Freebies and free stuff

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.

The freebies have been a little (Goob’s mind: define little!) slow lately and thus I thought I’d kick things off by giving away two $25 giftcards to two random Hiffers. All you have to do is take an 11 question survey about HIF to be entered! And heck, two of the 11 questions are your name and e-mail.

As for what the gift cards will be for, each winner will have his/her choice between a $25 GC to Amazon, eBay, or direct Paypal deposit. I’m flexible (and amazingly awesome?) like that. In fact, depending on how many people participate in this (hint, hint), I might make this a monthly thing.

So go take the survey and be entered to win a $25 gift card! The survey ends at midnight PST on June 2 and the winners will be chosen by Random.org.

(FYI: If you’re having trouble getting the survey to work, let me know here in the comments. I’m using the best “free” program I could find, but if I get a million and a half complaints, I’ll shell out a few hundred bucks for a professional service.)

EDIT: For some reason, #6 is not allowing people to input any answers other than the ones I selected and I can’t seem to fix it. Other than that, the survey is going strong. Reading through the answers so far has been a bit enlightening!

With March Madness coming to an end Monday night, the results of the contest are in!

Group 1
1st Place ($50): letsgospartans
2nd Place ($25): Brutus
Random Winner ($25): Going for the Money

Group 2
1st Place ($50): Marquette
2nd Place ($25): the1
Random Winner ($25): BettingLine

Unfortunately, over half of the winners masked their e-mail address from me, so I can’t contact them. If you were one of the winners listed above and haven’t received an e-mail from me, please go to the group homepage and near the bottom you’ll see a section that says “Recent Messages.” Just post there with an e-mail address that I can contact you at. You need to do this instead of just e-mailing me directly to prevent any scalawags from impersonating you.

I hope everybody had fun (I know I did!) and the next contest shall be starting shortly.

So, Yahoo screwed us. Hey, that’s a fun way to start a post, isn’t it?!

Long story short, Yahoo glitched and switched the scoring system for our first group, so I’m gonna be treating each group separately and giving out two first place prizes and two second places prizes. I know, I know, I rock.

Short story long, click below to read more.

(more…)

I’m making a reminder post about the March Madness Contest today simply because the deadline for submissions is early tomorrow morning before the next newsletter will go out. Games start tomorrow afternoon! My productivity is about to plummet! Woo hoo!

I’m happy to say that 500 people have already signed up! Unfortunately, Yahoo only let’s 500 people in a group, so I’ve created a 2nd official March Madness group that currently has 23 people in it. If you’ve already joined the first group, do not join this second group! Scoring will be the same and we’ll just act like both of these group are one giant group.

If you want to know how the scoring works or what prizes are being given away, check out my original post. And with that, enjoy the games!

EDIT: Wow, 500 people have signed up! Unfortunately, Yahoo only let’s 500 people in a group, so I’ve created a 2nd official March Madness group. If you’ve already joined the first group, do not join this second group! Scoring will be the same and we’ll just act like both of these group are one giant group.

Now that the official bracket has been determined, I’ve set up a March Madness group for HIF on Yahoo for anybody who wants to participate! Doing so is super easy, even if you know absolutely nothing about college basketball (like me!). Simply click the yellow “Join Group” button, fill out your bracket for who you think will win each game, and earn points for each correct pick you make. Scoring will be as follows:

• First round: 1 point
• Second round: 2 points
• Third round: 4 points
• Fourth round: 6 points
• Semifinals: 10 points
• Finals: 15 points

In addition to those points, you’ll get a bonus point for every correct upset you pick. The games start on March 19, so hurry up and fill out your bracket!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the prizes!

• First Place: $50
• Second Place: $25
• Random Winner: $25

If you win, you get $50. If you come in second, you get $25. And then I’ll pick a random person who participates, no matter what place they come in, to get the final $25. In conclusion, how can you justify not participating?!

