Last December I posted about how to get an iPhone or $580 cash for free. Well, I did it and got my $580! Click the thumbnail to the right to see a full-size image of the PayPal transaction.

Here’s the timeline:

1. December 14, 2007: I signed up at a freebie site under someone else’s referral link and signed up for a trial month of GameFly.com.
2. December 17, 2007: My account is credited for doing the GameFly.com trial.
3. December 18, 2007: I posted on my blog that I got my free iPod Touch and also posted my referral link for the free iPhone or $580.
4. February 17, 2008: I had the 11 referrals I needed for $580 cash, so I submitted my account for approval.
5. February 22, 2008: My account was approved and I placed the order for the $580.
6. February 23, 2008: I wake up the very next morning to an email notification that the $580 was delivered to my PayPal account!

I got another FREE iPod Touch, too!
During this time I also completed another freebie site on the side and got the 32 GB iPod Touch. I already got the 16 GB iPod Touch for free from a different freebie site, but now that I have the 32 GB one, I’m probably going to sell the 16 GB iPod on eBay.

If you want to earn a free iPhone or iPod Touch, sign up here for the iPhone or sign up here for the iPod Touch, complete a 1 or 2 trial offers to reach 100% and then refer some people to do the same under your link.

Get a PlayStation 3 or a Wii!

Next I’m going to cash out on the PlayStation 3 and Wii sites. Obviously I have first-hand evidence that this is real and legit, not a rip-off scam or some pain-in-the-neck process. Here’s how you can get a FREE PlayStation 3 or Wii (or cash):

1. For the PS3, click this link
2. For the Wii, click this link
3. Complete 1 or 2 trial offers to reach 100% completion and then refer other people to do the same under your referral link. (PS3 requires 8 referrals, the Wii requires 6.)
4. Receive your FREE PlayStation 3 or Wii!

It honestly isn’t any more difficult than that. If you have any questions about the process, I’ve done it many times, so feel free to ask in the comments below.

One important tip
Make sure your browser is set to accept all cookies while you go through the sign-up process both at the freebie site and when you complete offers. If you click an offer and don’t sign up for it on that visit, make sure you clear your cookies before going back to it again. Otherwise the tracking cookie might not register that you signed up for their service from the freebie site and you’ll have to request a manual credit, which can take several weeks.

My experience with offers I’ve completed so far

• Stamps.com — This offer was painless and easy. I signed up for a free trial month of their service at a time when I was selling a lot of stuff on eBay. They gave me $5.00 of free postage just to try it out, but I liked it so much I voluntarily bought a lot more postage for my eBay items. To get credit for trying this offer, just sign up for the trial, download the free software (Windows only) and purchase some postage with the free $5.00 they give you.
• Photostamps.com — Another painless and easy one that credited my freebie site instantly. All I had to do was order a sheet of stamps for $24.98 using a photo. Since my wife was getting ready to send Christmas cards at the time, I order a sheet of stamps using a picture of the two of us together for the cards. It was also nice because there was no trial involved that I had to remember to cancel later if I didn’t like the service.
• GameFly.com — Since my free Xbox 360 Elite, Xbox Live subscription and Halo 3 arrived, I wanted more games to play on it. GameFly.com took a couple business days to credit my freebie account (as it said it would) and for $9.95 I enjoyed a month of unlimited video game rentals.
• Blockbuster.com — This was a fun one. For $10.68 I got a month of unlimited movie rentals through their website, keeping up to 3 movies at a time and 4 in-store movie exchanges. Again, this offer took a couple days to credit my freebie account, but that was on-time for this offer.
• Google SEO Supervisor — Figured I’d check this one out since a lot of my blog traffic comes from Google and I depend on the Google Ads here to cover the site’s expenses. It cost me $4.95 to get two trial weeks of access to their site’s members area to learn how to optimize everything for Google and Adsense.
• Emusic — At first I signed up for the cheapest plan at $9.99 for 30 downloads per month since I didn’t expect to find much music there that would be of interest to me, but actually I quickly found many recent albums from bands I listened to in my teen years that are no longer on the radio. My 30 downloads went fast and there was still a lot more I wanted, so I upgraded to the $14.99 plan for 50 downloads. NOTE: When I first signed up, I could not log into emusic’s site nor did I receive a confirmation email, but by the next morning the email arrived and everything was good to go. I also did not receive credit for this offer, so today I submitted a “manual credit request” with a copy of my confirmation email. I should receive credit within 10 business days.
• FreeCreditReport.com, Free Online Credit Report — Each of these worked the same way. For $1.00 I set up an account to check my credit report with the three big crediting agencies and monitor my credit for a trial period. I didn’t end up keeping any of the services, however.
• Bargain Homes — I never got credit for completing this $1.00 trial period offer. I reported it to the freebie site, sent them the email confirmation Bargain Homes sent me for signing up and the guys at the freebie site were gracious enough to instead give me double credit for different offer I completed there.
• RealtyTrac, Simply You, RealtyStore — All these sites work pretty much the same way. I paid $1.00 each for a trial period to access a members only section of their website, whether that be for personal care products or special real estate deals in my area (mostly foreclosures). My wife and I were looking to buy a house at that time, so I decided to give them a try. Didn’t find anything that compelled me to spend more than the $1.00 or keep the services past the trial period, though.

Freebies I’ve earned

• FREE Xbox 360 Elite, 12-month subscription to Xbox Live and Halo 3
• FREE 12-month subscription to Xbox Live
• FREE Halo 3 video game
• FREE 16GB iPod Touch
• FREE $580 cash in place of an iPhone (see above)
• FREE 32GB iPod Touch (see above)

How to earn referrals for your freebie site
Most people would love to earn some of these free prizes, but there’s three common excuses:

1. It’s a scam!
2. I’ll get hit with a ton of spam mail.
3. Completing offers costs more than the prize itself!
4. I don’t think I can get others to complete referrals for me.

For #1, check out the links above. I’ve done it several times and received several prizes, so I know it’s not a scam. Concerning #2, I have not received one single shred of spam as a result of completing these trial offers or freebie sites, not via email nor postal mail. These companies actually have pretty aggressive privacy statements. Number 3 also is not true. Read above about the offers I’ve tried. The most I ever paid for an offer was $24.98 for a sheet of photo stamps. Most offers cost between absolutely nothing and $15. And about #4, check out this post I wrote that gives 10 ideas for how to earn referrals for your freebie site. They work for me, anyway!

Posted on March 3, 2008