Frequently Asked Questions

Short answer: Yes, MRH magazine is totally free, and will always be completely free.

Long answer: Yes, Model Railroad Hobbyist is a completely free rich-media ezine, and will always be completely free to download and read. MRH content is protected by a creative commons license, which is a new form of copyright that allows the content to be freely distributed as long as derivative use of that content also is free.

This means we WANT you to give copies away to all your friends, and to post content from the magazine on web sites and in forums. We give you carte blanche permission to freely post content from MRH magazine online as long as you also include a link back to this web site in the post.

Our creative commons license says that access to our content is free as long as the place you use our content is also free. You cannot, for instance, use content from MRH magazine in a Model Railroader magazine article without our permission, because that use of our content is not free.

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Short answer: Simple. The magazine is paid for by advertising.

Long answer: Model Railroad Hobbyist is completely funded by advertising. The open source software movement has shown that you can make money with "free" stuff as long as you also offer a service someone is willing to pay for.

In the case of MRH, the service we're offering our advertisers is the opportunity to (eventually) reach every model railroader on the planet who is online. Since MRH is a quality publication that's completely free, we expect word of mouth to do it's job well and most model railroaders on the web will download most issues - and why not, since the magazine's free!

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Short answer: We don't take annoying ads - and especially not involuntary popups. Period.

Long answer: We don't permit annoying ads with gratuitous animation or popup ads that get in your face while trying to read an article. The last thing we want to do is drive away readers, even if we are free. We encourage either static ads or rich media ads that inform, educate, and truly display the vendor's wares in a helpful light.

For example, imagine a SoundTraxx Tsunami ad with a nice loco photo that lets you try out the sound decoder for yourself. Click on the bell, and the bell rings. Click on the whistle and you get a popup that lets you play the whistle with your mouse or chose whistle sound options. And so on. How useful is that? It's completely possible with a well-designed, helpful rich media ad!

With a rich media magazine, you can click on links in the ad and immediately go to the advertiser's web site. Paper publication advertising can't deliver instant results because it's offline. To get you as an offline reader to complete an action, an advertisier must promote such an amazing offer that you stop what you're doing and go order the product right then and there. Or hope you remember them later. Links in a rich media magazine ads go instantly to the advertiser's web site - making ordering as convenient as it gets!

Since our magazines are posted online for download, search engines will find our keyword-rich content. We will continually be discovered by new online readers and rediscovered by previous readers. Our ever-growing base of high-quality free articles can be linked to by web sites, forums, and blogs, as well as passed around by email. By contrast, articles in print-only publications don't have the sticking power or the viral marketing* potential. Once an offline print article is no longer featured in the publication, it's out of sight.

^*Viral marketing: Word-of-mouth advertising that harnesses the network effect of the Internet and is capable of reaching a large number of people rapidly. The ad audience itself becomes the carrier, hence the term "viral". Viral marketing is popular because of the ease of execution, the relative low-cost (compared to printed publications), the more precise targeting, and the often high and rapid response rate.

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Short answer: Rich media means the PDF is interactive - it has video clips, audio clips, and 3D virtual reality images. If a still photo is worth a thousand words, then interactive video, audio, and 3D images you can spin must be worth a million words! Hence the term, rich media.

Long answer: Adobe PDF documents can contain video clips, audio clips, and 3D virtual reality images you can spin 360 degrees. A virtual reality image, for instance, is very powerful and useful. Imagine being able to look at all sides of a model or to look in all directions at a layout room or prototype scene.

We can also do interactive quizzes or a demo of a DCC sound loco where you press various buttons to play different sounds or even change settings to see their effect. This leaves traditional paper print publications in the dust!

We feel the PDF format has gotten something of a bad rap because print documents formatted with desktop publishing applications and later put to PDF are not designed for easy reading on a computer screen. The portait orientation, for example, makes reading a PDF page on-screen a real pain. You have to scroll around, zoom in, zoom out - it's all very annoying and burns extra mental energy as you attempt to read the document on screen. No wonder most people prefer to read offline on paper!

With Model Railroad Hobbyist (MRH), we've thrown out the old-school print PDF paradigm and started over. MRH uses many new online reading design concepts, and being able to add rich media content really leverages this format to its fullest. The fonts used, the "white" page background color, the way the writing is organized all need to be adjusted from the typical approach. The result is a PDF document that's a delightfully entertaining and educational experience.

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Short answer: A full-size issue circa 100 pages of articles and columns, plus 20 pages of ads will approach 100 megabytes (issue 1 was almost 80 MB). We produce two versions - a PREMIUM Edition with the best quality graphics and all rich media embedded - and a LITE version (20 MB or less) for dial-up, Macs and Linux.

