I've always been one to get a bargain where I can. For me there is nothing better than getting something for free, or for a minimal amount of effort. Now I am well aware of the old addage that "There is no such thing as a free lunch" Well I like to know why?
So I did a bit of digging around. And it appears that if you are prepared to look at things with an open mind without dismissing it straight away, then you can have your free lunch and eat it.
What I found, I found about 3 years ago, but like the majority of people I ignored it thinking it was a scam. Then about a year ago it appeared again. So I took a deeper look. Well what I found amazed me, but I was still skeptical. In the end it looked like it wasn't going to cost me anything, so I thought what have I got to lose?
I signed up to a site which claimed I could get a free XBOX 360. There wasn't much detail on the front page of the site, which I assume is one of their ploys to get you to sign up to get more details. Anyway I signed up and it turns out you need to complete and offer and refer some friends. At this point I was confused about it all as I was so new to it.
Basically the way this works is the site I had just signed up to has a whole list of sponsors that are trying to promote themselves, and it was one of these "offers" I had to sign up to. Well looking through the list there were quite a few varied types of offer to sign up to, Gambling, Credit Cards, Movies, etc, etc. Well I signed up to the Lovefilm 2 week free trial as it was one of the companies I had heard of. To do this I had to click on the link on the freebie site which in turn took me to the Lovefilm website.
Once on Lovefilm, I had to sign up and give my name, address, age and Credit Card details, and I was then signed up. Once this was done I had to choose package I wanted to go for, there were 3 at different prices. The cheapest one lets you have 1 DVD at a time, where the most expensive allows you to have 3 at a time. It didn't matter which one I chose as the 2 week free trial applied to all of them. I chose the cheapest. Once signed up I had to make a wish list of 10 DVD's I wanted and then one of them would be sent on to me. That was it I was signed up. Now I was committed.
Back on the freebie site, within a couple of hours my status went to Pending against my offer.
Now I had to get referrals. What this basically means is I needed to get some people to do the same as I had just done, (Though not necessarily with the Lovefilm offer) So I started thinking about how I was going to do this! And when I'd finished thinking, I thought some more!
The next thing I did was to ask a few friends, and not surprisingly most were reluctant, though I did get a few sign ups, but none did their offer. This is known as "Going Yellow". Completing your offer is known as "Going Green".
However I had 1 good friend who said he would help me out and he did the Gala Bingo offer and within a few hours he had "Gone Green" I was now on my way to getting my free XBOX 360. Just 9 more referrals to go. With renewed gusto I continued to promote my referral link and I even built a website. I manged to get loads of yellows and a few greens. but things were going slowly.
Then I found Exceem, this is a forum made by and full of people who are doing the same thing as me. Even some of the members are the owners of the freebie sites. Well I was astonished, especially when I viewed the section "I received my free gift" This is full of people who have received their items, and posted photos of what they have received.
Well I was impressed with the forum so far, so I decided to sign up to Exceem Extra, this is their extended section for "VIP" members and opens up a hidden section of the forums, here VIP members swap ideas on how to get referals, and I took some tips from it. I promptly signed up to Vistaprint and ordered myself 200 free business cards, printed with my referral link on them. This turned out to be a mistake, I should have just had my own URL printed.
Anyway after a few months things were still going slowly and I had only managed to get 4 greens, and no one was signing up anymore. And due to changes in my life it all fell on the wayside until recently.
In October 2007 I remembered the freebie site, and decided to log on and have a look. I was amazed, I now had seven greens, and was only 3 away from completing my offer. Well gusto was returned and I decided to start pushing my link again. Now I have managed to get all 10 greens.
The next step was to hit the verify button. This step basically means you have to wait a short while, so the freebie site can verify all of your signups, including your own, are genuine.
I have had one or two problems with some of the sign ups but the owners of the freebie site have been excellent in sorting these problems out.
In the end I passed verification and ordered my Xbox 360, and it arrived 7 days later.
Since October, I have also signed up to quite a few other offers and I have now received my first gift of a Apple iPod shuffle. £150 Amazon vouchers, and a Nintendo Wii
|
Contributor's Note
Ive been working on freebies for a long time, and have recieved a large amount of items for free.
|
