The billboard (May 1897)

THE BILLBOARD Vol. IX., No. 4. CINCINNATI, MAY 1, 1897. MAKING IT-PAY; Hints tor Country Bill Posters. which will run through perhaps a half dozen issues of ThH Billboard. I know of no better way of introducing myself ic the readersof the paper, than by simply staling thai 1 used to be a country bill poster mvself, and. by the way. before I proceed further twill just explain what I mean by a country bill poster. Be is a bill poster who is located in any town of under ten thousand inhabitants. Just at n exceedingly vaiious per- Occasionally he is her. for I know wt nigh a dozen plants that are managed, a well managed at that, by women. Duri the course of my peregrinations I ht 1 have known bill town. My parents had purchased it ueeUy) fir me when I Jett college. n \ forty miles ?«r to give me a chanc country. The town bad about i, hibitanls. although we claimed struggle with the * tuck. Occasional! down, but genera: About this time my fellow citiutni de- termined to hold a fair. They met. or- ganized an association, and elected me secretary. I little suspected what I was doing when I accepted the position. I only saw a salary which, while nominal. wish I could describe the c. i of the directors when the paper ar- il. There was enough to bill an ordi- Ial7-sheet We couU n. eight-sheet stands. C 1 " lM s Ji^dateA 1 in to read np, I insulted the American Newspaper Di- ctory for a trade paper devoted to fairs. ,t there was none listed. Then I wrote What to do with it was tLe pecially the big stands. rtnterprisiug citizens came forward and offered sides of who were also lawyers, dealers er, preachers, justices of the peace, chief of the fire ■department, managers of thea- tres, doctors, printers, druggists, under- takers, and. in fact, anything at al' would help to add to the m of their billboards. ""-^kly*: . so the former owner glibly in- termed us, was t.ioo, and the mail list galleys, hastily counted, bore him out. Hut it shrunk terribly on closer examina- tion. It is astounding wbat a number of sample copies it takes to go round among the eastern agents. In Br case it was over two hundred, and when these, to- gether with exchanges, advertisers who dealt direct and dead ones, were subtract- ed from the total, I found my bona fide li.~t was a trifle under five hundred. This, of course, was discouraging, hut I bucked to it with a will. Talk about schemes tor circulation building !. I fig- ured out a thousand. I started a boiler- plate serial, and presented every man, woman and child in the county with a copy of the issue containing the first in- stallment I offered chromos, constructed clubbing lists, and made a personal house- to house canvas. I tried everything I liart •;ver heard of, but the circulation abso- lutely refused to budge. The advertising patronage was just about as stubborn, and linallj-1 got discouraged and tried to sell W. D. REDINGTON. ed, and finally along came a copy of The Billboard . I immediately wrote for back copies and also to the" secretaries of other fairs for information, methods, etc. In due about things, but by this time our fair was npou us. and the advertising had to be settled. It was decided that we ought " 's, and I was delegated finally used all the pi The fair itself. I .s I had n l"am afraid, did r much, but the attendance ? open order to -.fleet sl)les I might neeT°And they did'with into the busines I immediately paper) boards and throughout same manner I had th( so lavishly wlyacqui murtry if 1 i and a three-sheet, printed from pine blocks, which I engraved myself. The results surpassed my most sanguine —- pec'ations. Subscriptions began to c< hut m, slowly at first, but faster as time w d it out almost as soon as I r by this timt opera house was building in th< I had already succeeded in w Success attended me. a enjoyed it. After how I experience as a iat I was making headway was a delig— . into months and my bank accoun tinued to mount higher and highi joy simply knew — * When I figured up at the end of the year I found that I had cleared twelve hundred dollars. But I also found that that was about the limit that a town of 1.503 inhabitants wootd yield. I was am- bitious. I concluded I would look for a routine office duties, and prepared for a trip. I had a line of sample posters from I concluded t. ea being to ime portion a t with such marked sue Well, to make a long story short, we built the boards aud soon had the town covered. Then we built boards in adja- cent towns and covered them, making country routes in the meantime tbrough- ----- of the State, and by and hard work we soiaurnugniy. mat I determined to follow k until *uch time mayhap as I might be ' tj- into a city plant - .- -He I rather thought thai there was little that I could say to the readers of The Billboard "-it would be particularly helpful or in- estiug, bnt since thinking the matter tr I have concluded that I may possess ne ideas and be able to convey some jgestions which will here and there ive profitable. I shall do my best, any y, and if I do no good, at least, I shall In the beginning I want to direct atteu- aon to the vast number of good towns that are yet unoccupied. I know that any town of 2,500 inhabitants can be made to pay a hundred dollars a mouth. I believe that towns as low as 1.000 will support a bill poster if he will also do distributing, sign tacking and sign painting. It is owed me > little o barely making a Bfi )ng, in fact, to malt uu double twaC-a^tea,*"!. btOthot^U