Long answer: We will be producing two versions of our rich media PDF magazine: the PREMIUM Edition running circa 100 megabytes and a LITE Edition that's less than 20 megabytes. The LITE Edition has more compressed graphics and you view the rich media via a browser over the internet, so it's not quite as nice visually.

The LITE Edition is also very Mac and Linux friendly, viewable on Macs using only preview and readable using an Adobe Reader as old as version 7.

The PREMIUM Edition requires you use Adobe Reader 9 in order to see all the rich media goodies, which is not insignificant to download and install. But at least Adobe Reader 9 is free - just like our magazine. The other wrinkle is the interactive Flash Media in a PDF doesn't work very well on the Mac Leopard OS - so Mac users are advised to download the LITE Edition unless you are a Mac techy who likes to experiment.

We know of Mac Leopard users who have gotten the PREMIUM Edition to work perfectly on their Macs - but they had to jump through some serious technical hoops to get it working. Unless you're adventurous, we recommend Mac Leopard users download the LITE Edition.

Our recommendation for readers on a dial up line is to find a fellow model railroader who has a fast internet connection and who lives near you. Have him or her download the PREMIUM Edition, plus the install for Adobe Reader 9 and burn it to CD for you. Model Railroad Hobbyist is free, so why not? In fact, we encourage you to burn copies to CD and give them away.

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Short answer: The hobby doesn't need another HO-centric model railroading magazine - our intent is to give all the scales some coverage. To make sure we do this, our table of contents will list what scales each article applies to. At a glance you'll be able to tell how well we're doing!

Long answer: We want to make sure we're not an HO only magazine, so to that end we're listing the scales that our articles apply to in the table of contents. For example, from issue 1:

Of the 5 feature articles, 2 are scale specific (only one is HO), while 3 apply to all scales.

We're also looking for contributing editors to be columnists for scales other than HO, so if you know of anyone who might be interested, send them our way!

Keep in mind that publishing articles for the other scales is a supply and demand problem. While our heart may be in the right place - we can only publish articles we're getting!

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Short answer: Email all your modeling buddies. Post about us on forums or in your blog. Include one of our banners (below) on your web site or in your signature.

Long answer: The more readers we have, the more advertising dollars we'll get, and the more likely Model Railroad Hobbyist will grow and flourish as a rich media hobby resource that's free!

Email all your model railroading buddies and tell them about us - make sure and include our URL in your email:

http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com

Post about us on model railroading forums or in your blog. Or start a blog here on our site - and then tell all your friends about it!

Put one of our banners on your web site, or include one of our banners in your signature:

Code (copy and then paste on your web site):

<a href="http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com"><img width="468" height="60" alt="Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine - Totally electronic, totally interactive, totally free - Each quarterly issue, 100+ pages!" src="http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/system/files/users/MRH_news_desk/MRH_banner1.jpg" /></a>

Code (copy and then paste on your web site):

<a href="http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/current_issue"><img width="468" height="60" alt="Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine - Always completely free! - Each quarterly issue, 100+ pages." src="http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/system/files/users/MRH_news_desk/MRH_banner2.jpg" /></a>

Code (copy and then paste on your web site):

<a href="http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/magazine"><img width="468" height="60" src="http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/system/files/users/MRH_news_desk/MRH_banner3.jpg" alt="Lean, mean, green (and free!) - Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine - click to learn more" /></a>

NEW!

Code (copy and then paste on your web site):

<a href="http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/magazine"><img width="120" height="240" src="http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/system/files/users/MRH_news_desk/MRH_banner4.jpg" alt="Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine - Totally electronic, totally interactive, totally free - Each quarterly issue, 100+ pages!" /></a>

NEW!

Code (copy and then paste on your web site):

<a href="http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/magazine"><img width="120" height="240" src="http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/system/files/users/MRH_news_desk/MRH_banner5.jpg" alt="Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine - Always completely free! - Each quarterly issue, 100+ pages." /></a>

NEW!

Code (copy and then paste on your web site):

<a href="http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/magazine"><img width="120" height="240" src="http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/system/files/users/MRH_news_desk/MRH_banner6.jpg" alt="Lean, mean, green (and free!) - Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine - click to learn more" /></a>

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Short answer: It's even more important for a free magazine to have a good subscriber number to give potential advertisers. Plus only subscribers can post comments, so that keeps down anonymous spam. The magazine's free so subscribing is also totally free.

