You’ve seen the ads. You’ve ignored the emails. You’ve read the banners — “FREE* laptop, click here!”. Generally speaking, I’ve always shelved these offers on roughly the same level as internet lotteries and Nigerian bank scams. It wasn’t until today that I actually started to think that they might actually work.
The idea is simple. Fill out some surveys, say “no” to a ridiculous number of shady offers (”Make $5000 a week in real estate GUARANTEED!*”), make a few low-dollar purchases, wait 6-8 weeks, and the prize is yours. It certainly SOUNDS reasonable; anyone who’s even worked the commission side of anything even remotely resembling sales or marketing knows that companies pay out large amounts of cash to get customers in the door. Your average wireless customer, for example, costs the carrier around $400 to sign up, mostly in commissions to the sales force. So it sounds reasonable that if a company signs up 20 customers, they can afford to trudge over to Apple and buy a laptop or two.

Or does it — complaints to Better Business Bureaus are far from mild. And some of the disclaimers that are tacked on are pretty comical: “Company reserves the right to substitute any item for any prize” “Company may terminate this agreement at any time, with or without cause” “User may not actually receive anything”. Ok, that last one is made up. But the terms are definitely in favor of the company. And even if you manage to follow their requirements to the letter, what’s to stop them from going bankrupt and not fulfilling your claim?

Nonetheless, I decided to take a shot. Equipped with some recently-created fresh email accounts, I trudged over to a few sites and registered for three different products: a MacBook Pro, an iBook G4, and an iRiver H10.

The MacBook Pro uses the most common signup method: Complete xx offers out of xxx available offers. “Complete” varies from order to order, but is usually spelled out pretty clearly. An example might be “Visit Company X and make a credit card purchase for at least $10″ or “Sign up for Company X’s free trial, then remain a paying member for at least 21 days”. The site keeps track of which offers I’ve participated in, which offers I’ve successfully completed, and which offers I still need to complete. Simple. The iBook and MP3 player are a bit different. Complete one offer from a choice of many, then refer a number of friends to complete one of the offers.

The offers, generally speaking, range from reasonable offers from respectable companies (Blockbuster, NetFlix, Dell, etc) to super-shady offers from questionable companies (”Lose 40 lbs overnight, GUARANTEED* OR DOUBLE** YOUR MONEY BACK***!”). In each case, it’s possible to find enough reasonable offers to complete the deal without dipping into the shady stuff. I’m going to do an update in another month or two once both offers are completed; I’m keeping excruciating details on my participation, so if nothing else, it should be an interesting post.

So here’s where you come in. I’m trying to get the iBook as a birthday present for my ex’s daughter (the MacBook Pro is all mine). In order to do so, I need 18 referrals to the site. Each referral has to complete one offer (I did a Tickle Brain Test for $6), and that’s it. No membership fees, no additional referrals, nothing. There’s even some useful stuff on there like Blockbuster Online, Stamps.com, web hosting through HostGator, AOL MusicNow, DirecTV, and Earthlink. If nothing else, you can do what I did and amuse yourself on Tickle for $6. Pick one, complete the terms of the offer (which is different for each, but usually consists of “sign up with a credit card / cancel anytime”), and voila … you’ve just contributed 1/18th of KT’s laptop!

Here’s the only caveat: Create a throwaway email account (I have plenty of Gmail invites if you need one). Whatever email address you give them WILL get spammed to death. Do not use your everyday email account. Once you’re done with the deal, you can safely never log into your throwaway account again.

Interested in helping? Here’s what to do:

1. Visit a site like GMail, Yahoo! Mail, or Hotmail and create a new email account. Remember, this account will be spammed to death, so DO NOT use your everyday email account.
2. Email me at ibook@floor-9.com to let me know you’d like to help. Be sure to include your real name and the throwaway email address you’d like me to refer you under. Better yet, send the email directly from that account.
3. I’ll enter your name and email under my plan, and you’ll receive instructions on what to do next.
4. At some point, you’ll need to complete one of the offers. If nothing else, Tickle has some brain test thing for $6.

That’s all there is to it. I only need 18 referrals, so if you’d like to help, drop me a line. If you enjoy floor-9, if you want to help give KT a happy birthday, or if you just feel like being a nice guy / gal, you’ll not only have my eternal gratitude, but KT’s as well. And if you can’t or don’t want to, hey — no hard feelings. You can read all about it in my next update.

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!