HIF Exclusive Freebies, Guides, and Samples • Page 2 • Hey, It's Free!

Stock Coupon Photos Are The Best

Updated on Dec 18, 2021 at 9:09 pm · Disclosure

Thankfully the stock photo world found some new models since I first wrote this in 2012. I'm sure old school Hiffers can remember seeing these images all over the Internet!

If you're a longtime reader of coupon, freebie, or deal blogs then you've seen the image above. You at least recognize the model. Chances are you've seen her more times than you've seen yourself in a mirror.

Long story short I got bored tonight and fell down the istock rabbit hole. If you view any of her photos, you'll see a link titled “Click here to view more images in the series: female40 model.” Thus we can safely conclude her name is female40 model, or F40M to her friends.

F40M is also super proud of accomplishing rudimentary tasks.

Stupid stock coupon photo — Look, I'm using a coupon!

You may have noticed that she's wearing a different shirt in that last photos. That's because she has quite an array of photos spanning all sorts of “activities.”

The checkout guy is now buying flowers with her. And she's wearing the same shirt as when she bought groceries. F40M moves fast.

Of course, she's not the only coupon chick you see around.

Speaking of coupon fraud, most of the coupons in the pictures below are the same. I'd totally watch a hybrid of COPS and Extreme Couponing. TLC, call me.

Stupid stock coupon photos — Is she shopping at King’s Cross station

However none of those are my favorite stock coupon image. The runner up is:

I don't know why that shows up when you search for “coupons” on a stock image site, but just look at her. Who gets that blissful picking breakfast snacks? There is totally another plain of emotions we're not privy to at work here.

But the current reigning champion?

The actual title of the above image is “FREEDOM!” When will people realize children peeing in the middle of the pasta aisle is no laughing matter?

For the record, this is the kind of stuff I do when bored. 😀 I love that the only category I can place this in is “HIF Exclusive.”

How to Delete Twitter Apps

Updated on Apr 10, 2021 at 11:12 am · Disclosure

I figured it was time for me to post a tutorial on deleting Twitter apps. Why? Because I care. Also, I'm super bored and the half dozen people I'm playing in Chess With Friends are taking hours to make their moves. I'm half convinced they've got a program calculating every possibility to help cheat.

Before we get started, you should follow HIF for freebies on Twitter and then follow yours truly so that we can laugh at the world together.

How to Revoke Twitter Apps on Desktop

So, onto the task at hand. One thing we have going for us is revoking access on Twitter is a heck of a lot easier than on Facebook. Step one, obviously, is logging into your account. Once there, you want to click the three little dots at the bottom of the left sidebar. It might say “More” next to it, like this.

An Open Letter To Freebie Giverawayers

Updated on Apr 10, 2021 at 2:54 pm · Disclosure

Dear Giant Faceless Global Conglomerates,

Hi, I'm Goob. You may remember me from such internal memos as “this loser keeps making fun of our dog perfume” and “does anyone know if we still have that hitman on retainer?” I'm here to ask that you, for the sake of my sanity, please stop announcing future freebie giveaways. Why? Because you screw them up.

Here's an idea: release a freebie then tip off a few bloggers. Seriously, it's that easy. Hit me up. I'll gladly put you in touch with two dozen of the biggest freebie bloggers who would love to share your offer with our combined billions of readers. (margin of error: +/- a few billion.)

We're all nice guys and gals who Would be happy to write about your freebies with nary a negative comment. Myself excluded – I'm still going to mock you as long as you insist on botching these giveaways and branding your products with stupid names. Plus think how nice it would be if your site wasn't constantly down thanks to a deluge of people sent all at once!

I'm sure my withered olive branch won't be enough for some companies though. You want your giveaways to be “events!” You want to reward your Facebook fans for proclaiming to the world “I LOVE DEODORANT!” I get it. So how about this – give your IT guy a heads up. Take it from a fellow ~~hunk~~ poindexter, he won't wet his pants and cry when you tell him there are going to be an extra 25,000 people on your site at noon tomorrow. He'll beef up the system and, surprise surprise, your damn site won't crash!