Long answer: Even a free magazine needs subscribers to encourage advertisers to place ads with us. Since we're totally advertiser supported, having a good subscriber number is vital to show advertisers that we are a serious publication. If you like the idea of a quality model railroading magazine that's available to you completely free over the internet, one of best things you can do to help us succeed is to subscribe.

Subscribing is free and easy - we only ask for a login name and email - and we never give your email out to anyone else, not even our sponsors!

And remember, nothing will help us win advertiser support more than subscribing to MRH.

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Short answer: Most who have video playback problems are using Internet Explorer version 6 or 7 with the Windows XP or Vista operating system. If this is the browser and operating system you are using, then read the long answer for a detailed explanation of what the problem is and how to fix it.

Also, check out these additional troubleshooting tips.

Long answer: If you are a Windows XP or Windows Vista user, then a "feature" Microsoft has recently added to IE6 and IE7 to make it "more secure" is preventing the video playback. We host our videos an a different server to increase bandwidth and make video playback more immediate. This is not an uncommon practice.

Unfortunately, Microsoft recently added "phishing attack" logic to their browsers that under certain special circumstances simply won't let foreign site content display. It is true that a common hacker trick is to take you to a site and then under the hood hit you with content from a completely different site unawares. So Microsoft sort of got it right.

Where Microsoft made their mistake is that their browser doesn't tell you this is the problem nor does it give you the option to allow the content to display anyway - the browser simply won't display the content and doesn't tell you why. Let's hope Microsoft eventually fixes this very unfriendly behavior, since there are legitimate reasons to host some content on a different site!

In the meantime, to fix the problem, you need add our video site http://vps880.inmotionhosting.com as a trusted site in IE. To do this, in your browser:

- Go to Tools > Internet Options ...
- Click the security tab
- Click on the Trusted sites icon
- Click the Sites... button
- Paste http://vps880.inmotionhosting.com into the top box, uncheck Require server verification  ... 
- Click the add button
- Click OK a couple times to back out of all the dialog boxes and apply the changes.

Try clicking on the video to play it. You should now get a question as to whether vps880.inmotionhosting.com is to be trusted - and if you click OK, the video should play back fine.

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Answer: Make sure you have tried all the video playback options we offer. Here they are:

1. If you click in the picture, the video from our main host will play.
2. If you look below the picture and text, there's a link to our video on our mirror site. Click the mirror link to see if it plays any better.
3. If neither one of those options work, there's also a download link. Click it to download the video and try playing it locally to see if it will play any better. You will also need to have a player capable of playing the video back locally - Adobe Media Player works especially well for this. You can download Adobe Media Player here.
    

Before you report the problem to us, here are some more things to try:

1. Did you try a different browser? With the leading edge web material we're presenting, trying at least two browsers almost always solves the problem.
   We find Google Chrome works especially well with our web site and our media.
   Just type "Google Chrome" in the Google search box to get a download link.
2. One useful tip before reporting a problem to us is to power your computer completely down, let it sit for 5 minutes to allow components to cool, and then restart it to see if you have a thermal problem or a residual issue from something else you were running before you tried our site.
   Have you tried a cold reboot to see if that helped?

If none of the above seems to help and you need to report the problem to us, make sure you include the following details:

1. What kind of computer is it? Mac or PC?
2. What kind of operating system are you running? Mac OS X, Windows XP, Windows Vista, some flavor of Linux, ... ?
3. What kind of browser are you using? Internet Explorer? Firefox? Safari? Google Chrome? Or something else?
4. Are you dial-up or broadband?
5. What version of Flash Player are you using (you need the first number to be 9 or greater)?
   You can find out here ...
6. Describe the problem as specifically as possible. For instance, just saying the "video won't play" isn't specific enough. You need to tell us what "won't play" means. Did you click on the link and it hangs? Does nothing happen when you click on the link? Does the video start to come up and just play the audio with a black screen? Describe "won't play" in as much detail as possible.
    

By giving us the details, we can often recommend further courses of action that will solve your problem.

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CAN'T REMEMBER YOUR USER NAME?

Try using your email address - both your user name and your email work as a login name.

We assume most people can remember their email address, even if they can't remember their username - especially if they don't visit this site very often.

CAN'T REMEMBER YOUR PASSWORD?

At the bottom of the log in form there's a link: Request new password.

Click this link, enter your email address (the one you registered with) and we'll email you a new temporary log in.
 

The email we send you looks like this:

tester,

A request to reset the password for your account has been made at Model  
Railroad Hobbyist magazine.

You may now log in to model-railroad-hobbyist.com by clicking on this link or  
copying and pasting it in your browser:  
http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/user/reset/1567/1239604826/136a2aec11286fd3a6febe27324ec5b8

This is a one-time login, so it can be used only once. It expires after one  
day and nothing will happen if it's not used.

