HIF Survey Update
The HIF survey is now complete and I’m happy to say that we had almost 5,000 people take it, which is approximately 4,900 more than I predicted! I’m still in the process of reading all of the suggestions, but some of the things I was able to learn just by looking at the numbers include:
The biggest change will be posting in-store freebies as soon as we find out about them, as 74% of you wished we did. As you may have noticed, we’ve already started doing so this week.
A figure even more shocking to me was that a mere 3% of you said we should only be posting long-term freebies (that is, freebie that are available for many months) once. Seriously, that low number stunned me. But, as you’ll see starting later today, I’ll be taking the voice of Hiffers into consideration!
Way too many people (25%) answered “what newsletter?,” which means I’m doing a horrible job of pointing out that we have a free daily newsletter that goes out once a day jam-packed with freebies. I’ll do a little tweaking of the sidebar later this month to make it stand out a bit more.
There are 300 people out there with HeyItsFree.net tattooed on their foreheads. I want pictures. 
And finally, entries 3090 (Chanthy) and 1604 (marva) were the big winners of the contest. I’ve e-mailed them both and if I don’t hear back from them within 48 hours, I’ll pick new numbers. Thanks again to everybody who took the survey and there will be another one in the upcoming days.
wtg Chanthy and Marva (and Goob, not sure what my number is, but PICK ME PICK ME, if you have to pick again)!
random thought for the day: I wish pencil lead came in flavors!
congratulations! to chanthy and marva !!!!! i’ll get the next one…[fingers crossed]****
congrats to the both of you!
well lets hope they don’t respond so he picks different #’s!! haha
I forgot to mention in the survey, but would it be possible to set up the links for the freebies to open in a new page so we don’t have to go back to HIF each time we enter a freebie?? Just a thought….
yes Congrats!
congrats to the winners if they dont claim it pick me too, lol, so goob how did you pick to people from 5000 i bet your head hurts now, poor guy lol
@ Lisa, forcing links to open in a new tab/window is actually a bad practice for a website to do, as it doesn’t give the end user a choice. As it is now, people can either choose to have the links open in the same tab/window as the default is set up or they can decide to open them in new one by right clicking on the link and selecting “open link in new …”
In addition, one of the trillion reasons we mention surfing with Firefox is that it has a feature where all you have to do is click on a link with your mouse’s scroll wheel and it opens the link in a new tab. I’m not sure if IE has integrated that feature yet or not.
@ Sharon, I used Random.org to pick the winning numbers.
I’m only about a third of the way through all of the responses though!
I hope that when you re-list a long term freebie that it will be apparent that it is being re-listed. I simply can’t remember what freebies I have already signed up for since I get so many. That is why I was one of the 3%-ers who only wanted a freebie listed once.
Congrats to the winners!! =)
So, I’m guessing that you have yet to read my survey, or I don’t rank high enough to have a say, or it’s just too funny, but I thought I said no “hiffers”! Did you notice that you even added an extra “f” for more of a “heffer” sort of relation? I’m telling you, I will lose the baby weight!
Goob, I thought of something to comment on after taking the survey. I’ve noticed that sometimes people who are new to this site think that you are giving away these freebies, so they post their name and address and ask you to send them stuff. Do you ever follow up and tell these folks to click on the links to request the freebies? And thanks for the “right click to open in new tab” tip above. I’m one of those IE users who wasn’t aware of that feature.
uhm… cannot sign up for newsletter. said not found, error.. sigh..
WOW, I myself am surprised there’s almost 5,000 of us. I didn’t even know we were that big!
I never saw HIF advertised on TV, myself, so there’s probably a substantial amount of people in this country that didn’t, and will never know/hear about it.
I found it searching for freebies a few years ago, and I didn’t sign up for an account until I was interested in using the forum, so there’s probably a lot of people that aren’t really part of the community, but still read HIF.
Thanks for the response Goob!
well keep up the good work goob, more contests and survey”s please, we are in a crisis, wish more people would just give us all money and send us checks and gift cards lol, just a thought, i need a job, unemployment is killing me,
I’m a little confused by Robin’s comment. What in the world are you talking about?????????
HIF is Great!!!!!!! I only wish I found it sooner!
yeah i agree with becky, hif is the best i found it on a search and have used it ever since, i didnt see it on tv. but 5000 is great for a free site.
ok i have a question when some sites have a free sample where you have to text to a number, if you text for a freebie, how in the world do they know were to send your sample, it just sounds like a domb idea, compared to filling out a sample, why would you want to pay text message prices anway. thanks for reading just something i had to ask.
There’s always one…… I LOVE HIF, best thing ever.. I saw you advertised on my local news station a while back and that’s how I joined you guys. I tell everyone about about HIF…
I recently subbed to this after finding it, and really enjoyed it at first. But then there started being so many phone and instore offers, I’m not enjoying it like before. Maybe I’m the only one, and everyone else likes phone and instores, so nevermind.
As far as a newsletter, WHY?, when there’s an XML/RSS feed?
@fannie – yes, I’ll be sure to mention that any repeats have already been posted on HIF.
@Lori – Haha, I can’t put every recommendation into effect!
@Trish – I usually just delete their comments for their own privacy protection and they learn how things work based on other comments / finally reading our FAQ. I have a pretty Darwinian approach to newbies. And I don’t mean that as a slight, only that if I messaged each person who did that, I’d spend all day sending out e-mails
@Lucy – Give it another shot, I think Feedburner was having some issues yesterday.
@KFM – HIF’s daily readership is actually much, much higher than 5,000. It’s just that most people don’t participate in surveys and whatnot. I’m always amazed to hear how people found the site though, there are so many different paths that I don’t even know about that lead to HIF.
@Becky – That makes two of us.
@Sharon – Most texting freebies are via ShopText, where you sign up for a free accound and register your address & cell number. That way when you send in the text, the system has your address on file and sends the freebie out to you.
@Shreela – We actually don’t post many phone offers. We post all the instore offers we find, however, as I view them as a good complimentary source of freebies.
yeah just got hif newsfeed in my email today i signed up a while back but didnt get them everyday, goob i told my apt mangement office of this site and they put it in our monthly newsletter, so hope some more people join, we have 300 apts here, hope it helps you guys out, yeah i am refering more poeple. to bad we dont get money lol(just thinking.
I’m a little confused by Robin’s comment. What in the world are you talking about?????????
HIF is Great!!!!!!! I only wish I found it sooner! What comment???? Was it deleted?
Yeah, it looks like she came back and deleted all of her ugly comments…from this thread and another
I wish pencil lead came in flavors!