This is a woman's true story concerning the addressing of envelopes at home in her spare time for $50 per 1000. Mrs. R, realizing that straight addressing work only produces $8 to $15 per 1000, decided to work out an original plan and this is how she worked it:

While searching for the idea, she noticed that local firms were tying in some of their special offers with birthdays and marriages (in other words, they were mailing their offers to customers or prospects in these two fields). This plan intrigued Mrs. R and she interviewed one store manager about having birthdays, or just married or having anniversaries, to say nothing of blessed events. She also learned that this particular store was quite willing to shift the filing and mailing burden onto someone else's shoulders.

So here was a ready-made service for Mrs. R. She offered a service to this store and to others in which she would agree to furnish the names of such people, in fact keeping file cards on each name collected, to stuff the firm's envelopes with their circulars and to mail them out. She set a modest price of 5¢ per name, the store furnished all circulars, envelopes and stamps for each mailing.

Since these mailings were costing 12¢ to 16¢ per mail package, her services and fee seemed most attractive. By specializing in this one field, she could do it at a lower price than the stores could do it themselves. Other stores were eager to take advantage of the service and she soon had a growing business.