After logging in, you will be redirected to  
http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/user/1567/edit so you can change your  
password.
 

Click the link (the one shown in red) in your email and you will be automatically logged in and put on your account edit page so you can enter a new password ...

... once you've changed your password and saved it, you should be all set. You should be able to log out and log back in with your new password and life should be great.

If this is NOT how it's working for you, then Contact us and let us help you with your log in.
 

IF ALL ELSE FAILS ...

Use the Contact us menu to notify us that you can't log in and need help. We'll get you going again!

We know things don't always work perfectly and sometimes you need a little personal help - and we're glad to help out.

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Short answer: Please submit your articles to us using the our upload site.

Long answer: For detailed sending instructions, see our contribute section.

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Short answer: A typical article of 3000 words, 10 photos, and a short video clip will net a payment of about $180, or about $30 per page. We expect payment of $100 - $200 per feature article to be typical.

Long answer: If we can use your article, we'll pay you for it upon acceptance. Our standard rates are:

• $10 per page of text (about 400 words)
• $10 per photo
• $20 per virtual reality image (3D click-n-spin)
• $20 per minute of video or audio (5 min max - contact us if more because we have size limits)

A typical submission of 3000 words and 30 photos (bracketed) plus a short 1 minute video clip will result in an article that runs about 6 pages, has 10 photos and includes a short video clip. This article will net a payment of about $180 (an average of about $30 per page).

If the actual published article has more pages, more images, or more of your rich media content than we originally estimated, you will get a payment for the extra material used upon publication. If we use less of your article than originally estimated, then so be it. You got a higher rate for your article!

If one of your photos makes our cover, we pay $100 for cover photos. If one of your photos gets used in the table of contents, we pay $50 for it.

Since we're just getting started and depend totally on our sponsoring advertisers for income, we don't yet have a huge cash flow. This means we can't pay a lot for articles (yet). But once we get rolling good, we hope to raise our rates to make them more competitive. Our main benefit right now is that we pay upon acceptance, so you won't have to wait until publication for your money!

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Short answer: Our magazine is designed to be entertaining, interactive and read on the computer screen. That means our readers can go straight from your ad to your web site with one mouse click. With MRH magazine, the road to instant gratification is short! Download our advertiser's kit.

Long answer: Since we have deliberately designed MRH magazine to be read on a computer screen with interactive elements as a compelling part of the reader experience, ads placed with us have several advantages:

*Viral marketing: Word-of-mouth advertising that harnesses the network effect of the Internet and is capable of reaching a large number of people rapidly. Your target audience becomes the carrier, hence the term "viral". This marketing approach is based on the fact that people aren't likely to buy something just because they see an ad, but are far more likely to buy something because someone else told them about it. Viral marketing is popular because of the ease of execution, relative low-cost (compared to printed publications), more precise targeting, along with an often high and rapid response rate.

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Short answer: If you agree to place a year's worth of half-page or larger ads in our quarterly magazine you get a 25% discount and free sponsoring advertiser mini-banner ads on our web site (and magazine dashboard*). You also get premium ad placement in the front third of the magazine at no extra charge. Download our advertiser's kit.

Long answer: By agreeing to place a year's worth of half-page or larger ads in Model Railroad Hobbyist, you become a sponsoring advertiser with us. Sponsoring advertisers get many benefits:

Being a sponsoring advertiser of our free rich media publication also generates a lot of good will for you with modelers. More than any of our other advertisers, it's our sponsoring advertisers who help make it possible for MRH magazine to be free to modelers. You can bet they'll love you for that!

By being a vendor where shopping spree winners can spend their winnings, your sponsoring ad with us could get significantly underwritten by contest funds if you have popular product offerings! We already have sponsors who have received over $700 from shopping spree winners (two drawings as of November 2008).

Download our advertiser's kit.

*Premium Edition Readers use the magazine dashboard to print out pages from the magazine, to toggle between full screen and and window'ed reading mode, and to exit reading the magazine. The dashboard is where readers go whenever they want to control something about their reading experience, so this is a high traffic part of the magazine and an ideal place to have your mini-banner ad visible to readers.

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Short answer: Our web site's been live for just over 9 months and we've had more than 60,000 unique visitors. We've also had over a million total page hits in that time.

Long answer: Word is traveling fast that we exist and that we're the first totally free model railroading magazine that's available over the internet. By March 31, 2009 we had over 30,000 downloads of our quarterly free rich media magazine.

