I Make Good Money Cutting Up Magazines

Benjamin Farrow is a fellow who no doubt should have taken up

commercial art or advertising as a career, he has such a marked

aptitude for both.

However, coming from a family of very restricted means, this

proved impossible.

He tells us his story.  After several jobs in the first 10 years

or so after leaving school, I eventually entered the field of

merchandising.

Here I came to appreciate the value of good advertising, and to

realise what a prodigious amount of time and money is spent on

this medium.

I also became aware of the tremendous market that is always open

for new advertising ideas.

In the course of my job, in a well-known Liverpool department

store, I came across a copy of the "Standard Directory of

Advertising Agencies" which is basically a very long list of

advertising agencies, operating in the UK - which is also

available at all libraries.

These, I realised, were potential customers for any interesting

advertising material that I or anyone else could gather together.

With this in mind, and whilst still working in the store, I

started plans for an advertising business to operate from home.

I began collecting newspaper advertising from every newspaper I

could get my hands on.

I collected the best ads in about ten different categories such as

furniture, carpets, electrical appliances, men's and women's

clothing, car accessories, etc, and pasted them up on A4 paper.

I had one hundred copies made of each sheet photocopied which cost

about ten pounds.

I then assembled the sheets into folios according to categories -

hence each folio contained about ten sheets of advertising ideas.

Next I made up a cheap but attractive brochure introducing the

advertising material folios, which I offered to sell at five

pounds each, and sent a copy of this brochure to about a hundred

of the advertising agencies listed in the "Standard Directory".

I was totally amazed by the response from this introductory

mailing and I knew that I was on the road to success.

I now charge customers a subscription rate per year for this

advertising ideas service and supply them with new folios each

month.