Welcome to the exciting but mysterious world of requesting free stuff. The concept of companies giving out free samples to consumers has actually been around for at least a century. Corporations have recently realized there is no better way to spend their advertising dollars than to put a sample of their product directly into the hands of the consumer through online venues. That is where Seriously Free Stuff comes in. Every day our team scours the web for the latest and greatest legitimate product samples and places them all in one convenient location where potential samplers can review and apply.

Before You Begin

Before you hop aboard and begin your quest to get freebies in your mail box, it is important to take time to educate and empower yourself with a few tools and a pinch of knowledge that can help you on your way. Due to the fact that many new freebie hunters send Seriously Free Stuff e-mails everyday with a multitude of questions, we decided to make the most relevant information available here in this free beginners guide to free stuff.

One of the most common misconceptions is that the freebie sites (in this case Seriously Free Stuff) own the samples. We do not. The samples are owned by the company who's product it is. SFS simply surfs the web, just as you would, Googling and exploring for companies offering free samples. When we find a free sample or coupon, we list a link to that site with a picture and description of their offering. This means that SFS does not have any control over the practices of the third-party site from which you request your sample. SFS does not have any control over if they will really send a sample nor when it will arrive. Although we test a majority of the free samples that we list and avoid listing offers from web sites that do not meet our standards, entering your information and requesting a sample from a companies website is done at your own risk, and that is precisely why we recommend understanding this information to protect yourself.

Before you sign up for your first sample, we recommend that you create a new free e-mail address from Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail. If you already use one of these free e-mail services, make a new one just for requesting samples. This new e-mail address will be the one you use to sign up for free stuff. The reason we do this is not just to prevent the occasional spammer from getting a hold of your personal e-mail address, but because even legitimate companies like General Mills will want to send you continuing advertisements, coupons and offers for their products. Once you have signed up for samples from hundreds of companies, even the legitimate e-mails can start to pile up. In most cases, any reputable organization will always provide you with a way to opt-out of their messages, but for convenience and safety do yourself a favor and make a free e-mail address devoted to your free sample hunting. Not only does it help keep you from receiving unwanted e-mail at your personal address, but it also ensure that all your free sample correspondences are neatly organized and contained in one convenient location.

Common Sense Practices

So now you have your free e-mail and your ready to rock right? Wrong. A large part of consistently receiving samples and avoiding pitfalls is using a bit of common sense mixed with internet savvy to avoid the low hanging fruit and spend your time on what is most likely to arrive at your doorstep. This makes the practices of avoiding scammers and increasing the samples showing up at your house go hand in hand. A simple way to think about it is like this: do you think your more likely to receive a sample from Proctor and Gamble, the largest advertiser in the USA, or from Bob's Trinkets, a small business with a total advertising budget of 1k/year? That's right, your more likely to receive a sample from P&G. While I am all for supporting small businesses, with a lesser known brand name and a general lack of presence on the web, I would be weary of whether or not Bob's Trinkets can really afford to send me whatever sample they are advertising. I would also be concerned as to whether or not Bob's Trinkets is a legitimate business, and lastly whether or not Bob realizes that by posting his sample on the web he is likely to receive hundreds of thousands more sample requests than he realized when he first set out with the idea.

Some free stuff enthusiasts just sign up to everything, and are happy if anything comes at all. For those people, we list some of the lower hanging fruit (which also sometimes turns out to be the sweetest full-size freebies). If you are weary of divulging your home address to possible marketing scams or you simply like to see a high percentage of what you have ordered arrive, then stick to the larger brand name companies that you could find at your local Walmart. If you are interested in improving your own free samples savvy, we encourage you to check out the Alexa rank, McAfee SiteAdvisor, privacy policy and terms of use for the sites offering free samples before making your request. That is the same screening process we use here at SFS.

Personal Information

We have covered free e-mails and general concepts for picking the best samples to sign up for. But if your going to receive anything, your going to have to put in an address too. At first, we were a little hesitant to provide our home address, half expecting a load of junk snail mail after the first few requests. In actuality, this couldn't be further from the truth. We have rarely received anything that wasn't from one of the companies we had requested a sample from, that is, outside of the usual 'money-mailers' everyone receives. In our experience, there is no reason to believe you are at risk by giving reputable companies your home address. In many cases, after your freebie has arrived, the company will continue to send you more coupons and free samples without requesting them because you are on their mailing list.

