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The idea of calling on buyers or store owners terrified me; yet I had read that such was the way to find an outlet for a product. Another suggestion for disposing of hobby products was to sell to friends—which was even more repugnant, since I was pretty well set in my ways about what one can impose on a friend.

Then the idea of selling by mail came. Certainly not an original idea since every magazine's advertising section attests to the popularity of this method, or look at Sears, Roebuck! But it was a new idea for me. By not getting involved in person I could avoid my embarrassment, and eliminate the handicap of my lack of salesmanship. I truly believe an item must have real quality to sell—the second time, that is. But to get it into the hands of your customer takes salesmanship in one form or another. Selling by mail is an excellent method for timid folk.

Many products made in hobby time are adaptable to mail order. An idea of how many is easily obtained by looking through any magazine's shopping section. Although your hobby might not even remotely resemble ours, the problems of selling will be much the same. So, now let's get specific.

The Product. First things first, of course. You must have something to sell. It can be craft items, instructions on "how to," or perhaps make-it-yourself kits—in most cases as wide a range as there are hobbies. In our case it was popcorn.

Growing things is our hobby. "Our" in this case means my husband, who takes little active part in the actual gardening but is our Mr. Fix-it and keeps the rest of us going and also contributes to the planning of any family activity; my father, retired and making his home with us in Mooresville, Indiana, is the main gardener; our young son, who likes to "get in on" everything; and myself, housewife who wanted some interest apart from household duties and yet remain at home. Our popcorn was of excellent quality and we had a surplus; we decided to try selling it. The fact that a hobby can turn a little profit is certainly nothing against it.

How to Sell. In our case, sell by mail. The reason: my timidity. With my father's interest in the actual growing and my husband busy with a full-time job, I was elected business manager.

Where to Sell. A hobby item presupposes small production. If you turn things out like hot cakes you're in business, not hobbying. However, our reasoning holds true in that case also.

Advertise to those interested. There seems to be a magazine or paper devoted to every subject these days; select the one for you. If you are not already familiar with such publications, the Readers' Guide at your library may be of help, or just the magazines to which the library subscribes. You might also consider advertising in farm papers or your local newspapers.

Or simply take a look at your newsstand. Our town is small and we have only two drug stores, yet in looking over the magazine display I found these subjects covered: baby, photography, aviation, mechanics, radio, electronics, general science, automobiles, crafts in metals, plastic, leather, etc., home building, animals, children, sports, farming, boating, household, decorating, beauty, needlework, foods and gardening. If your item is so specialized as to belong in a trade journal, ask a member of that trade or profession for a copy of the appropriate publication. Every field seems to have its own magazine. In our case we chose Organic Gardening and Prevention, publications of the Rodale Press, Emmaus, Pennsylvania.

To the general public popcorn is popcorn, and general distribution (even though on such a small scale) would put us in direct competition with commercial growers using commercial methods. Anyway, it happens to be our personal preference to use the organic method of gardening, and to allow popcorn to dry naturally (which gives better popping quality, confirmed by our state university, but not commercially profitable); so, we selected the market whose interest lay in that direction.

How to Buy Advertising. Advertising can be purchased in two ways: Classified, just as in newspaper "want ads," where the price is based on the number of words; or display advertising, which appears throughout the magazine and whose cost is based on the amount of space used, that is, number of columns wide and number of inches in length plus in some instances location in the magazine. This type is much more expensive, and for us we felt "classified" would be ambitious enough.

A simple letter of request brought the necessary price information and requirements. We wrote our advertisement, paid our money and looked forward to the orders.

Writing a classified advertisement is much like writing a telegram. You want to say only what is necessary so as to keep the cost at a minimum. Our method was to write out what we wanted to say, then by eliminating non-essentials arrive at the final copy. Look over other advertisements for ideas.

As a personal note, let me add that it was fun to write the advertisement, then receive advance copies of the magazine just as if we had taken the center spread instead of one small classified ad—which sounds naive, I know, but we were naive in such matters.

Packaging. Quality is exceedingly important but other factors influence the impression on your customer. Try to make your product look good at first sight.

