Get Inman News for Free!

I keep meaning to join Innman News but I just haven't gotten around to it. I wonder if subconsciously it's the thought of paying for information in a Web 2.0 world. After all, it goes against, my philosophy of free access to information. Heck even the New York Times gives me free information.

A friend sent me an Inman News link. I clicked only to be faced with a page that told me to "JOIN NOW and gain immediate access to this article!" So I pulled out my credit card and was about to drop the $150 when I started thinking about Inman's SEO. I thought to myself, wait a second, Google doesn't have an Inman subscription yet they seem to see all of the great content.

Inman's SEO Loophole!

It turns out, Inman has a page for Google and a page for site visitors. Let me explain. Let's say you want to read about a Miami Realtor who is being sued for $25M. The link to the article looks like this...

http://www.inman.com/inmannews.aspx?ID=65991

Clicking the link forces you to "JOIN NOW" if you want to see the article. but a simple edit to the link removes that pesky JOIN NOW text and gives you full access to the article.

http://www.inman.com/inmanstories.aspx?ID=65991

You will notice that I simply changed the link from "news" to " stories." Ahh free content without JOINING NOW.

Keep It Legal!

Now remember, joining Inman News has more advantages than just having access to stories. Their signup page list them all (including the ability to reprint and conference discounts). Based on these "extras", joining probably still seems like a good thing to do. So I guess I will still drop the 150 bucks and justify the cost by the perks and convince myself I am still holding on to my Web 2.0 philosophy!

UPDATE! It looks like Inman wised up and closed the loop hole. But don't worry. It turns out that Inman has a few holes in their system. Instead of changing the link to stories.aspx, just change it to story.aspx.

http://www.inman.com/inmanstory.aspx?ID=65991

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