Page 310 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

“My name is Stamm. I am making a survey of household appliances being
used in Rockford homes for an article in the Rockford Star and Register.”
(He previously had approached the publisher of the newspaper who said he
would be glad to publish the summary of his investigations in his news
columns. It helped his advertisers.) “Would you be good enough to answer a
few questions about the gas and electrical appliances which you are using in
your home?”

Next he went to the leading dealers, showed them the sort of information he
was obtaining as a result of his calls, and asked them if they would be willing
to pay him 25 cents for every lead he obtained for equipment such as they
were selling. He admitted frankly that some of the leads would be names of
people with whom the dealer was already in contact, but demonstrated that
there would be such a small percentage of these that it would not represent
much of a waste. In many such cases he obtained data that the dealer did not
have, but which were helpful to him such as, for example, the home-owner’s
preference for equipment sold by his competitor. This proposition, of course,
was made to only one dealer in each line of business, first come first served.

In nearly every case where Stamm called he got a lead for at least one of his
“clients” and in many cases for all five. He found he was able to canvass
about forty home-owners in a day, working evenings as well as during the
daytime. Since it was all profit, except for the cost of printing up the
questionnaires, you can figure out how long it took him to make $1,000.

This same idea, in a slightly different form, was used by the Women’s Guild
of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Evanston, Illinois, to raise funds for the
church budget. Each woman in the church was given a page from the
Evanston telephone directory, and required to call up these names within a
month. She was furnished with blanks printed for the purpose. In this case,
however, a wide range of needs was covered by the survey, including
automobiles, tires, radios, water heaters, incinerators, etc. Hundreds of dollars
were raised as a result of the plan.

Making Money with a Portable Duplicator