by Author Name Withheld 135

Created on: October 09, 2009

'Freebies' is a common search term. After all, we all love something for nothing, don't we? But when you analyse the catches and the conditions, is it really possible to get anything free online?

Yes. It is. That is the good news. There are various types of freebies you can find online. There's promotional freebies, whereby a company will print their name, logo and contact information on a product and hand them out. They do this in the hope that you'll become familiar with their brand, as may others who see you with the item. More commonly, however, you will find it is free samples online. Pretty much every major company will hand out a free sample of some description at some point. Make up companies such as Max Factor and Rimmel frequently offer free trial sized samples of their cosmetic products, as do the likes of Herbal Essences. In fact, you can find free samples online of almost any product from dog food through to colouring pencils. And finally there is the freebie that requires an ongoing payment. A fine example of this is when the likes of O2 hand out completely free sim cards knowing that you might just hand them to your friends. Your friends will then top up and O2 are in the money.

But is any of this really free? Where is the catch?

Well, some companies will expect you to pay postage, though many will not. The real catch is in their marketing - there will be check boxes, perhaps confusingly worded, for you to opt in or out of receiving their special offers, their information, latest news on their promotions and so on. So while you might just get a great few free samples, you do run the risk of insufferable junk mail by post and email (and sometimes sales phone calls too) from that company you took the freebie from and, on occasion, third parties to whom they have passed your information on.

There's a way around this. Simply, read the check boxes before ticking or unticking. Read them three times if you have to. I also recommend the use of an email address specifically for this purpose, to save emails from these companies blocking your personal inbox.

That said, it's a small price to pay for the items that it is possible to obtain. It's a simple matter of knowing where to look and what looks legitimate. I personally recommend using sites that go out and gather the information for you, as many of these websites will also have the most up to date ones too. For USA freebies you can try www.usafreebies.net and for the UK freebies try www.findingfreebies.info, both of which carry up to date information.

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