Not sure if this should go here or in MPSIMS, but I thought I’d share a couple of sites where you can get free “trade” (industry mags that are paid for by advertising) magazines. So far, I’ve not been buried under spam for signing up for them, and the articles are fairly interesting. (Certainly worth the cost of the subscription!
Technically, you’re supposed to work in the industry they’re aimed at, but I’ve not had them check to see if my employer really used lasers in their manufacturing processes.
Not yet, but the “qualifying” questions they ask are so vague that it’s easy to fudge any details you might need. For example, they’ll ask you what your position at your company is, but they won’t ask someone signing up for an engineering magazine something that only and engineer would know. Speaking of engineering, I recommend folks check out the Desktop Engineering magazine, strictly for the editorial column. (There’s another one that has a good editorial column, but I can’t remember what one it is.)
Qualifying questions are designed to get the proper answers out of the reader that will allow the magazines to go and tell their advertisers (and the circulation auditors) that they have X number of (for an example from my past) Hotel General Managers, Y number of Food & Beverage Directors, and so forth. It’s a fun data collection thing if you’re a circ-geek, as I am.
In general the CDs won’t give a damn about the truthfulness of your answers as they have numbers to make and rate base to justify. And the pressure to make that rate-base is horrific, trust me. Not making it for two or more cycles (six months each) is pretty much the quickest path for a Circulation Director to be looking for work.
However, when the circulation auditor (generally BPA or ABC) comes in to do a full audit one of the things they have the option of doing is taking a sample of names and data and calling the people involved to confirm their answers to the qualification questions. If too many of them are found to be incorrect or otherwise untrue the auditor has the right and responsibility to force the magazine to contact all advertisers with updated numbers based on the auditors findings. This can, at times, lead to some pretty hefty give-backs to advertisers who bought thinking they were getting X circulation and instead got Y.
