Free Ipod, Free Game Console, Etc: I thought I understood the scam

Factual Questions
1

Most of you have probably seen the ads online which say you can get a free ipod or console or laptop or whatever if you sign up with several sponsors.
Indeed, my brother actually go this Ipod through one of these sites, but that was like two or three years ago. These days, while its not necessarily actually a scam, I thought the sites had stopped really offering anything “free” or even cheap, and that there was now a trick to it–the last offer or two you have to sign up for end up costing much more than the “free” item you were going for in the first place.

But I’ve now seen several forums where people are discussing these sites offering free stuff, and talking about which are the best offers to take and so on, and it seems like they’re saying there is generally a way to actually get the “free” item without ending up having to pay for some really expensive “offer” from a sponsor.

My paranoid side theorizes these people saying this are actually agents of the advertising companies themselves.

But is it possible? Does anyone know if one can actually get cool stuff for cheap from at least some of these sites?

-FrL-

2

I don’t know. I ask myself “why would they give me a free iPod?” They must have an expectation of getting more than the cost of the item in return, even if they are legit.
mangeorge

3

Considering that many people spends hundreds if not thousands of dollars on itunes, they could probably give them away and make tons of money.

4

Those are not scams but do work. its almost like a pyrimid shceme where you need to get X amount of people to sign up for this service or whatever. Years ago i saw some documentation to get a free iPod through one of those sites. in involved making like 20 hotmail accounts then using those account make ebay account and so on and so forth to make those companies beleive you have actually recuirted more people for your ipod.

5

Apple runs these scams?
I have a shuffle, a video iPod, and an iPhone.
And an iMac.
I’m sick, I know. :smiley:

6

Anyone on this site wanna be the test subject and sign up for one of these sites, make a heap of fake emails to “recruit your friends”. And report back if they got anything for free?

7

A dog smells his own **** first! :stuck_out_tongue:

8

TAANSTAAFI.

When a company spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to tell me how they’re going to save me money, I check to make sure my wallet hasn’t moved from where I left it.

9

I got one of these today as a pop up, and was interested to investigate further as it was a gift voucher for an Australian company.

I read the fine print, and along with signing up for a ‘free’ service yourself, which all seemed to be ‘free’ mobile ringtones or games, each of the 5 friends you “invite” had to take up one of the ‘free’ offers also.

The funny thing was, I guess the sign up page must be for multiple use, because my ‘free gift’ was a $300 gift voucher for a departement store but the fine print talked about what you had to do to get an Ipod :smack:

10

The way they could (and are known to have in the past) give out “free” stuff is by making a lot of money on the commissions from the sponsors, and by being very stingy and nitpicky about actually giving out the free stuff.

-FrL-

11

“Incentive Marketing” or “Referral Marketing” are good things to google if you’re interested in reading up on these particular techniques.

While it can be (and is) used legitimately, I’ve spent many an hour navigating through the bowels of such sites as http://www.rewardbull.com/ and http://www.anything4free.com/ investigating the system on behalf of a company that utilized such techniques.

As someone already mentioned, these systems can work very much like a pyramid scheme. “Free” is a very loose definition to apply to anything that one might “earn” in such a system.

Their business model is to milk you as a data point by requiring an endless series of survey questions, and then plunge you through a series of “optional” advertisements that you can only determine are optional by reading the fine print back on the original site where you entered the crazy marketing maze in the first place, then they send you back through another round or two of surveys, then more ads, then more surveys, then you come to a series of required offers.

Sometimes you only have to pick one of three offers to purchase goods or services, or perhaps sign up for a “free trial” that will turn into a premium account unless you cancel by a certain date in a particular manner. Sometimes you can choose to sign up for a premium service that is either pre-paid, or whatever your “free gift” is that you’re trying for will be held until you live up to the minimum amount of months of paying for whatever “discounted” service that you agreed to buy (all of this, again, is listed in the fine print).

Basically, imho, a company spending marketing dollars on such a system is paying for exposure to the network of users in such a system which will drive both direct and indirect traffic to their site, exposing those users to their banner ads and such while also securing them a certain number of new paying users who have to pay a monthly fee for a required duration (3 months is common) or pre-pay for a year perhaps. A certain percentage of this traffic will result in loyal customers actually purchasing something over many months, or perhaps returning to spend money again in the future.

But, (also imho) what goes on most of the time is people gaming the system as much as possible (and often fraudulently, but I shan’t be discussing how they do so), and a lot of housewives who have way too much time on their hands.

12

I don’t trust it at all, cheat