The Super Simple Guide to getting Freebizmags (And Mercury Mags) Subscriptions - the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Myths Busted! Ballons Burst! Check it out!
But before all that, here's a brief warning dated November 5, 2011:
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BEWARE - Freebizmags has been sending out emails that are actually Fronts for companies they partner with. They offer a "FREE" mag but when you get to the end, you see it is either a "Perpetual renewal" (meaning, they auto-bill you each year) or.. there is a 99 cent shipping & handling fee atttaches as well as possibly a Perpetual renewal.
Remember, check the deal out throurghly if it looks different from the usual Freebizmags or Mercury Mag format. In these tough times, even these companies are trying to squeeze an extra buck out here and there. We see Freebizmags doing it by FRONTING offers from other players such as MY BONUS CENTER whih is not THEM. However, they get paid a per cap fee for every sucker who buys one of those $5 a year subs that they could likely get free if they just waited a couple of days, weeks or months.
Please read the fine print before posting offers with catches, folks. If it ain't directly from FBM, look closely.
Again. Freebizmags has lately been trying to increase their income by FRONTING offers for other providers. BEWARE of that. FBM still offers plenty of decent, totally free mags but just like the TRADE MAGS (Controlled Circulation Publications) they toss in your path during the reuqest questionaire, they are now tossing in these "Partner" offers AFTER the questionaire and in emails to you.
[COLOR="rgb(75, 0, 130)"]Be wise and Beware.[/COLOR]
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NOW BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BUSTING OF FREEBIZMAGS AND MERCURYMAGS MYTHS -- -
Introduction: Freebizmagazines is a great site that offers "free" subscriptions to both Trade Magazines and Consumer Magazines.
Mercury Mags is another one just like it that was begun by former FreebizMag employees. They earn their money by increasing the circulation of
Trade magazines also known in publishing as
Controlled Circulation Titles. To do that, they offer you good magazines, hereafter referred to as '
Consumer magazines' such as Town & Country Magazine, Guitar Player, Outdoor Life, MAD, VIBE, American Angler, American Cowboy, Cucina Italiana, Log Cabin Living, Elle Decor, Old House Journal, Upscale, Horticulture, Radar, Tennis, Computer Games, etc., etc.
Their goal is to lure you in with the free
Consumer Magazine offer and then, while you are signing up, get you to agree to receive one or more
Trade Magazines during the application process. All of us have fallen for this at the beginning because there are many myths on freebie sites about Freebizmags. I have believed some of them myself and even perpetuated a few back when I was still gullible. (please forgive me for I am heartily sorry and do repent).
However, it is my goal today to save you, the Noob, from all such myths and to keep your mailbox free of Silly Trade Mags (unless of course you actually WANT to receive Spot-Welding Illustrated or Miniature Vegetables Monthly)
Here we go -- How to get started:
If you are new to Freebizmags, find an offer that seems valid - One where experienced Slick Dealers say "Thanks, got it." Then, click on link:
Type in the name you use for mag subs and an email addy you actually check every day, preferably one you have set aside just for Freebizmags. You want a real email addy cuz Freebizmags sends account holders fresh links to free Consumer magazine offers at least once or twice a week.
Then, you are faced with the first hurdle: what to write as your Business info. You should be honest and try and figure out what to select for your own profession (something I did) .
UPDATE: Another slick dealer, Nightvessel, has suggested that I am trying to coach other Slickdealers to lie about their profiles to, in effect, get something they don't qualify for otherwise. Nope - nothing doing! Telling the truth about what you do in your profile gets you just as many magazines as you would if you simply made up a profile for the sake of ease of application. Let me be clear - there is NO advantage to lying or making up a profile. Whatever you enter you will still get offered the same consumer magazines unless you choose a profile that doesn't mesh with their software enough to allow that software to sift thru possible biz mag offers and toss some in your general direction, kind of like a fart on Monty Python! The only thing that would change with the profile is the Trade magazine titles they offer you. Therefore, there's no advantage in choosing one profile over another. Any profiles offered in this thread are for the purpose of showing you an example only.
In the past, many slick dealers have advocated using a Student Profile such as this one:
Keep in mind, however, that both FBM and Mercury have begun refusing the offer to students using the student profile. if you have a part-time job, you might wish to use that as your profile instead.
Student profile:
Other
.....Student
..........Other
...............Student
....................Student
UPDATE 7/11/06: The Other/Student/Other profile no longer seems to work and for good reason. Why would a company that makes its money referring you to Business trade mags want students to get their lure offers of consumer mags? Please use some other profile and stick with it if you want to be sure of being offered magazines. Use your part time job or the last job you held if you are currently unemployed. Really, it makes little difference what you use so long as it permits their software to toss some trade mag choices in your general direction, kinda like a fart on Monty Python. N'sM
MYTH NUMBER ONE: "There are special combinations that qualify your for certain FBM offers"
(However, for some specialized titles, some users swear on their parent's graves that a specific profile might matter but this is highly debatable and unlikely... read posts to this thread for examples.)
>>>>BUZZER NOISE<<<<
Wrong! In general, there are no magic combos, just a couple of DUD profiles as reported by dozens of other experienced slick dealers. DUD profiles could be student profiles or Retired profiles. if you are a student and don't know what to pick, you may want to choose a profile that matches your part-time job, the last job you held or, the job you are educating yourself for. if you are retired, you might try creating a profile for your former profession.
Any legitimate combo should get you any mag if indeed there are subscriptions to be had. (This may not be true for a very few special mags, but it is true for the vast and overwhelming of them) It's best to stick with one profile that you find works well for you.
Not sure how to describe what it is that you do? Need a sample profile to look at? Well, here's one �and is an actual profile from my next-door neighbor:
Communications/Utlility
.....Radio/Broadcasting
..........Advertising/Sales
...............Avdertising
....................Account Manager
If you are a teacher this is one way to do the profile:
Education
.....Education
..........School/Library
...............Education
....................Educator
Okay ... now if this is your first try opening a FBM account, you will get a page which at the top SHOULD ideally show the mag you were hoping to get at the top of the page highlighted in yellow with a check next to the box.
EDIT 1/02/08 Lately due to a software change, you have to manually add the check yourself. If you see that, that's a good thing. That means you will get the magazine if you can make it through the next few hurdles.
If you are a returning client, you will have been prompted to put in your password before you get this screen. Again, if the mag you were hoping for is pictured at the top of the page - YOU WIN.. you get the sub. now proceed.
Next you will see all these other options and offers.
SAY NO TO ALL OF THEM. Make sure you check "No Thanks, or NO or "None of The above' to any and all questions.
DO NOT BE TEMPTED TO ACCEPT ANYTHING.. Not even the free sub to BabyTalk.. it will just side-track you with a bunch of qualifying questions.
SAY NO NO NO To Everything!! Do not say "Okay send a letter to Washington on my behalf. Do not say YES to any sweeps entries or email newsletter subscriptions.
KEEP SAYING NO! NO NO NO! Got it?? GOOD.
EDIT 2/07/06: Sometimes it is OK to say YES but only under very special circumstances. Please see the next post in this thread for the one time you can say YES. there isn't room here
You will also be asked to give the first letter of the State where you were born, the first letter of your dad's first name or some other piece of info which serves as an online signature that you are really you. Do it. You should not have to put the year of your birth if you followed my above instructions which were to SAY NO NO NO TO EVERYTHING! They only need that if you fell prey to the dumb offer for the Free career Kit. SAY NO and move on!
Say no no no, go to bottom of page click Submit.
If you are new, it will bring you to a page where you have to fill out your business addy and home addy. Fill them both out with the same address if you don't want to use your real business addy. You must put some business name and some phone number. I usually put my Area code plus all zeros. Then, under Alternate/Home address, I put my real address. It will ask you to enter a password too if this is your first time.
Remember, in the future, you will always be checking off 'SEND TO HOME ADDRESS" so it doesn't matter what business name you put. If you have no business just put in the word "Resident".
When you finish, check off 'Send to home address' and click submit.
You will get a confirming page showing where your mag sub is going and a button to click that says CONTINUE. Click it. That will bring you to a confirmation page that says THANK YOU... blah blah blah. Print that for your records.
You are done.
Now, next time you see a FREEBIZMAGS offer, click on the link � fill out your name, email and profile (which you have made note of somewhere I hope), hit enter, then enter password. IF YOU DON'T SEE THE MAG YOU WANTED AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE....
There are no more freaking subs - STOP THERE - DO NOT go on. If you go on, you risk accepting some dumb Trade Mags. Just because the link works and permits you to enter your info does not mean there are subs to be had. If you don't see the desired mag after you enter your password - No Mag Sub for you. Quit while you are ahead.
Class dismissed for now.
Next lesson:
What is that Akami Crap in front of the web address for FBM links?
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Thanks Nuala's Mom!!
FBM exists to make money by pre-qulifying people for controlled circulation magazines (trade mags). They use the free consumer mags as a lure. As explained elsewhere in this thread, FBM can snag anywhere from 50 cents to $5 per qualified subscriber they refer to a trade mag. They also get paid for referring people with kids to the babyTalk or American baby mags (those magazines then sell those names to photographers, dept stores, cord blood bankers etc).
So, if you pick a nonsensical combo or one that doesn't qualify you to be offered any trade mags, you won't be offered the free sub they are using as a carrot. That's why experienced users share successfully used profiles - it's for people who either don't know how to choose their own profile or whose profession isn't covered. Some evidence exists that certain student or reitree combos also are starting to get weeded out by FBM. There will always be people who say "but I used XX profile and I still got offered the mag..." and that's great. However, it pays to remember why FBM offers us these subs to begin with. if your profile cannot be useful to them, best to get another.
Why does it take a forever for a 3rd party or marketing firm to submit your subscription to the publisher?
Nuala'sMom Answer: Thanks for the Answer:
It's because they have to wait and bundle all the subs which are usually submitted once a quarter. So, if they sell you a 3 year sub on the last day of a financial quarter - it won't usually get sent in for processing for another 3 months.
I can't be sure about every discount broker, but that's the way it worked when I was in the business. We used to be able to buy the brokered subs thru our own accounting divisions and they would get submitted once a quarter via a central clearinghouse. This was before brokered subs were being sold on eBay but I'm sure it's still the same system.
Brokered subs are not the same as Sponsored subs. Sponosred subs are submitted differently and they usually go straight to the publisher and not thru a clearing house.
In a nutshell - the heavily discounted subs are brokered subs and part of the reason you get that steep discount is the delay in processing. They are processed en masse 4 times a year via a fulfillment house.
In Summary:
1. There are no magic profiles.
2. One profile over another will not get you any more magazines than if you use a profile that actually describes what you do for a living
3. In the absence of any benefit to lying, why not just tell the truth?
......But I'm a student you say? Well, then fill out the profile for your part-time job or summer job. The Student Profile doesn't get you very far these days with either FBM or Mercury. You must remember why these two places even exist - to make money by pre-qualifying users for controlled circulation magazines (Trade Mags)
4. The longer I stay at this hobby of getting free things, the more it is apparant to me that lying to get something you wouldn't otherwise qualify for is more harmful to you than it is to others. It lowers the threshold of temptation to the point where where once someone has said one little lie to get a tbe of lisptick, they think nothing of making the big lie to say they had a kidney transplant to get a free CD player.
Just to make sure that any other users don't get the false impression that I believe lying in your profile is a good way to score more free mag subs, I have gone back and edited some of the posts on the first page to make it abundantly clear that fake profiles give a user no advantage whatsoever. If a user chooses yto use a profile other than their own, they aren't gonna get anything they wouldn't have gotten anyway.
So - happy free mag hunting and be honest! it pays off in ways I can't even begin to describe!
If you go thru to front offer page, fill out your profile, enter your password and get to the offer page there are only two possibities:
1. you will be offered the magazine - means there are still subs to be had
or
2. You cannot get the check off box to check off for you or, they only show you trade mags and not the mag you were looking for - means there are no more subs to be had for that title.
it's really that simple.
Look, years ago I used to believe alot of the crap about profiles mattering too but through experience and after talking with an ex-employee of Freebizmags, I came to understand that the only thing that matters when it comes to profiles is that your profile be of sufficient depth to permit them to offer you some type of trade magazine. If their software can't match you with any trade magazines, you will likely not be offered anything. There is no person looking through the profiles, just their software. That's why choosing a retired person's profile won't get you offered anything.
I know the profiles can be confusing.. a lot of folks who genuinely Wwant trade mags offered to them have a tough time trying to figure out what to choose on each successive screen. Just try and accurately represent the profession you're in. That is why I have given examples of successful profiles in the past - so folks can see their logic.
I'm not sure which Jewelry mag you were going for but keep trying with the other consumer titles and I'm sure you'll get in on some good ones!
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Actually No. That is not the case at all.. as has been explained throughout this thread. All of the above is another one of the popular myths about FBM that people believe because they are cross-pollinating rumors about Product testing with magazine giveaways. The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
The one and ONLY purpose of the profile is to enable FBM softweare to match you with potential Trade magazines. That is all. FBM makes its money by pre-qualifying people for Trade magazines which are known inside the publishing industries as "Controlled Circulation" titles. Controlled Circ titles charge their advertiser rates based on the number of qualified readers they will reach. it is therefore imperative that the Controlled Circ magazines continue to find new QUALIFIED readers if they care to stay in business. This is where FBM comes in.
To repeat everything that has been stated before 7 or 8 times....
FBM makes its money by by charging a per head fee for referring prequalified readers to trade Mags. They get anywhere from 50 cents a head to as much as $5 a head. The consumer magazines are a lure. Those are bought in bulk at extreme discounted rates by sponsors such as Fandango, Computer Asssociates, SpaWish and so on. The sponsored subs are given away to hook you into the application process. Very few new uesers get away clean from the application process. By clean I mean, only taking the consumer mag and not getting rooked into accepting some of the controlled circ titles FBM tosses in their path. All that is gravy for FBM cuz FBM didn't pay for those discounted sponsored subs, SpaWish or Fandango did - all FBM is doing is providing the set-up to give them away.
So - once more with feeling - it doesn't mater WHAT profile you choose or how many people you appear to talk to in a given day or how popular you are etc etc. - So long as you choose a business profile that meshes as a real world profession with the FBM software (as in NOT retired and NOT a student and NOT unemployed), you will be offered the consumer magazine so long as there are subs available to be had.
The End
However, a significant number of slick dealers trying to use the retired profile and student profiles report being locked out of any and all mag offers. they always get the "were sorry but based on your profile we couldn't find aany magazines for you" message even as other slick dealers are getting in on the consumer mag.
I gave up trying to cover every contigency in this thread a while ago and instead, cover the broad strokes to benefit the largest number of users. I find that when I get bogged down with the "well, once this happened" and "But for Jeanie andher BFF this works even though 472 other people say it doesn't".. I lose the noobs who just get frustrated and can't follow.
My suggestion for the ladies coming over here from Prison Talk (Hi gals! Got your PMs!) is that they just choose a profile that fits what their man did before he became incarcerated. It's easier and less risky than flipping the retiree coin and hoping your one of the ones the software doesn't catch onto. It's also not being dishonest - that was his profession and remains his profession. He's just not working in that field at the moment.
As for filling out the addy section for the incarcerated fellas: Use the Company Name slot to put in either his DOC # or the name of his facility. If it's a choice between putting his facility and his DOC#, always choose the DOC#. So long as you use the facility's street address or PO Box on the first address line, yyour mail should get there. use the second address line for facility name if you must.
I hate to keep bumping my own threads but with the new archiving system, if the threads don't get a new post every once in a while, they get flushed down the toilet to the archive system where they can never be resurrected.
Keep in mind too - as mentioned about there is a tiny bit of YMMV here and there with regard to the use of Student and Reitred profiles. Personally I just don't understand peopl's aversion to plugging in real business info for their own profession. When users are new to the system they did it to avoid being offered lots of trade magazines. But once you know to JUST SAY NO to all of those Trade mags, sweepstakes enticements, e-newsletters and other garbage, there really isn't any reason to avoid a real profile.
If you really are retired, I would suggest just using the profile that applied to you when you were working and if you really are a student, use a profile that applies to the last job you had, the part-time/fulltime job you hold now or.. the job you hope to hold based on your current course of study.
There's a good reason for doing this which is - FBM sells your name and info over and over and over again and sometimes this results in good things coming your way related to your industry. At my private P.O. Box I use for my business addy on FBM (and which is the addy for my part-time business), I have gotten invitations to local business events, posctards with significant discount codes on supplies related to my business, free tickets to Trade shows and a lot of weird little gifty chotchkies from office suppliers and business machine companies. I know they got my name from FBM becuase I use a unique abbrevation of my title on my FBM account. I did that just to see who they were selling my name to.
Now, I also list my home addy with them and have most of my mags sent ot my home address but still, I get tons of mail at my buisiness addy all addressed to me and my title from my FBM account. It hasn't netted me a whole lot of wonderful stuff but I have gone to a few local events I couldn't have afforded otherwise and scored a few free Giftcards for Starbucks, iTunes & Amazon based on offers I got in the mail from a company that bought my name from FBM. (They sent industry specific surveys and if you were one of the first X number to reply, you got the cards).
So, do the profiles! Good things may come your way.
This is most likely due to the sponsorship issue. It is crucial to keep track of who sponsored the offer you did under which FBM account. I keep a log book listing the name of the mag I ordered, the date I ordered it and the sponsor's name. If the mag comes up again with the same sponsor, FBM will NOT usually allow you to re-order that mag under that account but will let you order it under a new or different account that had not previosuly ordered it. If the same link and the same mag comes up with a DIFFERENT sponsor, you can usually order it under that same account.
For example:
If you ordered Horse Illustrated under an offer sponsored by Malaria No More and 10 months later, the same link gets posted again but you notice the sponsor is now Fandango, you almost always can order again without any difficulties because even though the link is the same, it is considered a new offer by FBM due to the different sponsor.
I have an account for myself and one for my husband and I usually ping-pong between the two and have never missed out on any mag that still had subs available.
Lesson to OP's all hot to post an offer: Please post the offer details including the sponsor in BOLD. It will get you more rep if that's what you're after. If you're just hoping to be helpful, you will be doing that too.
Personally, I refuse to rep anybody that just posts bare links to FBM offers becuase they are missing the point entirely - FBM recycles links - It's the sponsor info that matters.
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