1887 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



91 



ADVERTISING W^HAT YOU HAVE 

 FOB SALE. 



nOKS IT PAY .■' 



AND SOME OKNERAI. HINTS TO AD- 

 VERTISERS. 



TN the office, I believe it is generally con- 

 M sidered that the advertising clerk has 

 W one of tlie most difficult and responsible 

 ^ places of any of the girls in that room. 

 It seems that, in spite of any precaution 

 we have been enabled to take, there is almost ' 

 continually some degree of dissatisfaction. 

 The most comes, however, from taking out 

 an advertisement, or from leaving it out, 

 when our customer wanted it in. In view 

 of this I have told the clerk to be sure to 

 have the mistake come by getting in an ad- 

 vertisement when it was not wanted, rather 

 than to leave it out when it was wanted. 

 Advertisers, like many other people, are 

 sometimes in a great hurry, and they hurry 

 off the notice at the last moment, as it were, 

 omitting or forgetting to say how many 

 times the notice is to be inserted, the length 

 of space they wish to have it cover, and fre- 

 quently do not say whether they want it in i 

 every issue, or only the issues of the hrst of 

 the month. Let us take an illustration, for 

 instance. Tlie following is the contents of , 

 a postal card : 



Please put undei" the department, " Queens for i 

 sale," we have for sale 6 very good tested Italian i 

 queens, 1 Hybrid, at $1.00 each, or $6.00 for the 7. 

 Hybrids, 3"c. Send S1.02 to return your money if 

 queens are sold before your order comes. 



Model Bee-Hive Co. 



W. Phira., Pa., Aug-. 23, 1886. 



You will notice in the above, that our 

 friend does not say a word about what issue 

 he wislies it to appear in, nor does he say 

 how many times. Under the circumstances, 

 on receipt of such an order the advertising 

 clerk sends back by first mail a printed letter i 

 which reads as follows : 



Friend 



Your favor of inclosing $ re- 

 ceived with an advertisement, which we will insert in 



7mmhers, as you request, or until otherwise ordered. 

 As you do not mention the amount of space, or the 

 numlicr of lines you wish it to occupy, or give any in- 

 >iti-ucti<m as to display lines, we will set it ujj so as to 

 make such an appearance as we thi7ili it ought to 

 present. We will send hills after each insei-tion, for 

 the space occupied. If the above is not satisfactoi-y, 

 pleMse reply hy return mail, on inclosed card, giving us 

 coi-rect instructions. According to our advertising 

 rates, given helow, we will credit you with the discount 

 at the expiration of the time you wish it to run. 



Yours respectfully, A. I. ROOT, Per 



You will notice, that, in with this printed 

 letter, we inclose a postal card directed to 

 ourselves, so that our customer may take a 

 pencil out of his pocket and tell us what to 

 do, even while he stands in the postoffice, if 

 he chooses. We prefer to pay for these pos- 

 tal cards, and to pay the postage on the let- 

 ter we send them in, so that our bee-friends 

 may have no excuse for failing to inform us 

 immediately, if our proposal is not satisfac- 

 tory. We do this, because it is so very dif- 

 ficult a matter to get people to write and tell 



us what they do want. Now, after we have 

 done this, our advertising clerk has instruc- 

 tions to insert the advertisement until we 

 get some kind of notice from the advertiser, 

 saying that he does not wish it continued 

 any longer. It seems to me, that almost any 

 sensible man will say, if there is any thing 

 wrong it (;ertainly is liot our fault. A good 

 many troubles have come up, notwithstand- 

 ing these precautions. Quite a number of 

 pretty good men— that is, we have always 

 considered them to be sucli— have.(aefused to 

 pay their advertising bills, giving, as a rea- 

 son, that they ordered the advertisement 

 stopped. Now, after we have very kindly 

 explained to them that their letter ordering 

 it stopped did not reach us until the journal 

 had gone to press, they still object. In one 

 or two cases where advertisements have been 

 ordered out, the order was written within 

 three days of the last of the month ; and yet 

 the advertiser claimed he was under no ob- 

 ligation to pay. 



Now, in regard to the postal card we have 

 given above. The advertising clerk inserted 

 the advertisement four times, at a cost of a 

 dollar each insertion, before we got a word 

 from the Model Bee-hive Co. Then he 

 claimed it was ordered in for only one inser- 

 tion, in the first place. He writes in regard 

 to it as follows : 



We wrote to you, saying to put said advt. in Sept. 

 No. of Gleanings. We left home shortly after the 

 first of Sept., and just returned home last night, 

 and, to our surprise, you had continued said advt. 

 (on examining Gleanings), and sent two or three 

 postals, stating amount due you. We wanted said 

 advt. only in Sept. No. If we had wanted it in any 

 other numbers we would have told you so. 



Model Bee-Hive Co. 



West Phll'a., Pa., Oct. 27, 1886. 



As we have published every letter and fig- 

 ure on his order, one can readily see that our 

 friend is greatly mistaken ; and the adver- 

 tising clerk and book-keeper, without bring- 

 ing tiie matter to me, wrote him that they 

 could return Ids order if he wished, to show 

 him that he didn't say a word about putting 

 it in the September issue ; therefore that we 

 should expect him to pay for his neglect in 

 not notifying us. On my return from the 

 Albany Convention, the card below was 

 handed me, which was sent us, I presume, 

 in answer to a statement in regard to the 

 remaining $3.00. 



We wrote you some time ago, Oct. 27, thinking 

 that you were charging us for running our advt. 

 which we did not oi-der. If you will look up our let- 

 ter, which will tell you all about it, we do not care to 

 repeat it here. However, of all the advertising we 

 ever did in Gleanings, it never paid us ^i of our 

 advertising money back. Make a note of this, and 

 publish it in GiiEANiNGS, as you never say any 

 thing about those that write you about advertising 

 not paying— only those that say that their advts. 

 paid. Come out with both sides of it, and oblige 

 Respectfully, Model Bee-Hive Co. 



West Phll'a., Pa., .Tan. 14, 1887. 



I read it over in a little surprise, and ask- 

 ed for the whole of the correspondence in the 

 matter. Now, the advertising clerk, the 

 book-keeper, and. in fact, almost everybody, 

 would say that our friends of the Model Bee- 



