Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Maxim update.

So, right on the heels of my tirade about how Maxim sucks and I'm never going to buy their magazine again, I paid full retail price for their first issue beyond the umbrella of my former subscription. It's the April 2007 issue with Fergie Ferg on the cover, which I purchased for obvious reasons. And while going through my pre-reading ritual of tearing out all the inserts, I noticed that every single one was pushing the same subscription offer-- 18 issues for $10.00.

18 issues for $10.00?!

After they made such a huge deal about their last-ditch we-want-you-back mind-blowing-sex-position-of-an-offer of 12 issues for $11.97? Upon which I discovered this was only three cents lower than the offer everyone gets on their website (12 issues for $12.00)? This is disgusting. Here they are offering me a year's worth of issues at a dollar each, when people off the street are being treated to a year and a half's worth of issues at 55 cents each. We're talking MORE issues for LESS money. At first I thought this might be a new price for everyone, but their website remains unchanged. So unless their site just needs to be updated, am I to believe that different people are getting different offers for the same product? Let's review.

GROUP 1: Departing subscribers -- 12 issues for $11.97.
GROUP 2: Website visitors -- 12 issues for $12.00.
GROUP 3: Unsubscribed readers -- 18 issues for $10.00.

Do they figure the people in those first two groups are so much more likely to throw their money away than the faceless mass composing group 3 that they shouldn't be offered as good a deal? What kind of research is this based on? No one would willingly pay more money for a shorter subscription if they knew about this. You don't even need to buy an issue to get the little subscription card inside. Are they relying on consumer ignorance?!

I was talking to my brother about this, and he directed me to a website that lists deals for things, including some ways to get free magazine subscriptions-- in this case, a specific coupon code used at a specific website. So I went to this site and used the code to get 4 free years of Maxim. They also had Stuff, so I got 4 free years of that, too. If you're asking yourself, as I was, what the catch is, there seems to be no catch. The broham in fact claims that magazines don't make that much from subscriptions anyway. Most of their revenue comes from companies who buy ads in the magazine. And the more subscribers they have, the more they can charge for those ads. So, one last time:

GROUP 1: Departing subscribers -- 12 issues for $11.97.
GROUP 2: Website visitors -- 12 issues for $12.00.
GROUP 3: Unsubscribed readers -- 18 issues for $10.00.
GROUP 4: Me -- 48 issues for $0.00.

Works for me.

Cheers,
Diego

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