“For making lighter shade or color, add the light paint to the color drop by drop until you have the color you want. Paint on the back of the pictures. Use small pictures to practice on until you get the knack of it.”
PLAN No. 392. SOLD ANOTHER MAN’S SOAP
An agent who had been very successful as a house-to-house canvasser, but was temporarily without a line of goods to handle, decided to try a new plan with soap, and found it so profitable that he adopted it permanently.
Visiting a large factory in his city, where special brands of soap were made to order, he arranged to have made for him a first-class toilet soap of the usual size, each cake to be neatly wrapped in a fancy printed wrapper bearing the name of the soap and a company name he had adopted for his own use. Three of these cakes he had packed in a neat pasteboard box, upon which his own label also appeared.
The price to him of this soap, thus wrapped and packed, was $7.20 per gross, or 5 cents per cake, and this price also included one gross of “sample” cakes of one ounce each, but unwrapped, for free distribution.
Placing the 144 sample cakes in a handbag, with circulars detailing the merits of the soap, he started to canvass the residence districts. At each house he left a sample cake of the soap and one of the circulars, with a request for the housekeeper to use it, and he would call the next day with a supply of the full-sized cakes in boxes. When he called the next day and showed the lady the beautifully wrapped cakes, which he assured her sold regularly for 15 cents each, but upon which he had placed an introductory price of 25 cents for a box containing three cakes, he made a sale at almost every house he visited. He usually sold seventy-two boxes in a day’s canvass, and his profit of 10 cents a box netted him $7.20 for one day’s work. He often did better than this, so that his first year’s business showed a clear profit of $3,500, as he also sold through agents and to dealers.
PLAN No. 393. MAKING RAISED-LETTER SIGNS
A young man in Detroit, with an invalid mother and two small sisters to support, found it difficult to earn sufficient to meet necessary expenses, until a friend of the family told him of the opportunity afforded for good returns through the making of raised-letter signs by means of an air-pencil outfit. He even loaned the young man $2.50 with which to purchase one of the outfits, and assured him he needed no experience, as a little practice would enable him to become proficient in the work.
These raised letter signs are easy to make, can be produced in any color, in gold, silver, bronze and metallics, are more attractive than embossed work, and can be made and sold at a profit for considerably less than painted signs, as they cost only 1 to 3 cents and sell readily at 10 to 25 cents each, made on cardboard of any color. With a little practice anyone can easily make 50 to 200 of these signs in a day.
The young man took the advice of his friend, bought an air-pencil outfit, and practiced until he had acquired considerable skill in the making of signs. Then he went among the merchants of the city and soon had orders for all the work he could do, at prices that brought him a good income. He closely followed these instructions which come with the outfit: