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Old 09-17-2004, 11:51 PM
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Default Helpful Freebie Tips

If you are new to freebies, there are a number of tips that will make your life much easier while applying for them. These are our recommended tips:

1. Create A Freebie Mailbox: You want to be sure to set up a new email account (hotmail, yahoo or gmail) to use exclusively for freebie offers. This will enable you to sort through all the follow-up emails companies will send you (while some of these will be SPAM, others often contain other freebie or discount offers) without having your private email box overflow.

While in the past it was necessary to check your freebie email on a fairly regular basis so as not to go over your space limit, with the free email providers now offering a huge amount of space, this is no longer an issue. Still, you want to check every once in awhile as some emails will include other good freebie offers.

2. Get Form Filling Software: You'll find that filling out the required information for all the freebie offers you want will be extremely time consuming. Therefore you'll want to consider getting form filling software. One of the more popular free form fillers is Robo Form.

Gator is another form filler that works well, but some people have issues with it because it contains SpyWare (SpyWare is software within the program that records where you go on the Internet and then reports your activities back to the site that sponsors the software).

3. Giving Out Information:

ADDRESS: It's necessary to be realistic when going after freebies. If you don't give a valid address when signing up for a freebie, there is no way it can be delivered to your house.

PHONE NUMBER: Rarely is there a valid reason for a freebie offer to require a phone number. If a freebie offer requires a phone number, consider long and hard before giving that information to them.

CREDIT CARD NUMBER: Unless it is for a free trial of a service that you are 100% sure is legitimate, never give out your credit card number for a freebie offer.

OTHER SENSITIVE INFORMATION: When a freebie offer starts asking for sensitive information like your social security number or a bank account number, you want to leave that freebie site right away.

4. Realistic Expectations: While the members listing freebies try to provide links to legitimate offers, sometimes the freebies offered do not arrive. This can be for a number of reasons such as the company not having a large enough supply of the freebie offered. It can also be that a spammer has set up a site to gather email addresses (another important reason to set of a dedicated freebie email account) and never intended to send out the freebie in the first place. Be aware that cases like this do happen and it is a part of getting freebies on the Internet.

Along these lines, if you do receive a freebie, it is always a nice gesture to leave a short note that the freebie arrived so others know that it is legitimate.

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Copyright Jeffrey Strain and SavingAdvice.com 2003 - 2006, All Rights Reserved. If you find anything inaccurate in this article, please email us.

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