Читать книгу One Thousand Ways to Make a Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money онлайн

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This plan is not so easy to work as it was then, as all paid articles must now be followed by the word “adv,” meaning advertisement; and yet, even with that handicap, reading notices are still regarded by many people as more effective than display advertisements, and the man who has a talent for writing that class of matter can still make good money by doing so.

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Here is the case of a woman who, though having only a few hundred dollars, had a lot of foresight and energy, and these qualities enabled her to originate a plan that paid.

Thousands of vacant lots in her city were covered with weeds that were an eyesore to their respective neighborhoods, and detracted from their appearance when shown to prospective purchasers. She went to the agents for these lots, made contracts with them under which she was to keep them clean of weeds the entire season for $3 per one hundred feet frontage, bought a mowing machine with her $100, and went to work. She also contracted to mow the lawns of a large number of people, hiring thirty men at $1.50 per day to do the work, and charging $2 per day for the work done by each man. The profits of her first month’s work paid for her mowers and her advertising, but after that all the profit was hers. The summer’s work, after paying all expenses, including her own board and clothes, netted her $1,200. The next season she contracted to keep the weeds from city lots that aggregated 2,000 acres, at $3 per one hundred feet frontage, plowed those lots all up, sowed them in wheat, kept fifty men employed, mowed more lawns, cut and threshed her wheat, and found she had made $11,000, with good prospects of making a great deal more the next year.