I had a company once ask if I'd like to help consult for their upcoming series of giveaways. I don't think I best expressed my flattery when I laughed and said “just make sure you have enough #$@*ing servers to handle the surge of traffic.” Guess what they didn't do. o_O

So, in conclusion, stop wasting my readers time and start listening to me. 🙂

Forever Yours,

Goob

Host a House Party, Get Free Stuff

Updated on Feb 3, 2021 at 10:15 am · Disclosure

Speaking of Coffee-Mate, remember a few months back where you got a coupon and were entered into a chance to host a Coffee-Mate sponsored party?

Hiffer Teresa recently posted on our Facebook page that she was accepted and got all the following for free:

Cranium board game
A Poker Set
17 coupons for Free Coffee-mate Creamer (Liquid or Nondairy, up to 3.99)
30 Nescafe single coffee packs
25 Coffee-Mate single pack Creamers
Cups and Napkins

You might be asking yourself why she got these freebies. It turns out that some companies offer boatloads of freebies in exchange for using them to host a house party. They get to place their products in front of you and your friends while you to have a sponsored party. It's win-win!

Now unfortunately the Coffee-Mate offer is dead. But instead of getting bummed that you missed out, check out HouseParty.com where you can sign up for the following parties:

AARP Celebrate Life @ 50 House Party
DiGiorno Pizza & Hoops House Party
Huggies Pull-Ups House Party
Johnsonville Italian Inspiration House Party
Philadelphia Creme Cheese Dinnertime Dilemma House Party
Singer Sew Very Easy House Party
Tapena Wine and Tapas House Party (Only available in CO, DE, FL, GA, MD, MA, NJ, NY, OR and WA.)
Zatarain's Brings Mardi Gras Home House Party

Remember, these companies are looking for people who 1) have friends and 2) are outgoing enough to invite them over for a party. In order to screen applicants, they do make you take a survey with around 20 questions. But as long as you're not some hermit with no social skills you'll have a chance at being selected.

So which Hiffers out there have hosted one of these house parties. How did it go and would you ever want to do it again?

Why The “Free Snuggie” Offer Is A Scam

Updated on Nov 27, 2023 at 6:09 pm · Disclosure

I come across dozens of fake freebies every day. 99.99% of them quickly die, but like a crazy ex, some hang around and simply refuse to go away. Case in point, the “free Snuggie” offer that popped up in October. I still get an e-mail or two each day suggesting I post it, and while I hate to be the bearer of bad news, there's no way it's coming.

However, I thought I could use it to show how I vet freebies when I'm unable to contact the freebie company directly. So if you're interested in learning more about the process as well as following along while I hunt down who exactly is behind this spreebie (I just made that word up), then please read along. Warning, it's fairly lengthy.

First, what's up with their domain? Suzzly.com? Why isn't this on GetSnuggie.com, which is the Snuggie's official site? Furthermore, Suzzly's WhoIs info is hidden, which is the #1 sign of a freebie spam site. WhoIs is publicly available info on who owns a domain, kind of like a phone book for websites. For a fee, the info can be privatized, but I can't think of any company that does so. Instead, they put their office mailing address and a public 800 number so that their customers can reach them. A spammer, however, is most likely operating out of his/her/its home and doesn't want their info available, for obvious reasons.

As seen on TV? No, I've never seen Suzzly.com on TV. — As seen on TV? No, I have never seen Suzzly.com on TV.

Second, the signup page is an iframe, which is pulling from a second domain, SuzzlyPromo.com. An iframe is an old-school technique that in a sense is like a window on a website. It allows a webmaster to load part of a page from Site A and another part from Site B – usually this indicates they only own one of the sites. HIF's Coupons.com page is an example. The banner should look familiar – it's part of HIF! However, the coupons load in an iframe below. I don't manually own or update that section, Coupons Inc. does. It's a handy technique for many websites, however a legit company has little use for it. If they were offering a freebie of their own product, they could simply host the signup form on their own site.

