There is no doubt that we all love free stuff  Free is good right, well most of the time free is great! but sometimes its either to difficult to get or someone is trying to scam you out of pocket.

The realistion is that  if you want free stuff you have to put in a little work to get it, which basically means you give to get given there is no real free lunch as such.

There are lots of free things available on the Net, but the trick is knowing which ones are worth while and how to get them. My job is to make it easy and fun for you to get freebies.

Like anything else, you need to know a little about what you are doing to be successful in obtaining freebies. You need to know where to look, how to make your request, and what kinds of things to avoid so you don’t get scammed.

The Internet is a wonderful place, filled will all kinds of great information and lots of stuff you can get for free. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of of bad things about the Internet. Where ever there are a lot of people you will find the evil few who try to take advantage of the masses. The same hold true for the Internet. You will want to learn to steer clear of the scams on your way to finding the good stuff.

Free Stuff Scams

The lure of free stuff is a powerful marketing tool and is used to good effect by many savvy marketers. Unfortunately, not every free stuff offer is what it appears to be. There are lots of great free stuff offers out there, but you need to use some healthy skepticism and resist the temptation to fall for free stuff scams.

Evaluating free stuff offers is pretty easy if you use a little common sense mixed with some knowledge and a bit of experience. Below are some tips to help you avoid the free stuff boondoggles:

• Too good to be true – Offers that appear too good to be true are. Examine the motivation for the free offer. A free trial size shampoo makes sense because they are trying to sell shampoo. A free vacation is unlikely, unless there are large hidden charges or other commitments attached.
• Ignore unsolicited offers – Just take it as a given that spammers have nothing of value to offer. Variations of the advance fee scam like the email from Nigeria saying they want to use your bank account to get money out of the country are on the rise. Just delete these without giving them a second thought.
• Don’t pay for prizes – If you get email or postal mail proclaiming you the winner of a great prize and all you have to do is pay a fee or provide sensitive information to claim it, don’t. It’s a scam and the only winners are the scammers.
• Free with shipping and handling – These offers are generally OK as long as the shipping and handling fees are reasonable and you get something of value. $4.95 for a CD-ROM you are interested in is fine, but $4.95 for a cell phone antenna booster (which does not work no matter what they tell you) is a waste of money.
• Beware email collection scams – Most of the sites that consist of nothing but a form offering free stuff are there to collect email addresses for spammers. These sometimes have long lists of offers or “newsletters” you can subscribe to. If you are tempted to sign up for these, be sure to use a disposable email address.

Just put these tips together with your own common sense and you can enjoy the legitimate offers and avoid the free stuff scams.

How To Avoid Junk Email and Still Enjoy Freebies

Here’s How:

1. Only provide your email address to sites that have an appropriate privacy policy.
2. Use a free (and disposable) email address when you suspect you may get on email lists that don’t interest you.
3. Most online forms provide a checkbox to select whether you want to receive email from them. Check or uncheck as appropriate
4. Many online forms have a checkbox which asks permission to share your information with third parties. Check or uncheck as appropriate.
5. Avoid entering your email address in online guest books or other places where it will be displayed on the Web. Spammers use programs called bots to harvest these.
6. Never reply to unsolicited email even to request removal. It just verifies that your address is valid.
7. Use a bulk email blocking service like the one described in the related features below.

Tips:

1. Some junk email is inevitable. Learn to recognize it by the subject or other headers and delete it without bothering to open it.

So you want to get some free samples and other free stuff?

Obtaining free samples and other free stuff can be a hit or miss proposition. You can, however, improve your odds of getting a free offer if you make sure it is from one of the big brand name companies. Sometimes the smaller companies will make an offer that sounds very attractive, but they usually become overwhelmed very quickly and seldom are able to follow through on the free stuff offer.

Brand Name Freebies

Companies like Procter & Gamble or Walmart are a great source of free samples and offers. These companies and many others gladly give away samples in hopes that you like their products and make future purchases. It’s a win – win situation all around. You get to try new products without buying them and the companies gain new customers and sell more products.

Free Software

Free software is probably the most plentiful type of freebie you will find on the Internet. Everything from games to heavy duty business applications can be had for free. The biggest problem is determining what free software is useful and avoiding software containing adware and spyware.

Brand Name Freebies

Charmin Free Offers:

Charmin is making it easy for you to find their free offers by collecting them on one page. The Charmin offers tend to run for a long time, but any offer may end at any time.

Costco Free Offers:

Costco’s free sample offers are not listed on a single page, but can be turned up with a simple search of their site. At this writing they have two free sample offers. They may have more or less at any particular time.

Dove Free Offers:

Dove now has a special offers page where they list all of the current offers including a number of free sample offers.

Kraft Foods Free Offers:

Kraft Foods puts a lot of effort into keeping their brands foremost in the minds of consumers. One of the ways they do that is to provide free offers and free services related to food and healthy living.

Kroger Offers:

Kroger has continued in the the competition with Walmart and has added an offers page. The page is hosted on StartSampling and I expect it will be kept up ot date and that offers will change frequently.

Nestle Free Offers:

Nestle usually has several nice free offers including those from Very Best Baking and Very Best Baby.

Neutrogena Free Offers:

Neutrogena uses their “what’s new” page to list their current offers and promotions. Promotions may include rebates, free samples, coupons, or sweepstakes.

Olay Beauty Free Offers:

Olay Beauty almost always has one or more free offers and a couple discount offers on their site. I’ve listed both the US and Canadian free offer pages.

Pathmark Samples and Coupons:

Pathmark lists brand name samples and coupons. Some of the offers are similar to the Kroger listings, but there usually are some unique offers to be found.

Procter & Gamble Free Offers:

Procter & Gamble is one of the biggest and most reliable sources of free sample offers. They conveniently offer a single page which lists many of current offers and promotions.

Reynolds Free Offers:

Reynolds is one of those household brands that works hard to get consumers to understand that they have more to offer than their original product line. As a result, you can usually find at least one free offer on their site. Whenever they come out with a new product or are having a marketing push on an existing product, you can usually expect they will post a new free sample offer.

Walmart Free Samples:

Walmart has the ultimate brand name free sample site. They usually have from four to ten active offers and offers change rapidly, sometimes daily.