Need I say that we already had carefully cleaned our popcorn and protected it against contamination. Our product was in good condition.

Plain brown paper bags would have served the purpose to be sure, but would do nothing to enhance our popcorn. We bought plastic bags. Telephone directories list packaging manufacturers and distributors, or the chamber of commerce of a large city will send you sources—for us it was Chicago.

A letter explaining our needs brought prices and samples. We wrote to several places in order to compare prices, then placed our order. To get the lowest price per bag, we bought in quantity; however, if you don't want to invest as much money in accessory items you can buy smaller quantities at a higher unit price.

We sealed the bags with my hand iron, although manual and automatic equipment is available if you want to make the investment. Our thinking on this line was that such special equipment belonged in the category of business proper, not marketing a hobby product in a small way. With the plastic bags we figured if we should change our plans, any remaining could be applied to household use.

Labels were printed at the local printing shop. The man there was most helpful with the design of our label. It was simple and cheap, but attractive. We used a sketch of our house with a map of its location as the decorative feature, then the necessary printed information was added.

So there we had the popcorn packaged and labeled, but then we had to get it through the mail. I obtained packaging information from the post office on just what Uncle Sam likes. A proper shipping container was the next item.

Let me say here that if all of this sounds like too much trouble then I'm saying it wrong, for I've never had so much fun as I had rounding up all the things we needed to sell by mail. I'm not afraid to talk to people if I don't have to sell them anything, and everywhere I went I had a good time. I stated my business simply—didn't try to sound like a big operator, and every person contacted was helpful beyond the call of duty. They furnished prices, information on delivery, etc., of their particular item and in addition made suggestions for better methods of procedure. All of this was most welcome because none of us had experience. We had seen packages every day but soon discovered we had taken little notice of them insofar as being able to make good selections ourselves.

Back to the shipping containers. I started with the telephone directory again for addresses of appropriate firms and called on them. Corrugated cardboard boxes are expensive and usually a manufacturer is only interested in selling quantities that seemed fabulous to me. I continued searching and found one concern making cartons but also stocking various sizes and quantities of surplus, slightly imperfect and other miscellaneous cartons.

I had a package of popcorn with me and the salesman and I went to the storeroom and by trial and error found just the right size at a very low cost. (I think he was glad to get rid of them.) He also sold me a roll of gummed paper tape.

Filling Orders. Have a stock on hand of your product so that orders can be filled promptly. (Yes, the orders had begun arriving in response to our small advertisement.) In order to be efficient, we operated the "shipping department" twice each week, usually Tuesday and Saturday, since I most often had the car out to shop on those days.

A package that goes through the mails has to be able to stand the gaff. At first I sealed the cartons by taping only where the box closed. We received three complaints about boxes breaking open. I added tape along the ends for reinforcement, and also learned to moisten the tape properly. I had been over-wetting it. Instead of investing in a dispenser I used a juice glass in a soup bowl partly filled with water. I could roll the tape over the wet glass and get it just right. This packaging has worked out satisfactorily.

Efficient methods must be used. For example, so simple a thing as cutting all of the tape needed at one session instead of for individual boxes. This same principle applies anywhere: If you are making or doing something repeatedly, do all of one step at a time.

Pricing. Price by comparable product. Much of the work of a hobby is done by hand (and in many cases therein lies its value); so, you don't have the advantage of automatic machinery, but then this business of selling a hobby product is different from making a living. But on your side, from your hobby income you're not paying employees for wages, holidays, vacations, pensions nor insurance.

If you want to restrict your production to hobby time only, then your first profit is the pleasure of doing something you enjoy—any cash profit is gravy to my thinking and not the primary object. If cash is the object, then your methods change—time and labor saving methods must be applied or originated to suit your situation. Our own experience I would classify as "in-between."