Now let's get back to Whois info again. SuzzlyPromo not only has private info, but it was registered on Oct. 19, 2009. If hidden info is the #1 sign of freebie spam, a site registered hours before the freebie offer became available is #2. Spammers work in bulk and domains cost $10 a year ($20 if they privatize their info). Typically, a freebie spammer will set up a very basic site with a signup form and collect as many submissions as possible. However, before the year is up, folks like myself ID the site as spam and thus people stop signing up. The spammer will then simply delete the domain after a year and start the process all over again with a new domain and spreebie. If I see a site that was registered in late 2009 (or whatever the current date is), it's cause for further examination.

By now, I would have moved on to the next freebie since it's clear to me that this isn't legit, but let's keep digging. We submit our info, reach the confirmation page, and…Google Ads? Quick, name a large company that both (A) Gives away freebies and (B) Has Google Ads on their site. BZZZZZ, time's up. I notice that collectively we came up with zero examples. Now, Google Ads aren't evil or spamish at all, but they're used by smaller sites like HIF, not companies giving away freebies. Furthermore, check out the footer links on the confirmation page. They all go to a third domain, Spooluff.com. That domain doesn't even have a main site and two of the four links (Shipping & Contact) go to dead pages! The owner of Spooluff isn't a company, but some some random guy named Joshua Comeau, who lists his address as 96 St. Patrick, Toronto Canada, his e-mail as [email protected], and his phone number as 647-833-9673. Oh, and the domain was registered on October 9, 2009. How lovely.

Gaweb.com is a spamish directory (surprise!), the phone number plays a recorded “this number is not assigned to anybody” message when you call, and Google says the address is home to the Toronto Standard Condo Corporation, which certainly (although not definitively) looks like a residential complex. Furthermore, a Google search of “Joshua Comeau Toronto” pulls up this discussion from almost four years ago where a person by the same name in Canada was running freebie spam sites. I know, I'm shocked!*

Finally, if you call the phone number (206-337-7752) that's on Suzzly's site (and in the confirmation e-mail), you'll get a recorded message and then be given a prompt to hit # for more options. This is followed by “to enter your K7 security code, press 4” which means they're using K7.net, a free voicemail and fax system. Now come on. This supposedly legitimate company has the financial resources to give away tens of thousands of Snuggies (which retail for what, $10-$15 each?) but they can't afford anything more than a free telephone service for their clients? (edit: The number now plays a recorded message saying Suzzly.com is a spam site and that their snuggie offer is not legit! It looks like K7 received a few complains 🙂 )

Now if you signed up for this, don't fret. No creeper will show up at your doorstep. You'll most likely start receiving more spam e-mail soon (which is why we suggest using a separate e-mail account for freebies instead of your personal or work e-mail!) and at the very worst, a few extra telemarketers will start calling. It doesn't ask for credit card or banking info, so you won't be out any money.

But this is what I get paid to do (apologies to my college History degree!) and perhaps this post has not only helped show how I judge freebies, but will maybe nudge this damned snuggie offer closer to the grave. The fewer sites harvesting our info, the better!

—

*I decided to keep following the Joshua Comeau trial, for my own personal enjoyment. The same Google search above brought up a message board profile for a JoshuaV, which lists his job as “affiliate marketer” and his location as Toronto. It also lists [email protected] as his e-mail, which when searched on social media sites, brings up Josh Volsh (Facebook), Josh (Myspace), and Joshua C (MSN Live). If I search for his new Josh Volsh name, more results pop up of him linking and advertising even – more – spam sites that I recognize from the past.

I contacted him via e-mail, asking if he would like to comment on this post, but so far I've yet to receive a response. I can't prove anything definitively that he's behind some of these spam offers, but there's enough circumstantial evidence here for me to never post anything he's associated with. If you happen to have any contact info for Josh, please join us on the forums and chime in. I really would love to talk to him…

Corporate Internet Coupon Policies

Updated on Nov 28, 2023 at 2:50 pm · Disclosure

Over the past months, a trickle has turned into a torrent of e-mails from people telling me that X store doesn't take printed coupons and Y store does but only if you use less than five and Z store has no limit and… you get the point. The thing is, in this example, Walmart was X, Y, and Z store!

