All day long on Twitter and Facebook I see posts about “freebies” and “free stuff.” Most of it isn’t legitimate. Often they are paid ads that try to get you to give out your personal information in exchange for some kind of item that you will only really get if you refer X number of other people and they all do the same thing.
That’s not to say that there isn’t such thing as “free” on the Internet. If you try really hard and spend a lot of time looking for them, you can find some nice coupons and free trials. Sometimes it’s just a matter of being signed up for enough mailing lists or being in the right place at the right time. But what if you didn’t have to go looking for all of that free stuff and instead it came directly to you?
In any given week I will have at least one free sample of something I genuinely want sent to me to my house to try out. It’s all a part of Word of Mouth marketing and you just have to sign up for a few places to get on the list to take part. Some of the sites do not require you to do or say anything after you get the product. They just want to get it into your hands. Others require you to leave feedback or write a blog post. Here are my favorites sites for free samples (in no particular order):
Klout is super easy because you just sign up and connect it to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc accounts. They measure how “influential” you are in different areas and if you meet the criteria, they send you free stuff. You don’t have to follow up with anything. I’ve gotten movie tickets, iced tea, DVDs, deodorant, business cards and other branded merchandise. (If you join, you can find me under “SunshineTricia”)
MyBlogSpark is for people with blogs, and you usually get not only the free samples for yourself but also another identical set to give away. It’s a great way to reward your readers, get new content ideas, and publicize your site.
BzzAgent is the ultimate in Word of Mouth marketing sites. You fill out your profile and answer questions periodically. If a campaign opens that might fit you, they email you. After they send you the products, you do have to follow up quite a bit. You may have to take surveys, leave feedback on their website, distribute coupons to others, etc. However, the products that they promote are usually really good.
I’m sure that there are a lot of other similar companies, but those are the ones that I keep going back to. I used to do MySurvey.com a lot as well for their surveys but received some nice free products to test. It just got to be too much work over time.
Do you have a favorite site for legitimate free products and trials?
Leave a Reply