freebies

A free sample or freebie is a portion of food or other product which is given out in shopping malls, grocery stores, and other venues. We’ve all tried them. I know I have walked through Sam’s Wholesale and tried a lot of their free samples of food and called it lunch for the day.

Sometimes samples of non-perishable items are included in direct marketing mailings. The purpose of a free sample is to get the consumer to try a new product, hoping they will like it and come back for more. Many consumer product companies do this hoping the consumer will be a regular customer.

Benjamin T. Babbitt in the 19th century was one of the first known, though almost certainly not the first ever, people to offer free samples of his product.

The internet is a great place to find these free samples or freebies. There is an overwhelming number of sites where you can find more than your share. Most are free and provide daily updated links to companies giving out free samples. Some also offer a daily or weekly newsletter or email with the newest freebies, so you don’t have to keep scouring the site. Links on the sites take you to the product’s website, often directly to the freebie sign-up page. Many sites add other neat stuff like coupons links to download to save money and tips on where to go to spend less. Not sure you might get the freebie then take a look in some of these sites “mail call” where the community of free samplers discuss what they have received or haven’t received in the mail and you can make your decision from there. ( I will give you a few of my favorites at the bottom. )

Now you aren’t quite ready yet. Make sure you are prepared. Use a separate email address than your main one. You will get a lot of spam from most of the companies. Some give you a choice whether to sign up for emails. Some don’t but either way a second email address is a good idea. You can register one with Yahoo or hotmail or any other place that you know of.

Only requests samples that you or your family can really use. Remember these companies are sending you this stuff for free hoping you may buy from them in the future. They are paying for the shipping and handling themselves to get their product to you to try. If you do try a sample and like it by all means buy from the company. Or mail them and tell them you liked it a lot..you may get a coupon for their product.

Most sites will not send to a P.O. Box so make sure you use your correct address. Use a program like “Roboform” that will fill your info out for you automatically. Sometimes Google will also do that for you.

Remember these free samples will not be in your mailbox the next day. Some take a few weeks to get or longer. Just be patient. I have seen in some forums about freebies people who complain they haven’t gotten anything and how they are getting scammed. Just a little patience for the first 2 months to go by and you will be getting your freebies regularly. If you find a great site make sure you also have a few more to look through. Sometimes some sites will only have few while others have more. Check the sites ongoing contests to win more freebies. Most are if you post a certain amount as in contributing to the free sample world you may win a GC or some more samples.

Here are a few free sample sights I have found that I really love to check out and I use quite often:

Free4U&Me Forum

This is a pretty new site only being around since May of this year ( 2009 ) and already has a lot of free sample links. Also you may want to look through the coupon pages and other helpful advice they have.

No contests yet but I’m sure they will once they get more people to register and participate on the forum. I saw something about a coupon train that I can’t wait to try. This one you have to register for but it’s real easy and simple to do. They try to send you a newsletter once or twice a week on new stuff. And they try to update the links as often as possible.

Lemontide

I’m not sure how long this site has been out but I have been following for some time now. Everyday they have new freebies to check out. Registering at the site is a good idea but not mandatory. The advantage to registering is when you come back to the site the next day you will be able to see the new freebies which will be highlighted in the forum. The one downfall to this site is their links are not updated quite as often as they should be. So registering will give you a better chance at getting the correct link. They also list some paid surveys that they themselves have checked out.

Hey it’s free

I love this site for just the humor alone that the owner incorporates into his freebie findings. And they update the links a lot better than most other sites.

Twisted Branches

This one has been out for a few years now and is run very well. They have tons of freebies to go through and they make sure to label them with more directions if need be.

Once you Google and find these sites make sure you bookmark them so you can go back to them on a daily basis. The best time to check and start requesting your freebies is in the morning early like 6am. If you check them out later in the day or night they maybe be all sold out. In this case the early bird does catch the worm.

Also if you can register for a freebie site do so. This helps the site out in many ways. Plus participate, Even if you just post what you got in the mail or check in to say hi or just say thanks. It means a lot to the freebie site community when it has great freebie fans like you take advantage of all the great things they have to offer.

So now that you have a few helpful tips on free samples get out there and request for yours and you will be so excited when they finally start coming everyday!

D. Mackrodt

Author: Deborah Mackrodt
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Free unlimited image hosting