So, I set out to see if there was a universal corporate coupon policy for any of the big name stores. I compiled the list below and began emailing corporate offices asking if they accept Internet coupons. Long story short: yes, most have an official policy and in the majority of stores, printed Internet coupons are okay.

But as I've hinted to, everybody seems to have a horror story of a cashier who refuses to accept the coupons and suddenly the total bill balloons. Nine times out of ten, that cashier is in the wrong and this is where a little education, planning, and hopefully this post will come in handy. If you shop regularly at any of the stores below, you might want to print out the policy and carry it around in your purse when you go shopping next!

There's no reason for anybody to be denied savings when they're rightfully entitled to them, especially in this economy!

A&P – Holy Mother of…A&P simply did not want to respond to my e-mails at all. But after a mere trillion messages by me, I received an e-mail with the following statement:

The internet is a powerful vehicle for getting information out to people and at the same time it is also a vehicle for false information. Unfortunately, internet coupons are not accepted in our A&P stores due to an abundance of fraudulent coupons circulating over the internet.

I know this is not the answer you and your readers want to hear at this time, but we are listening to you and other customers who are seeking alternate means of stretching their food dollars. Currently, we are working on a solution that would allow our customer's to download coupons from the internet directly to our loyalty cards electronically. We are exploring this idea and hope to put it into fruition in the near future. I apologize for the delay in my response, as I wanted to wait until we had more information of the new clipless electronic coupon service we will be offering. We are working with an external vendor and hope to have this service available starting August 7, 2009. [ed: so…it's released now?]

So that's kind of promising as it sounds like they'll be rolling out their own Cellfire version within a month in the past.

Free Pizza Coupons

Updated on Sep 9, 2023 at 7:33 pm · Disclosure

I don't think it's any great secret that the economy is nosediving right now and as such, coupons are becoming more and more valuable with each passing day. At the same time, what's the first thing to fly out the window whenever money gets tight? That's right, eating out. There's a whole slew of reasons to make your own meal every night: it's cheaper, usually healthier, etc.

But admit it, sometimes it's nice to treat ourselves to a large meat lovers pizza after a long week. That's why I thought it might be a good idea to put together a list of some pizza companies that offer free coupons & deals on their website. Here's to enjoying a little treat every now and then while lessening the wallop it puts on our wallet!

Top Olympic Freebies – Paris 2024 Edition!

Updated on Feb 20, 2024 at 2:28 pm · Disclosure

Whoa, the Olympics kind of snuck up on me this time around! For anybody new to the games, you might not realize that most Olympics athletes stay in what's called the Olympic Village.

And do you know what they have there? Freebies upon freebies upon glorious freebies.

So while you and I have zero access to them, I thought it might be cool to list some of the awesome freebies that the world's finest athletes are enjoying right now at the Paris 2024 Olympic games and beyond!

Note: I originally published this for the Beijing 2008 games, but I've updated it with new information and links every two years since!

Free Food

You'd think that elite athletes would eat nothing but healthy food during their training and for the most part, you'd be correct. However, since it takes a ton of work to make it to the Olympics, most athletes tend to take a break once they're finished competing and enjoy the finer aspects of dining. As Dutch rower Michiel Bartman put it:

The most fun thing I remember from the Olympic Village was the food court. It was huge, almost the size of two football fields, and great. So many choices of different and delicious food; you could try every night something else. McDonald’s is one of International Olympic Committee sponsors and were prominently placed in the food court as well.

Irish rugby player Harry McNulty shows a bit more of the cafeteria option in Tokyo 2021 when he took us on a tour in this video.

Of course, there's more than just junk food and candy. The Village has a ginormous cafeteria stocked with every food imaginable: fresh fruits, veggies, meat, breads, drinks, and everything else imaginable. If they don't have what you want, chances are one of the dozens of chefs cooking will be able to whip it up for you. As a matter of fact, I tried to apply for a spot as one of the chefs, but was told that my peanut butter & jelly sandwich specialty was already covered by somebody else.

