EDIT April 2008:  Since the date of this post, most of the “free stuff” websites have substantially changed the terms under which you can claim a reward.  These prizes are now pretty hard to come by; often, simply canceling an offer will disqualify you from winning.  I no longer recommend trying this stuff unless you really do want a year of DirecTV, six months of Mega “Performance” Pills (wink wink nudge nudge), and a year’s membership in the $75-a-week Tie-Of-The-Month club.  Please review, re-review, and re-re-review the terms carefully before you embark on any of these offers.  And good luck!  Original post:

Back in April, I decided to try an experiment. Some called it risky, some called it bold, and still others called it stupid. Never being one to be constrained by boundaries like “caveat emptor” or “common sense”, I soon found myself wrapped up in a fast-paced world of action, intrigue, and questionable business practices. That’s right — I went for the free MacBook Pro.

The concept is simple: Visit their website, participate in a number of offers, and receive a free notebook as compensation. Merchants pay the promotional company (in this case, NUITech / TheUseful, who has a decent reputation for sending out gifts promptly) for exposure, and commission on completed transactions. For example, if I have a business selling imitation weiner dogs (IWDs), I might pay TheUseful $200 for every IWD I sell through their site. If TheUseful directs 10 people to my site, and each of those ten buy an IWD, then TheUseful has just made $2000 in commission; plenty to purchase a new laptop.

Of course, their vendor selection is a little more realistic. Actually, some of their products were quite useful. NetFlix, Blockbuster, printer ink, Columbia House, and BMG are some of the big names that lead the pack. Mixed in with those are questionable offers for health products, work-at-home businesses, and other overpriced merchandise. The end result is that you’re going to spend some money on products you don’t want or need, but whatever you wind up spending is far less than the final cost of the prize.

The offers are broken down into three “pages”, and each page has its own participation requirement. In my case, I had to do 3 offers from page one, 6 offers from page two, and 9 offers from page three; 18 offers total. Some were useful (Rhapsody, NetFlix, ink), some were not. I spent about $500 on the offers and received about $300 in refunds. That leaves me with a final cost of around $200, for which I received 10 DVDs (worth the $200 alone), two ink cartridges for my printer, 5 CDs that I’ll never listen to, and a free $2000 laptop. 90% off? Not bad!

The time frame between when I started and when I received my laptop was just shy of two months. The site keeps track of which offers you’ve completed, and all but one of the vendors reported within a few days of completion. 30 days after I had signed up, when the lone renegade vendor still hadn’t reported, all I had to do was fax in a copy of my receipt and all was rectified immediately. In short, this was a cakewalk.

There’s really no secret to “winning”. The key is keeping records of EVERYTHING. Print out the landing page when you arrive at a vendor’s site. Print out the screen showing you placing your order. Print out the screen showing you an order confirmation number. Print out a copy of the order receipt. Another good idea is to create a dedicated email address for your participation — they will spam the HELL out of whatever email address you give them — I see about 120 - 150 spams daily on the address I used. Under no circumstances should you use your everyday address. Finally, it’s not a bad idea to use a prepaid credit card for your offers. That way, if you forget to cancel something (or if a vendor overcharges you), your bank account doesn’t get cleaned out. I had no such problems, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Finally, use your real information. Don’t give them an excuse to deny your laptop just because you gave a bogus phone number or address.

When I first started working on this, pretty much everyone laughed and told me I was getting scammed. Now that I’ve got it, nobody believes me that it worked. Well, proof is here, here, here, here, here, and here. I’ll do another post on the laptop itself in a few days, but for now, I just wanted to show that I did, in fact, get my free* MacBook Pro. Rock.