Page 83 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

conscience.” A coupon was attached to the circular which read, “Dear Billy: I
like your soap. Send me six cakes. Here’s your dollar.” The idea worked like
a charm. Many orders came from the hotel’s guests. In this way, Billy B. Van
had put the reverse English on direct-mail advertising. As he had no money
to write to prospects he arranged for them to write to him! This was the
opening wedge in the merchandising of the Pine Tree Soap. From that time
on, little by little, he progressed with his merchandising plans. Eventually he
built up a lucrative business in the White Mountains where the pine trees
send out their clean, healthy fragrance.

The point to this story is not, however, that Billy B. Van, one-time showman,
became a successful soap manufacturer, but that by doing the obvious thing
he made money. So many people foolishly suppose that the only ideas that
are any good are the clever ones, which nobody ever thought of before. The
truth is that the ideas that make the biggest money are usually those which
are only waiting for somebody to pick them up, just as Billy B. Van picked
his Pine Tree Soap idea out of the air of the New Hampshire mountains.
There were many brands of soaps on the market when Billy B. Van started to
sell his soap, but as he found out, there is always room for another product—
if it has quality and answers a specific need.

Knapp Specialized in Pressed Chicken

I

N EVERY farming community there is an opportunity to start a “pressed”
chicken business. No skill and very little capital is required. You simply
contract with the farmers and poultry raisers in your community for their
chickens when they become too old to lay and too tough to eat. Because they
are such tough old birds you don’t pay much for them. Then you buy or
borrow a steam pressure cooker, and you are in the pressed chicken business.

That there is good money to be made quickly in such a business is
demonstrated by the experience of the Knapps, The Knapps have a poultry
farm in Eaton County, Michigan, not far from the State Capital. In addition to
selling eggs—there is a capacity of 2,000 laying hens at the farm—quite a