Free Stuff - Web Giveaways

It's amazing what you can get free on the Internet. Free drives the Internet. It may be free advice, free research information, free products, free samples of products, free services. It may, of course, appear free when actually it requires you to purchase something or register for something or try something.

But there are many completely free offers out there. Why? For several reasons, the two most prominent being that manufacturers and retailers want to lure you into buying their products by letting you try them for free, assuming you'll love them and want more. The second primary reason is they want your information, requiring or at least requesting, as part of the freebies process, to get you to register and provide name, address, phone, and e-mail address, as well as a number of other demographics such as age, gender, family information, income, education and whether you own or rent. This gives the firm marketing information to better sell their products. They might also sell the registration information to list vendors and other marketing firms.

It may also be that the free stuff is simply a gimmick to upsell you into added products for which you'll pay a fee to the firm. One of the best examples of this is the newspaper industry. Hard hit by free classifieds competition from sites such as Craigslist, many newspapers are offering free classified ads to private parties, to sell their couch, find a new home for their dog, or sell their car. Where these freebies pay off is in the upsell. If you go on their site to place your free ad you may be told for an additional few dollars you can add a photo, or a border, the newspaper ends up earning revenue from their freebie offer.

The range of free stuff available online is staggering. Lets take a look at some of what's out there now.

You can get a free sample of Blistex by registering and joining (for free) an online service that offers health related news and forum groups. What does the site get? Undoubtedly they are paid by Blistex and other firms offering samples to bring them potential customers.

You can get a free digital camera. This firm's mission is to give free incentives to qualified consumers as a reward for their participation in surveys and marketing promotions and surveys. Right now they seek consumers in the United States in top markets. The consumers, to participate and earn the camera, must be at least 18 years of age, a legal U.S. resident and have a valid e-mail as well as shipping address. They must live in the area where the firm is conducting the promotion. The site first asks you to enter your zip code.

Beware of this one, however. I tried 8 different zip codes, all in obscure areas. They all said, "Congratulations, you have been accepted." Then the survey was simply dozens of attempts to get me to sign up for offers of other firms - school scholarship information, home mortgage, free Internet trail access and on and on. Finally I was told I qualified for the camera as soon as I completed just two of the following offers. Not one of which was actually free. After a lot of wasted time there was really no free stuff here.

Free custom business cards are offered online as well. This is a legitimate business free stuff offer, with the hope of an upsell. Once you get to the home page of the site you're asked for the information that you want placed on the business card, but you also are given two different highly visible opportunities to choose from hundreds of other designs for only $19.99 or order 250 premium business cards for the same $19.99 (unless they're bordered in 14 carat gold this is an exorbitant price to pay for business cards.) Clearly the upsells on this page pay for the freebies offers. But you can legitimately get free business cards from this site.
 

ALex Ruban.

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