Collective benefit from free gift referral schemes

There has been a spate of posting links to free gift referral schemes recently- the "get 8 referrals and win (piece of consumer electronics or gift vouchers)" type of thing. In this quick 'Tible I will show you how to use these to your advantage.

Disclaimer: I make a few tongue-in-cheek references to communism and related topics in this Instructable. I don't endorse it as a way to run a country, I'm not getting into a political discussion but where I make these references they are merely meant to amuse. inb4 "pinko".

DIsclaimer 2: it is entirely possible that some of these reward schemes will be scam and no-one gets any free shinies. In this case my method won't help, but I will leave it to your discretion to find a scheme that seems genuine. Bear in mind you are giving away personal details on the internet in exchange for the promise of free stuff, and act accordingly. If you are at all unsure about the trustworthiness of a scheme, don't give them your credit card number, home address or a valued email account. It goes without saying that details like your social security number etc. shouldn't even cross your mind to divulge under these circumstances.

Step 1 How they work

The general model of the schemes is that you fill in a "referral" to get into the scheme. Usually this involves some trial offer with a company trading online in an attempt to get you as a customer. Referrals vary from "sign up for this video rental service" to "spend at least X money in this online store". You are contributing to the person who you are a referral for (ie they are "referring" you to the scheme).

If you get a certain number of your own referrals, ie. you get people to join the scheme, as a reward for providing the scheme with 9 fresh new consumers you are eligible for a free gift. Usually between around 8 and 25 referrals are required, for gifts of varying values from mobile phones to flatscreen TVs, games console packages or gift vouchers. If the people who you referred get their own referrals, then they too get free gifts and so on ad infinitum.

In these examples I will assume you require eight referrals to get an unspecified "shiny gift".

EDIT: the editor seems to be persistently losing my comment boxes. "Diddly squat" means "nothing".

Comments

[hedgiehog]

what! this instructables was a bigger disapointment than me not getting my free stuff yet. I have an evene better idea to not only cut out the company!! But each person also gets a shiny new thing!!!!!! step one, first find a group of friends, must be as large as the most number of referals, dont go for laptops, they are like 20 referals. step two, first person signs up and refers the number of people needed. They do what they need to do for it to count. That person gets the prize and hes all happy! step three, everyone, except the next person, cancels their account. He sends out referals, and then they all sign up again, he gets his gift, and it keeps moving on throughout the chain. keep doing it until everybody gets what they want! and if some one needs less referals, than less people are needed for that referal. EVERYONE WINS!!! and the company wont be suspisicious, cuz you wont be in the data base if you cancel the account. BUT!!!! please make sure you get your prize before you start cancelling tat persons account.

[PKM]

I think the problem is your assumption "cuz you wont be in the data base if you cancel the account" Often you need to sign up with some kind of personally identifiable information such as a postal address, so you can only sign up once per scheme (the idea about finding nine different schemes still works). Otherwise, everyone would be doing this. If you find a scheme where you can use throwaway free email addresses and pseudonyms then go for it, but I'd suspect they would prevent this from happening.

[DYLEGO]

Hey PKM, The reason for my post is to quash the point of your Instructable here. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a bad guy. I don't go around ending people's fun just for fun. But, I do see one fatal flaw here. This Instructable requires you to find a legit referral scheme. That's the problem... How do you find a legit one? Now, you could go to each site in turn and look at it, but how do you tell if it will yield a prize? There is no way to tell without signing up and waiting for your gift. And, hypothetically speaking, let's just say that you actually do get a prize, and you want to go in with some friends and earn a Wii. So you log in, and you click "Refer a Friend", you find a problem. You've already won a prize with this site, and they won't give you anything else no matter how many friends you refer. Now, there is a way around this... You could always create a new Email address, and use somebody else's mailing address... But think about it... Was it worth the work? HECK YES!!! But only if you can actually find a legitimate site that won't scam you, and let's face reality, here... What are the chances of that?

[hedgiehog]

but the thing is, if you resign up for something else, or cancel the account,it just means you have to keep doing the offers and you lose any referals, im sure u could keep signing up, but u can only have one item shipped out. i'll try it, but anyways, if it doesnt work, at lest one person will still get the prize

[DYLEGO]

What you are missing here is that when you cancel your account to create a new one, you are not out of their system. If they go to these great lengths to get referalls, they surely keep records of all past and present members, wouldn't you say?

[Audey]

Good instructable but can you link to a couple (pref about 10) schemes please?

[Sgt.Waffles]

Silm ov Derby?

[PKM]

Erm.... yes? I have no idea what you just said.

[Sgt.Waffles]

You remind me of someone from a much more shady site than ibles. I was mistaken.

[TheScientist]

you could take it a step further: find 9 sites that each require 8 referral details...

then each person picks a thing off each site

then you all get an item you want.

(i'm sure there are more than 9 sites around to do this with)

==free stuff for everyone, and if you use throwaway email addresses, it's awesome!

[PKM]

I had thought of that- it seems like you'd have to find a lot of sites offering similar things, though, or then there would be arguments because presumably some sites give better gifts than others. Now you've got me wondering if there is a scheme where one person can enter multiple times, because then you could just go round the group, you refer for everyone else in the group and everyone gets a gift.

[m-arijn]

http://www.spambox.us

[DYLEGO]

That is the best post I've seen ALL DAY!

[onlyonebowman]

so you would share the thing between several people??

[PKM]

Yes, that's the idea- that's why I said it works best with consoles or something you can easily share. Some of the schemes give out money to paypal accounts, which would presumably be pretty easy to share as you just paypal your friends their share of the money- it wouldn't work out as very much each, though.