The athletes don't have to worry about tainted food, either. After fears that commonly used pesticides and growth hormones might seep into the foods and trigger false positives during Olympic drug testing, China set up hundreds of organic farms to specifically grow food for the Olympians. However, they even went one step further and set up a tracking system for every single food item. So if a track star from Uganda thinks his carrots taste a little funny, it'll be no trouble tracking their history to see where they were grown and who handled them.

A quick side note: guess how many apples were eaten in the Beijing 2008 cafeteria? An estimated one million. Or to put it another way, they ate about 936,000 bananas, which is enough to circle the Olympic marathon route more than three times.

Freebie Review – Dress Like A Cow Day!

Updated on Dec 18, 2021 at 4:39 pm · Disclosure

I woke up last Friday already knowing about the free Slurpee's at 7-11, but it wasn't until around noon that I logged onto HIF and noticed the Dress Like A Cow Chick-Fil-A freebie. I didn't have anything planned for the day, my little sister was pretty bored, so a few hours later…

Free SMS & Text Messages

Updated on Dec 18, 2021 at 12:37 pm · Disclosure

Ok, I'll admit, I don't really get the whole text messaging phenomenon. If I want to talk to somebody or ask them a question, I'll just call them! Over 90% of my phone calls consist of 30 second conversations that go like this:

Friend: Hey Goob, what's up?
Goob: Hey mate, got a quick question. You know what time we need to show up at Bob's tomorrow night?
Friend: Yeah, be there around 6.
Goob: Great, thanks, take it easy.
Friend: Peace.

I don't care how fast you type on a phone, you can't beat that in terms of time spent! But whatever, I digress. 🙂 I've got friends all over the country and world at this point. And while I might want to call them from time to time, the nitty gritty is that I end up texting them thanks to the prices of phone calls. But seeing as how text messages cost money too, I figured there had to be a way around paying. I mean, if e-mail is free, why shouldn't 150 character messages be?! And thankfully, many other websites out there agree with me!

Below I've put together some of the best sites on the net that allow you to sent 100% free text messages. I tried most of them out by texting my own phone to see if they worked, how fast it went, etc. Many of these offer world-wide messaging, or at least texts to certain countries abroad. So chances are though that no matter where your friends or families are in the world, you'll be able to text them using one of the sites below. Many times you'll need to know the country code of the number you're trying to message, but for some reason most of these sites don't provide a list of the freaking codes! Luckily, this is when Wikipedia really comes in handy. Even more annoyingly, sometimes you'll need to know the cell phone service provider of your friend. If you have no idea what it is, then have a look at Fone Finder and thank me later!

And as always, if you know of a good site I missed, please leave a comment and let us know about it!

Google Voice – One of the longest running free texting via websites still up and running! They let you send text messages for free to US and Canadian numbers (excluding U.S. territories American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands). It couldn't be easier to send text messages straight from your browser or phone, all for free.

They update their locations here.

TextFree – This is a mobile app for both iPhone and Android or personal computers that lets you send free text messages worldwide.

Text Port – Yet another fantastic site that lets you send free sms to US and Canadian numbers via their set numbers. What makes this site even better, IMHO, is the clean and nice layout. No flashing ads or annoying messages all over the place. Just a box for you to send your free text message from and that's it.

Previous Best Free Text Options

How many people remember some of these original free texting sites? While they're sadly no longer with us, they were the pioneers of free global texting online back in the day, circa 2006-2014.

AIM
Anon Txt
Call Wave
Cardboard Fish SMS
Chikka
Free Text Send
Gizmo
Group 2 Call
Joopz
Send SMS Now
SMS Everywhere
Text 4 Free
The Txt
Txt Drop
Yahoo Messenger India

Yeah, you read that last one right! I still have my YM India login info from 2005 😀

So there you have it! Those are some of the best free text messaging websites I found that let you send free text messages around the globe. No matter where you or your friends are in the world, hopefully you'll be able to stay in touch with nothing more than a couple of cell phones and a few of the websites from this list.