We have Movie Monday in MRH Theater, where we're posting fresh new quality video content specifically for model railroaders each week. And of course, like everything we're doing, this video is completely free.

Each month, we release an 8-10 page newsletter of product announcements, industry scuttlebutt, event listings, MRH sponsor highlights, and a sneak peek at what's coming in the next quarterly issue of MRH.

We track click through rates, and we're seeing click throughs of over 5% for some of our sponsors on their mini-banner logos and ads in MRH. If you know anything about ad response rates, 1- 2% response is considered good, so numbers approaching 5% is off the charts! With your web site being only a single click away when you advertise with us, the road to instant gratification for modelers is short!

We also had one modeler report to us that his link in his posts here on the MRH web site have sent more modelers to his site than any other place he's ever posted a link, according to Google Analytics. And that's without even before we released issue 1!

As another data point, a European publisher recently debuted a new prototype railroad news magazine (Railway Herald Worldwide) that's totally electronic and free to download. Reports are they're scrambling to get enough server horsepower to keep up with the interest!

As word gets out that we're free and that we're loaded with engaging rich media model railroading content in our magazine and in our MRH Theater section, we expect strong growth as well.

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Answer: Yes, we do not accept any of the following types of ads:

- Illegal products, services or anything of dubious legality
- Adults only products, or anything adults only or pornography-related
- Gambling products or anything gambling-related
- Ads with potentially offensive content or with annoying gratuitous animation

We do not accept ads for anything related to any of the above under any circumstances, and of course it's our judgement call as to whether or not the potential ad is one of our "do not accept" ad types.

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We prefer to receive your ad copy submission electronically, since we're an all-electronic publication.

It's best if you package all your files up as a single zip or tar, since that creates one big file for you to send to us with all your text, images, video clips, audio clips, and so on. If you're looking for a free zip utility that runs on Windows, Macs, and Linux machines, check out Zipcreator.

Because of the attachment limits on emails, we have our own upload site. Please fill out the form like so:
1. Put your email address in the email field
2. Type a description of your upload, like "Full page ad from Jim's Hobbies"
3. Browse to your zipped file you want to upload
4. Select the /upload/files/submit_adcopy directory
5. Upload your file!

Once your file is uploaded, we will both get a link to it via email. We'll go download your ad copy, review it, and get back to you with a sample PDF page containing your ad so you can okay it!

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Short answer: If your announcement is only text, then use the "News release announcement" category on our contact form. If your announcement includes images or other media, see the long answer below for submission details.

Long answer: If your product announcment includes images or other media (like video clips or audio samples) we prefer to receive your announcement as a single zipped file via Sendspace.com.

Package your announcement and media up as a single zip or tar file. If you're looking for a free zip utility that runs on Windows, Macs, and Linux machines, check out Zipcreator.

Because of the attachment limits on emails, we use the free large file delivery service at Sendspace.com. On Sendspace, fill out the form like so:
1. Put news@model-railroad-hobbyist.com as the send to
2. Put your email as the from
3. Put in a simple title description of your news copy, like "New loco announcement from MRX Engineering"
4. Upload your file!

Once your file is uploaded, we will both get a link to it via email. We'll go download your announcement content, review it, and get back to you regarding where and when we will feature your news!

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Short answer: Go to contact us and select the FREE flyers category. In the message body, give us your shop's name, address, phone, web site, and description - and include a contact name (not for the listing - for our records) so we will know who to contact about the listing if needed.

We'll list your shop for free and mail you a stack of flyers to put on your counter that tells about Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine.

Long answer: If you're willing to promote our free Model Railroad Hobbyist mediaZine a little in your hobby shop, we're happy to list your shop for free here on our web site.

We'll mail you a stack of MRH flyers for your counter, and in exchange you get added to our supporting hobby shops section for free!

The listing includes:

All free, just for putting some of our free flyers on your shop counter. We get over 15,000 unique visitors to this web site every month, so having your hobby shop listed on our site for free can't hurt. And telling modelers everywhere that your shop supports the forever free MRH magazine shows your good will toward the hobby!

We'll make your shop's address clickable to Google Maps for driving directions - making it very easy for any of our readers to find you!

As a value-added service, we'll make sure your shop has an up-to-date listing in Google Maps, complete with the correct address, phone number, web site URL, email address, and description. When we provide this service, you'll get a letter mailed to you from Google with your PIN and details on how to keep your shop's Google Maps listing up-to-date.

Having a current Google Maps entry makes your shop show up more in Google searches and makes it even easier for people to find your shop.

Just one more example of how Model Railroad Hobbyist works for you to connect modelers to you via the web!

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