Cheap Door to Door Delivery of Flyers

June 6, 2014 8:30 AM

I need to get word out about a neighborhood meeting next week. I know I can (and will) use email to get the word out. However, I don't have everyone's email address. So I am going to use a paper flyer with the info about the meeting. I need to deliver these to about 150 homes. I can walk around and do it myself. But I was wondering if there were any sources out there to crowdsource this kind of job. What would be a reasonable payment? I need the hive mind to help me.
posted by cmh0150 to Work & Money (12 answers total)

Best answer: This is what neighbor kids are for. Get five of them, give them a map and 5 bucks and go to.
posted by Think_Long at 8:33 AM on June 6, 2014 [3 favorites]

Best answer: only 150 houses? just ask a neighbor or two to help you out. I help deliver newsletters for my neighborhood association. My route is 88 homes and takes about 90 minutes to complete. Unless your neighborhood is very low density, this won't be as big a task as you're thinking.
posted by juliapangolin at 8:33 AM on June 6, 2014

FYI per postal regulations It is illegal to slip these into mail boxes. So if you do deliver either attach to the door or slip under the door.
posted by Gungho at 8:34 AM on June 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

Best answer: We have a loosely constructed neighborhood watch group nearby, and one of the ways they break this up is to have a designated person in charge of each street. Might look into that in the future, or if you meet someone friendly while out handing them out on a particular street see if they will do that street.
posted by Big_B at 8:39 AM on June 6, 2014

I second the neighborhood kid idea. One kid, a bicycle, and $20 ought to cover it.
posted by COD at 8:50 AM on June 6, 2014

Our neighborhood group uses our local Boy Scout and Explorer troops for this purpose.
posted by divka at 9:07 AM on June 6, 2014

Best answer: Please don't leave your flyer on my door or on my steps.

You can knock, and you can call, and you can email, but if you put these sad pieces of dead tree on every door in the neighborhood, the following will happen:

* I will resent having to pick it up and throw it away, adding to our city's waste.
* Other people will simply toss it into the street and it will blow into my front yard.
* I will resent having to pick those up and throwing them away, too.
* Thieves will get a clear vision of who is home and who is not in the neighborhood.
* I will not come to your meeting, period.
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 9:09 AM on June 6, 2014 [5 favorites]

Best answer: Staple a rubberband to each flyer and slip it over the door knob. Get some kids or neighbors to deliver them. Also, you can make a private Facebook group and have people request to join. That way they don't have to hand out their email address. (Include the Facebook group name on your flyers.)
posted by Crystalinne at 9:13 AM on June 6, 2014

Services like TaskRabbit are made for this.
posted by phearlez at 9:40 AM on June 6, 2014

Best answer: While I echo some of I EAT TAPAS' concerns, this attitude REALLY depends on your neighborhood. I started talking about an email list in my neighborhood and got significant pushback - several people didn't even have email addresses (we have a lot of retired people who have lived there their whole lives). Unfortunately actually talking to people has had the most impact, but it takes a lot of your time. And prepare yourself for some negative interactions becuase if my experience is at all normal you are going to have some.
posted by Big_B at 10:05 AM on June 6, 2014

Best answer: Task Rabbit.
posted by ewiar at 10:18 AM on June 6, 2014

Go back in time and get your neighbors signed up with Nextdoor.com.
posted by cda at 7:41 PM on June 6, 2014