We applied business methods, such as quantity buying of plastic bags, labels, and so forth to keep unit costs to a minimum. We organized the technical aspects of packaging and mailing so as to be most saving of time. In the case of popcorn, shelling the corn was a big item and if done by hand would seem an endless job. To avoid a large investment in shelling equipment we purchased an inexpensive hand sheller to which my husband attached an old motor he had on hand—more time and labor saved. But the hobby work itself remained a pleasure, and efficiency applied only so far as pleasure permitted. I believe that reasoning applies to whatever type of product you have. On the other hand, your hobby might be a machined product easily adaptable to production methods.

The point is that the very act of selling any surplus production is business and business methods should apply insofar as required. The degree is up to the individual. The more time and labor saved the more of the cash receipts are yours. Simple!

AS FOR postage, our advertisement was worded so that the prices fell into three zones by mileage. The price of the popcorn was stated plus an average postal charge for each zone. We used up to 300 miles, 300 to 1,000 miles, over 1,000 miles, and in that way our price was "postpaid" and the customer sent his money with the order.

If you use an average rate you can only guess as to what will actually balance out in practice if you have no experience to guide you. In our case, this division was not right since it turned out that the majority of our orders came from the East Coast, which meant that we needed to revise our rates to make the 600-1,000 mile distance a specific division.

We received orders from all over the country, but the bulk of our shipments went to the East Coast and the Chicago vicinity. We've wondered if those areas actually do more buying "by mail" or whether it was the organically grown popcorn itself that was of more interest.

There are several other ways to handle the matter of postage rates. Some advertisements use the Mississippi river as a dividing line and have an added charge for the longer distance, the familiar "slightly higher west of the Mississippi."

Many display advertisements include a chart for postage rates and you might take a hint from that. Include in your advertisement the actual rate for each zone. Weigh your product in its shipping container, then take that gross figure to obtain the proper amount for each zone. This adds more words to your advertising but does give specific rates.

Or you can always ship C.O.D. However, we did not select C.O.D. shipments because the extra charges made the product higher priced in the final amount the customer must pay. Although our price was given as postpaid, many people did order C.O.D. anyway. In fact, enough did that our postmaster gave me a supply of C.O.D. tickets so that I could fill them out in advance.

GARDENING REMAINS a hobby for our family—profitable in having good food for ourselves, profitable in aesthetic benefits, and profitable in selling surpluses. Selling by mail in itself can almost be classed as a hobby. It had problems of its own that were new and challenging.

In looking back over these last two years of our popcorn venture, we feel that our results have been most satisfactory. To date we have sold 1,350 pounds of popcorn by mail, which to us means a lot of popcorn. Most orders are for five pounds and some figures for this average order may be of interest and help to you.

The price for five pounds of popcorn, exclusive of postage, is $1. The cost of packaging supplies and advertising for that five pounds comes to $.224, which leaves $.776 from the $1. But this figure of $.776 must cover every other cost. These miscellaneous expenses are cost of seed, parcel post labels, paper tape, electricity used, equipment maintenance and wear and tear, as well as payment for our work. Now we haven't tried to pin down these costs because we didn't feel such detail was warranted. However, we realize the $.776 is not clear profit, but it has certainly been nice to have that extra cash—whatever part was actual profit—when the household budget ran short or some "extra" was wanted.

One comment about advertising costs: The benefits from advertising are cumulative. Many customers who answer your advertisement in turn tell their friends and by a gradual process your unit cost for advertising decreases.

However, I cannot define "profits" as cash only. We received cash for the popcorn, more than what expenses were. Income minus expenses equals profit. But let me also include the profit of pleasure. For fun I fastened a map of the United States to the wall and marked every order we received the first year. We covered the country well and it was interesting to watch.

The orders themselves are interesting. You wonder sometimes just what kind of people you're dealing with, and rapidly conclude that it's all kinds. We've received orders on everything from beautifully engraved stationery to scraps from a wastebasket. Typing, ink, pencil—formal letters, brief notes, chatty letters, to one with only a check, nothing else. The check was the type with name and address printed—"personal" I think is the name, and we judged the amount desired by the size of payment. We decided he was really the efficient type. The orders in themselves could well be the subject for an interesting human nature study. So, again, joy minus toil equal profit.