Free Google Services

Updated on Apr 19, 2022 at 3:39 pm · Disclosure

Everybody seems to love Google when it comes to finding stuff on the Internet, but did you know they offer a ton of free services? From the ever popular ones like video sharing (YouTube) and e-mail (Gmail) to the more unknown ones of free voicemail and free calendars; chances are if there's a program or service out there that most people would be interested in, Google provides an easy and free version of it! So I've decided to try and compile a massive list of them here on HIF, in alphabetical order and broken into two categories. The first list contains all of the services and products that Google offers directly from their site. The next list contains all the websites and companies Google owns and operates. By no means is this a be all, end all list for the services Google offers, but these are the things that I think most average people could get some use out of. So…enjoy!

Google Alerts – Let's say you have a hobby of collecting rare, Norwegian buttons from the 17th century. Now, chances are there aren't going to be many new and fresh stories to pop up on the Internet every day about such a topic. Which is where Google Alerts comes in. You can set it to e-mail you whenever there is a new article about any topic you want, (you can specify if you want to only focus on blogs, user groups, large newspapers, etc.) Pretty nifty if you have certain things you're really interested in but which there isn't a website already dedicated to them.

Blogger – It seems like everybody and their brother have a blog by this point. But in case you are one of the nine people left without one and want to try, yet feel overwhelmed by the process, then Blogger is the site for you. It walks you through every aspect you could possible need and handles all the techno mumbo-jumbo, so that all you have to do is click a few buttons, type what you want to say to the world, and then click one more button! Easy as can be.

Google Custom Search – This nifty little tool allows you to create your own mini-search engine of data. Let's say for instance that you are a wonderful chef with tons of family recipes that you'd like to share with your family. Well, with Google's custom search engine, you could input each of the recipes that you wanted to share and if you do a few a day, over time you'll have a nice (and big!) database of awesome recipes. Then your cousin halfway across the world might one day think, “Man, I could go for some pizza right now…,” come to your database, search for pizza, and viola! He's got your own recipe!

Google Book – Slowly, but surely, Google is trying to scan every page of every book into it's computers so that one day you'll be able to search for a certain passage and pull it right up. Of course, it's taking them forever to do so, but current estimates put the count of books in their database at over 1 million. Not too shabby!

Google Docs – Now this is one of my favorite Google features, by far! Basically, this is an on-line version of Microsoft Office. There's a word processor, spreadsheet, power point – basically everything you'd ever need. You can password protect all your files or collaborate with friends across the internet, giving different people different levels of editing powers. If you're in school or work and have ever tried organizing a group project, Google Docs might very well be a Godsend for you!

Google Earth – If you enjoy spying on your neighbor's backyard, then this is the product for you! Haha, Basically this is a massive collection of satellite photos spanning the globe, to the point where you can plot in almost any coordinates and get a bird's eye view of the place. It's fun to at least check out your own area and see if you can make anything out.

Google Groups – You might already be familiar with Yahoo's Groups feature, but Google's is much more visually appealing and easier to navigate, so I go with theirs. Pretty much, there will already be a group out there for anything you can imagine. In fact, I think there's already a Norwegian buttons group 🙂 This is a great feature to hook up with people who might be able to help you with something particular that a search engine might be vague at, like where the best sushi in Argentina can be found or how best to fix the engine of an antique car.

Google Hangouts – Google started with own messaging service a while back called Google Talk. It's since evolved into Hangouts, which is a pretty useful cross-platform messaging app. You not only can talk to people, but also send files, check your gmail accounts, and even make free pc-to-pc phone calls (just like Skype!) – all for free!

Google Image Search – You'd be surprised how many people out there still don't know that you can search for images as well as normal text words on Google!

Google Keep – This free services used to be called Google Notepad. It's essentially a cloud-based notes program that lets you to access your files with any internet device, like with the Google Docs feature. You can save and sync notes, pictures, graphs, voice memos, and more. If you're anything like me and have sticky notes all over your desk with reminders to do things, then you'll love Keep!

Google Mail – Previously an invite-only system, GMail now let's anybody sign up and has 1.5 billion active users worldwide. It's quite easy to navigate and use and the 10GB-plus space they offer makes it the perfect e-mail account to never have to delete a message with pictures or videos attached to it!