And last, but certainly not least, I forgot to mention that we did finally get in touch with a winner for the $50 Amazon giftcard that I gave away two weeks back. The initial winner never contacted me after a week’s worth of e-mails, so I went to the first runner up, which happened to be HiccupQueen! So congrats to her and thanks to everybody who entered

I don’t have a photo of this gift card, but that’s only because I bought it on-line. I guess I could take a picture of my computer screen or maybe create one of those cool Matrix graphics where you can see the inside of electronics, but…nah, that’d take too much work. Just take my word on it; I’ve got a $50 Amazon gift card that I’m dying to give away!

Some people have asked that I make a contest for those of you who are technologically illiterate. And you know what? That I can do. Thus, in order to enter this contest, all you have to do is….sign up for our daily newsletter. That’s it! Well, you’ll need to comment on this post and let me know you’ve signed up, but that shouldn’t be too hard, no?

The contest ends at midnight on Tuesday March 2. After you enter your email in the link above, you’ll get a confirmation letter with a link in it asking if you really want to sign up. Make sure you click that link to confirm your subscription!

So, to recap:

1. Sign up for our daily newsletter.
2. Click the link in the confirmation e-mail you get shortly after signing up.
3. Come back here and leave a comment on this post.
4. Cross your fingers and hope you win!
5. Name your next child/pet Goob?

Good luck, everyone!

EDIT: If you’re already a subscriber of the newsletter, then just comment on this post and that’ll be your official entry!

EDIT: So obviously the 2009 Entertainment Book is no longer available, however you can get the newest version here!

So Budget Busters is going to be a new series where I explain ways to save money while spending money: coupon, lowering your utility bills, trading items instead of buying them new, stuff like that. This first one covered the new Entertainment 2009 Coupon Book that basically has the following pros & cons:

Pros

• Comes with $20,000+ in coupons.
• You can look at the coupons in your area’s book before you get it! This is a huge bonus and that I think some people overlook. You essentially know exactly what you’re getting upfront.
• Many of the coupons can only be found in this booklet and are worth more than most circular coupons. (free entree instead of only an appetizer, etc)
• Each book is area specific (mine is for the D.C. region only), so around half of the coupons are for locally owned and small stores.
• Coupons expire on Nov 1, 2009 at the earliest, so you have almost a year to use them.

Cons

• Costs between $16-20, but comes with free shipping.
• Some of the coupons for on-line retailers can be found by Googling.
• Most restaurant coupons are BOGO, so it’s not that great for a single person.

I gave an example in the video of how I ate at my favorite Mexican hole in the wall recently for my birthday and used a BOGO coupon for a free $10 entree. That’s already half of the cost it took to purchase the coupon booklet and after I use the second BOGO coupon in a few months, I’ll have recouped the price of purchase. After that, every time I use one of the other hundreds of coupons, it’s like free money.

So at the very least, check out your region’s Entertainment 2009 Coupon Book and see if the coupons in your area interest you! If so, order a book while it’s still on sale for 30% off WITH free shipping!

I also announced the winner of the $50 Target gift card, which was Deem2. Thank you to everyone who participated and if you’re now following me on Twitter, send me a message and I’ll gladly reply!

There’s also one last hidden clue in the video about something else coming up, but I can’t say anything more about that

So I’ve got a $50 Target gift card just sitting here and not being spent, so how about we remedy that? In order to win, all you have to do is follow Hey, It’s Free on Twitter and tweet the following message below:

Goob is giving away a free $50 Target giftcard! You can win by following @heyitsfree and retweeting. http://bit.ly/14tRIa

The contest will end this Sunday night at 11:59pm and the winner will be randomly selected from the people who are following Hey, It’s Free on Twitter. Fingers crossed Random.org doesn’t somehow try and force me to win my own contest again

Here are the results for the free Walmart $50 giftcard contest!

• The first comment number I drew was 30, which was me. Highly amused and not wanting to win my own contest, I redrew numbers….
• …and got 92, which was Camille! Massive congrats to her and thanks to everybody for participating!