Free Book Plus a Data Vacuum

October 22, 2020

DarkCyber spotted an innocuous item offering a “free” book about Microsoft Office 2019, a product the research team no longer uses. TextMaker works just fine, thank you. Curious about the pitch and how trade publishers are responding to the challenge traditional niche publications and publishers are dealing with the impact of thumb typers on print, one of the DarkCyber team filled in the form.

Here’s what we learned. Start the process by navigating to this link.

We received the download link from this link.

Then an online form requires name, address, email, and other useful marketing bits.

The system from TradePub.com then matches the book to specialist topics and titles and displays books in a category, which in this case had a technology slant:

Click a title and the fun begins. Each title gathers substantially the same information. One can repeat this process a number of times to obtain free magazines. Some are in theory still in print and will be delivered to the DarkCyber offices.

So what?

Several observations:

The data collection is overt
Data must be entered multiple times
The download link did not arrive.

Bummer.

TradePub does not operate from the business capital of the rust belt. According to the firm’s Web site, the firm is in California. The company says:

TradePub.com is owned and operated by NetLine Corporation. NetLine Corporation empowers B2B Marketers with the reach, technology, and expertise required to drive scalable lead generation results and accelerate the sales funnel. Operating the largest B2B content syndication lead generation network, NetLine’s AudienceTarget™ technology drives prospect discovery, quality customer lead acquisition, and buyer engagement from real prospect intent as professionals consume content directly across the network. Superior quality, on demand access, and advanced campaign reports enable all clients to achieve lead generation success. Founded in 1994, NetLine is privately held and headquartered in Campbell, California.

For more information about TradePub.com navigate to this link.

How much junk mail will arrive at the “real” DarkCyber email address? Monitoring is underway. The DarkCyber researcher reported that within 10 minutes of registering, three email spam items were received by the “real” DarkCyber email address.

Since the marketing set up has been in operation for a quarter century, why haven’t trade publications and specialist publications outperformed their stakeholders’ expectations?

This is a good question which some study from home, soon to be MBA may want to answer. At least the approach is not chock full of search engine optimization goodness. That’s a plus.

DarkCyber was able to download the book. It is an 800 page tome, which is definitely going to become the research team’s night time read. One of the DarkCyber research crew observed, “This outfit should pay me to read this book.”

Unlikely, right?

PS. The “free” book? It contains zero information about inserting images and controlling their location in the document. Minor point? No, representative of the value of “free.”

Stephen E Arnold, October 22, 2020

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Marketing, News, Publishing

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.