Google Maps – Like Mapquest, but 100 times better in my opinion. You can not only look up directions, but plot a trip and even track your vacation for friends and family back home to watch! But even cooler is their Street View for certain large cities, which has 360 degree photos from almost every street!

Google Messages – Share high-quality media without extra fees by sending free text on Wi-Fi with Google Messages.

Google News – Kinda like Google Finance, but with News instead. It's actually one of the better news services out there, much better than Cnn.com and the like, as they tend to get breaking news uploaded much more quickly as well as draw on news from a huge variety of sources.

Google Photos – The old Picasa program has evolved into a powerful photo editor and management storage system program. Google Photos is a must if you have tons of photos on your computer and was created as Google's answer to Yahoo's Flickr back in the day. Photos will backup your pictures on your mobile or PC device and save them in the cloud so you never lose them. They also have a search function built into the photos metadata, so you can search for topics like “birthday” and it'll show all the photos of birthday parties.

Google Scholar – This is cool feature that lets you search among scholarly papers and journals for in-depth analysis and conversations based on the topic you're looking for. Google is slowly broadening the number of resources it includes in the search results, but suffice to say if you ever really need to sound smart about a given topic, a GScholar search should be at the top of your list of things to do.

Google Shopping – Formerly known as Froggle, this service basically let's you search for a given product and Google will tell you where you can buy it cheapest.

Google Sites – This is a free web page-creation suite to rival Microsoft Office! It gives you free access to Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, and Google Keep.

Google Translate – There are plenty of other free web translators on the web out there, but I've yet to come across one that's any better or easier to use than Googles. Enough said.

Google Voice – Google will give you a real, working phone number for free! They can then call it and be forwarded to your real number or leave you a voicemail, which you can access through your own phone or via the Internet. Perfect for those situations where you don't want certain people to know your phone numbers!

YouTube – If you don't already know about this free video sharing site, and yet you're here reading HIF, then you my friend are one in a million! Upload videos of up to 100mg, watch millions upon millions of other videos, and waste a good portion of your day while doing so.

So there you have it! Hopefully you found a few services in here that you didn't know of before. And by all means, if you know of one or two I skipped over, please share them in the comments!

This Free Stuff Works!

Updated on Apr 10, 2021 at 8:00 am · Disclosure

When I originally started HIF, I had in mind a much different site from what it is today. You see, I was big in the high tech freebie scene as long as two years ago and on my personal site, I even talked about how you could get free iPods. (Although the info in that post is a little dated since I wrote it two years ago.) I ended up getting my free iPod only a few months after making that post and happily spent the next year or so jamming out and enjoying it to the fullest extent.

And then while I was over in Australia, I stumbled onto a message board that had lists of all the free stuff you could get from these companies and I was astounded. IPods, desktop and laptop computers, digital cameras, flatscreen monitors and televisions, video game systems and games, even designer handbags for the ladies – you name it, you can get it for free. I made a mental note to look into it again when I got back to the states and I did just that. I signed up for a few sites, began getting / buying referrals and started going “green” on a few sites in December. (Going green is slang for getting all your refs, having your account go through the normal review process, and be approved for your freebie prize – but I'm sure y'all know about that since it's over in the HIF FAQ =)

Of course, some people still didn't believe me, despite my accompanying pictures of proof.

So, I decided to up and make a site talking about how to get free items such as iPods and such. But I soon realized that if that's all my new site had, there wouldn't be much in the way of updating and posting on a daily basis, which is why I decided to go more with the daily non-expensive freebies that I post here every day.

But even yet, I still work on getting free iPods and laptops and flatscreen monitors. And so I'm going to try and mix a little bit of that up into here as well, showing y'all not only how to get free shirts and candy, but iPods as well. What I'm going to do is look at a different site each week and let you know the pros and cons of it. I'll also post news of the freebie world here as well and let you know which companies to stay away from and those that are awesome. And finally, I'll be opening up a message board here so that people can swap/sell/trade referral links and talk about the freebie world, both high tech and low tech. It should be a fun new shift here at Hey, It's Free! and I hope people are interested in it!