|
The Hacker's Guide to (legally) Getting Free Shit Off the Web By Thom Denick No, this isn't an article on Warez: how to get free copyrighted software off the web. No, that article was permanently buried in Buzzsaw annals due to legal complications. This is an article on how to get "real" free shit off the web. Stuff like a $25 Gift Certificate to Red Lobster or a Free Book or CD. We can thank the stock market's artificial inflation of .COM sites' values for one thing; it's never been easier to get a ton of free shit if you've got patience, time, and a little bit of wit. First things first, if you hate advertisements, don't even bother trying out these sites below, this is how they make money, they will bombard you with advertisements whether you sign up for e-mail or just visit their site, if you can't stand ad banners or pop-ups then it probably isn't worth it. I should mention, however, that I managed to get all the "free shit" below without buying one thing from any of the companies that advertise. Occasionally I will buy something in order to take advantage of a deal where I end up just paying shipping on an item. But I never had to pay a cent to any of the companies advertising, just had to close their pop-up windows. Also, one more thing you should do is create a new e-mailaddress just as a Spam Blocker, so that the Spam you may get from different companies doesn't interfere with your current e-mail. Do this at Hotmail or Yahoo or one of the hundreds of other "free" e-mail sites. OK, a good way to start off on your adventure into earning free things is a trip to http://www.elotteryfreeway.com. E Lottery Freeway is a game site in which you try out your knowledge in various trivia games from movies to history. When you first sign up you get to play a free Keno game in which, if you're lucky, you can earn a ton of the "epoints" which earn you money. Depending on how well you do at the various crossword puzzles, trivia games, wall street and sports prediction games, you gain epoints. In about two hours when I first tried out this site I earned 3,000 epoints, enough for a $20 check. I played for another hour managed to earned about 3,500 points, and requested a check. Two weeks later I received a check for $23. Not too bad for a fun three hours of trivia and minimal annoying ad pop-ups. Speaking of games, let me go to my next favorite game site, where the actual payouts are less common, the ads are incredibly annoying, but the potential payouts are gigantic: point your browser to http://gamesville.com. Gamesville is an online casino that is free to participate in. There is a huge multitude of games from QuickDraw Poker, to Cash Cow, a game in which you have to find the fat cow on a randomly placed image. The payouts range from $0.50 - $50,000, but don't get too excited, I've been playing for a long time, and I've never won more than $5 at a time. That's OK though because the games ARE a lot of fun, and everyone likes to play in the lottery, this is a way to do it for free. You really can't beat that. Enough with the games, let's move on to "rewards" programs. These are the sites and companies which pay you to look at lots and lots of advertisements. The first one I want to focus on is the MyPoints program located at: http://www.mypoints.com. At MyPoints, you can sign up for the program and earn "MyPoints" by reading advertisements in your e-mail, visiting particular websites, participating in free promotional programs, or signing up for services like BMG's Music Club. MyPoints can take a tremendous amount of patience, but the payouts are pretty good. After about two months of participating in the site on a semi-daily basis for about two to 10 minutes a day, I had earned a $25 gift Certificate to Barnes and Noble, after another three months, I had earned a $25 gift Certificate to Tower Records. Not bad for never paying a cent to any company. MyPoints is not for everyone, the amount of advertising and time commitment is high, but I have to admit it is a lot of fun to figure out the best ways to earn the most points. One bonus with participating in MyPoints is the last thing I want to cover within this article, and that's .COM discounts. MyPoints often posts promotion deals from .COM's. Something like "$10 off at BUY.COM" Now at first I was very skeptical, yeah right $10 at BUY.COM, but I have to buy $50 worth of stuff right? Well, actually, no. You don't even have to buy $10 worth of merchandise, you can order something for say $5, then the with the postage the order comes to $9.95, you get whatever you just ordered for free. No Shit. I found this to be consistently true with many of the .COM online stores' offers. CD-NOW, MotherNature.com, Amazon, and Petstore.com all had similar offers, I ended up getting a lot of free stuff from these kind of offers, and they definitely should not be ignored. However, a word of warning, be careful what you are signing up for, like in real life, Internet offers may carry odd commitments and may cost money down the line be sure to read everything before you participate in one. There are hundreds of other ways to get free stuff off the web, you can sign up for a browser which flashes adds for you at http://GOTOWORLD .COM and earn $0.35 an hour for cruising the web, you can participate in other "points" programs, you can play more games at http://uproar.com, and you can cruise .COM on-line stores looking for sweet coupon deals. I've picked what I feel are the best to share with you. Thom Denick is a senior film major at Ithaca College. |
