painting, and much cheaper.
PLAN No. 363. ADVERTISING ON FLY PAPER
Most advertising men think they have brought out all possible forms of publicity, but one of them in San Francisco thought of an entirely new idea, and worked it to perfection. His plan was to make and distribute fly paper free, containing advertisements which were also printed upon it free of charge. You can’t see how he could make anything out of that? Well, he saw a way.
He cut thin manilla paper into sheets 10x16 inches, upon which he had printed six ads., each 4x4 inches, and covered these over with a sticky preparation made by melting two pounds of white rosin in a pot and stirring in a gallon of boiled linseed oil until it is of the proper sticky consistency. This he applied with a wide, stiff brush, leaving a margin of one inch all around the edge for handling. The ads. showed plainly through this.
In order to secure the necessary ads. he agreed to print them on 100,000 sheets of the fly paper free, and to distribute the fly paper to all the residences in the city, also free, but to charge each advertiser the regular price of distributing circulars, $3 per 1,000, so that for each 1,000 sheets distributed, the six advertisers paid him $18, and for every 100,000 sheets he collected $1,800 for distribution. The printing was but a small item, and the cost of hiring boys to do the distributing was not very heavy, so he received over $1,400 net profit for a few weeks’ work. He presented an affidavit that the sheets had all been distributed before presenting his bill to the advertisers, so he had no difficulty in collecting the money due under the contracts.