The question to end all questions. Is there really such a phenomenon known as free stuff on the Net?
I’ve been mulling over this recently and quite frankly, I think it would have to come down to your own personal understanding and your own personal thoughts on what is free. In the end, no business or company donates anything for free. It’s bad for business and a very poor business model. People don’t get into business to give away stuff. They are there to make money and copious amounts of it, whether honestly or through deception.
When companies give away trials of their goods at shopping malls, whilst it is “free”, they are basically enticing you to try their product in the hope you will find it better to their rivals or to introduce their product to the market and trust me, they have already factored this into their marketing budget. Therefore the consumer who purchases this product is paying more for the product than they should. Hence really the samples given out aren’t actually free.
And when it comes to the Net, the lines blur just that little bit more. To get free stuff, at the very least you need to pass over your name and postal address to have the product mailed to you. Therefore if that company wants to send out newsletters and other promotional material, they have your name and address. Your details can also be onsold to other marketing companies for them to send you unwanted mail. So long as you’re happy with that, then sure it’s still free.
However on a more involved level you may be required to fill in a questionnaire that may take up quite a bit of your valuable time. From here, the company not only has your personal details but can gauge a much better understanding of your buyer behaviour to tweak their advertising towards marketing suitably for you to make a purchase. They can drill down on figures and know your age range, your opinion on certain packaging, what makes you tick, what you would lean towards etc. You might get your free item, but at what cost? In the end you may end up spending $100 on services that you otherwise might not have if you didn’t fill out the questionnaire.
So in conclusion my personal answer to this question is no. The time it takes to fill our registration forms and surveys to participate to get these free samples, is not worth my time. I could spend an hour a day filling out forms to get a couple of freebies, but if I actually worked that hour, I could have purchased all the free stuff anyway. So the question is, how much is your time worth?
However these are just personal ramblings of a raving lunatic and should no way discourage you should you enjoy getting free samples!
More about FreeStuff4Free
FreeStuff4Free is a website that specialises in finding free samples. The site is visually compelling and easier to navigate than text based free sites. The site is updated daily and dead links removed regularly. There are no scams and all freebies are 100% legitimate.