This reminds me of my dad's story about decades ago as a kid paperboy they had a contest get people to sign up and who ever had the most after a few months would win a bike. He smoked everyone. They were desperate to know how he got so many people to sign up but he refused to tell them.

His trick, well back then for a nickel you could go to a paper vending machine and buy a paper. But it would just open up and you could literally grab all of them if you wanted. So for a month every day he sacrificed a nickel and essentially stole about 20 papers. He then delivered them to non customers along his route for about a month. Then he left a note "if you have enjoyed your free trial of the paper and would like to continue as a customer....". He won the bike hands down and never did tell the paper company how he got so many new starts.