Can you go sign up for freebies now? Not quite yet. Let's talk about giving out your home or cellphone number. In general giving out your real phone numbers is a bad idea. While many forms will have a spot for you to fill in your number, most companies will not make it a required field. Besides, why would they need your phone number to mail you a sample? In this age of digital marketing, cell phones and text messages are the next frontier for spammers, scammers, and real businesses alike to get their products in front of you. Be extremely cautious and weary of who you give your home phone number to and even more careful with your cell number. Keep in mind that there are a few exceptions as some companies will want to verify your name, address and existence before sending out an expensive free sample like a DVD, glucose meter, T-shirt or information kit. For instance, we recently requested information from an online college for our daughter and a friendly representative called to verify our information. We never received another call, but we did receive a nice full color packet and brochure on the school. The best practice here is to use common sense, tools like McAfee and to look for and read the companies privacy policy and how it applies to your information. Giving out your number for verification is necessary in some cases, and some of the better samples will include phone verification. However if Bob's Trinkets requires a number to receive a free ipod (or something else too good to be true), has a red Mcafee rating, low Alexa ranking and no visible privacy policy, you should just walk, or surf away.

Moving Forward

You are now pretty well geared up to apply for free samples, but free stuff (like life) isn't so cut and dry. You can not simply fill in every form you find and expect to get stuff for free. Read and reread what is required to receive the sample before you begin. Now more than ever, companies are taking advantage of social media, sweepstakes and other methods to make their advertising dollars more effective. That means you may need to have a Facebook profile and become a fan of the company to receive their sample. Others will want you to 're-tweet' their offer on Twitter. Some avoid the high cost of sending individual samples and instead hold a contest or sweepstakes where the winner(s) receive full size versions of the product or other prizes. Once again, as in life, the more effort you put in the more samples you will probably receive.

If you are a casual free stuff browser and only request samples from the largest companies where no more action than filling out the form is required, you will probably receive less samples than someone who makes a Facebook profile and Twitter account and signs up for company's contests. This is also evident with grocery coupons. While a coupon might not always mean you'll get something completely free, especially by using advanced techniques like 'double-coupons' you can save yourself a lot of money with minimal effort. Another smart tool that dedicated free stuff and sweepstakes fans use to make things faster, simpler and easier is to use an online form filling tool like Roboform so you can fill out a form with your name, address and e-mail with one click. Most of these tools also support multiple profiles and password management.

As you embark on your voyage, let us bid you adou with some simple etiquette for using freebie sites. Here are a few do's and dont's to help you mind your P's and Q's.

Free Stuff Etiquette

Do

• Let other people know which freebies you have received by leaving comments.
• Let other people know which freebies you signed up for that never came - after you have waited patiently for at least 6 months.
• Politely inform site administrators or owners that a free sample offer on their site has expired, been removed or otherwise is a dead link either by contacting them or leaving a comment.
• Help other users that you see struggling by explaining how you successfully signed up for the sample that they are having trouble with.
• Politely inform site administrators or owners of any new sample offer that you come across.

Don't

• Believe that free stuff sites own the samples.
• Blame free stuff sites when your sample doesn't arrive or if a sample is no longer available.
• Request free samples that you don't really want or need.
• Put your name and address in the public 'comments' area thinking it's how you request a sample.
• Complain. Constructive criticism with valid points is always welcomed.

Conclusion

As applying for free samples and coupons on the internet has become more popular in the last few years, the topic has gone from confusing to rocket science in terms of the scope of issues that would have to be addressed to make this a definitive guide, which it is not. We do believe following the few simple concepts above is a great place to start and hopefully gets you underway on an exciting adventure hunting for free samples and coupons. As always, read before you apply, ask questions when you don't know the answer and most importantly Happy Freebie Hunting!

If you have made your free e-mail and you are ready to roll, get started finding free stuff now!