Selling Recipes by Mail |
 |
 |
 |
|
During the past few years, a number of very enterprising housewives (and a few man) have established a very successful business selling recipes by mail.
The idea is very basic. You create a new recipe and then you advertise it in the classified section of a magazine or newspaper which is read primarily by housewives. You advertise your favourite recipe for a œ1, and some dealers also request a self addressed, stamped envelope. When you receive orders in the mail you mail them a typewritten copy of your recipe. Or a Xerox copy. Even handwritten copies are permissible, if the handwriting is ver legible. Along with your recipe you include a list of additional recipes which you have for sale. The list should tie in with your original offer.
Let us imagine that you have advertisied a secret recipe for Danish Butter Cookies. Your list should include other cookie recipes, as well as Danish recipes. If your customer bakes your Danish Butter Cookies and likes them, she will be in a good frame of mind to purchase more recipes from you.
In researching this article, I combed through the classifies sections of dozens of magazines studying recipe ads. Here is a partial list of recipes that were being sold by mail:
Four Fabulous Christmas Cookies Delicious Frosted Brownies Red Velvet Christmas Cake Old Fashioned Nut Roll Greek Donuts with Warm Honey Cinnamon and Sesame Cookies Aunt Sarah's Original Turkey Goulash Delicious Coconut Cake Italian Gravy Texas Longhorn Bar-B-Que Sauce Sparkling Burgundy (French Wine Recipe) Chocolate French Mint Pie Quick Punch Sugar Free Fudge Homemade Cheese Unique Plum Pudding Twenty German Recipes Russian Tea High Protein Diet Candy Italian Candies Grandma's Old Fashioned Bread Polish Recipes Grandma's Fantastic Mocha Cream Cake Chocolate Pie Hungarian Green Bean Soup Molasses Donuts Effortless, Bakeless Fruitcake Vegitarian Recipes (Cottage Cheese Meatloaf) Delicious Ambrosia Cake Fantastic Frosting Man Pleasing Chili Sour Dough Starter Bread & Pancakes Wine - Australian Style Famous Pastry Shop Cheesecake Sugarless Diet Desserts Light Moist Coconut Cake German Christmas Cake Coldwater Dill Pickles Old Testament Scripture Cake Easy Delicious Cherry Cobbler Beer Cake Holiday Honey Balls
You will notice a lot of reginal and national recipes. If you collect recipes from a specific country, say Finland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, they would probably sell very well. Also recipes from New England, the Deep South, or some other special area would do well. Also notice the number of recipes that contain words like delicious, tempting, and easy.
Further, recipes which are sugarless, or which feature Vegitarian specialities would seem to do very well.
Many housewives pay a great deal of attention to holiday recipes. If you can time your ad so that it happens about thirty days before Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Halloween or Christmas, you will do very well selling these recipes.
Where do you find recipes?
Start by selling your own recipes. Ask your friends if they have recipes that you can use. Often they will be delighted to help you. Or you can go to the library and search through OLD newspapers and magazines. When you find recipes that look promising, go home and experiment with them. Write them in your own words, otherwise you could be violating copyright laws.
To get an idea of what kind of recipes are currently being sold, it would be advisable to study the recipe section on the classified pages of most women's or food magazines for several weeks (their advertisment rates are sky-high, but they sell about four million copies of their magazines every week. I notice some ads in every week, and they could not continue unless they were getting stacks of orders).
Closing thought: Give your customer their monies worth and you will be in business for many years to come. Good Luck.
1600 recipes on two 3.5 HD 1.4mb IBM comp. computer disks are available from the publisher of this report - an ideal start to your new business.
|
