I just completed my marketing offer for the free digital camera. It was the easiest offer from Gratis Networks yet — Napster.
You sign up for a 14-day free trial. You do have to download their software (and when you’re asked whether you want to restart your computer, it’s important to say NO or else you may not get credit). Then a couple days later credit for the offer shows up on the free electronics offer website. The best part is that you can cancel online — you don’t even have to speak to a live person. I printed out the page saying I had cancelled, but I also got an email from them anyway. Then I uninstalled the software. Easy, free, a great way to complete a requirement.
The other easy one that I see up at the moment is EFax. You cancel via live chat with them. It’s a free offer, so you aren’t out any money. And the good part of the cancellation process is that you can copy the entire live chat into Word or use some other method to save the whole conversation, so you have a record of the cancellation just in case.
As a quick refresher, the various free electronics offers require you to complete a marketing offer and refer friends who complete marketing offers as well.
When you sign up you’ll be asked whether you want to participate in several ‘optional’ offers. Answer no to each one of them.
Then complete an offer like Napster or EFax — which cost you nothing. Naturally you don’t want to join Columbia House…
(For additional context, these are the same folks that offer the free iPod which I got myself almost a year ago.)
Can you give a rough idea of how many friends I need to complete offers for these products or refer me to a website with information on this (before registering). If it is like 30 friends that gets difficult when you dont run a popular web site.
The iPod Shuffle requires 3 referrals.
The iPod requires 5, so does the PSP and the game system and the handbag.
The desktop computer, the digital camera, and the photo iPod require 10.
Do all these offer the Napster option or are offers different for each item? How do the limits work on refering the same person twice? Can my friend get me two referrals on the camera for doing the napster and efax offers, one referral on the camera and one on the ipod for doing the napster and efax offers, or can I only get one referral credit from each friend ever? Thanks. PS, do you need any more referrals or do you have everything they offer now?
Okay
I have been hearing about these and maybe I am missing something. My concerns with this outfit was always on how to refer friends to sign up for these things. How in the world do you get 10 people to refer???Do you really have that many friends who keep doing these or is there some creative things (as in setting up distinct email addresses, etc.) going on? If it is the latter, I just don’t feel comfortable doing it.
Any feedback Gary is greatly appreciated (private email ok)
By the way love your blog here and your FT participation.
Thanks.
George
– Do all these offer the Napster option or are offers different for each item?
** The offers available on each site are similar at any given time, but they cycle the offers so they may not be around at any given time… though they may come back.
– How do the limits work on refering the same person twice? Can my friend get me two referrals on the camera for doing the napster and efax offers, one referral on the camera and one on the ipod for doing the napster and efax offers, or can I only get one referral credit from each friend ever?
** You can only refer the same person once FOR EACH FREE ELECTRONICS ITEM. The same person can get you a completed referral for more than one item, though.
– Thanks. PS, do you need any more referrals or do you have everything they offer now?
** I have finished all of the free items except for the digital camera. I’m still working on that one.
– Do you really have that many friends who keep doing these or is there some creative things (as in setting up distinct email addresses, etc.) going on? If it is the latter, I just don’t feel comfortable doing it.
** Don’t use multiple email addresses to sign up more than once and complete your own referrals. They’re pretty good at sniffing that out and you’ll be disqualified from the offer. I’ve been successful at getting everyone in my office involved.
A lot of the offers are for credit cards. I have some friends/family with pretty trashed out credit to the point where I doubt one rejection on their score would matter. Does the offer still work if they are rejected? It’s a pretty good deal if they get 37 cent credit reports (send in to find out why you were rejected) and I get an ipod.