Hey, It’s Free!

I’ve tried a lot of food in my life, some good, some bad, some ugly. I’ve also tried A LOT of health food, mostly bad and ugly, but bee pollen is something I’ve never tried. What could it possibly taste like?! As a vegetarian should I even be ordering this? Honestly couldn’t be as bad as the elk antler velvet that I tried a couple years bad to ‘rejuvenate’ and ‘energize’. Before elk antler velvet, I didn’t have the ability to run and puke, so I can’t deny it gave me more energy. Back to the point, try a free sample of PollenPower! Bee Pollen and tell me what you think!

(whoah my first HIF post. how cool is this?)

People who’ve been reading HIF for a while now probably think I’m a broken record at this point, but it needs to be said again that you don’t leave your home/mailing address here in the comments. I don’t send out the freebies. I never have. I never will. Instead, you need to click the link provided in each post and then enter in all your info on the new website that loads.

Well, after an exhausting month long search and taking another few weeks to write up a a guide on how to work WordPress for them, I’m proud to announce the newest writers here on HIF! They’ll all start posting pretty soon here as we start the trial period, but for now, I’ll let them introduce themselves:

Amy’s having trouble with her home computer right now, so she hasn’t sent in an intro yet. I’m guessing her kids tried to flush her computer down the toilet. Well, at least that’s what I did to my mom’s jewelry box when I was a kid. But don’t worry, I sent my GI Joe’s in after it to “save the rings” as I later explained to her.

Hey, all you HIFFER’s!!!!!! My name is Amy and I was one of the people who answered Goob’s plea for help posting freebies on the main HIF site! Yayyyyy! I suppose you are all wondering about what kind of person would want to do something like that, so a little about myself:

I am a homemaker with a wonderful husband of nearly 15 years (I always refer to him as “hubby Chris”, so get used to it!) and I have two boys. Connor is 13 and Brendan is 12. I am one of the fortunate people who is financially secure enough that I now get to stay home and raise my boys while hubby Chris slaves away. I hail from the Pacific NW. I am originally from a little hill billy town about 35 miles SE of Portland, OR but left town the day after I graduated from high school. Hubby Chris and I kicked around a lot and have finally ended up settling in the Seattle area.

When I was growing up I wanted to be either a princess, a mortician (I kid you not) or a journalist. Now, although I make my children call me “Your Highness” I am hardly a princess and hubby Chris says he’ll never kiss someone who touches dead bodies for a living and I dropped out of college at age 20! (Sigh) So…….here I am, doing “journalism” for all you HIFFER’s! I am so excited to share freebies with all of you. Plus, reaching two out of three goals ain’t bad!

I am very much looking forward to being here and helping all of you keep your mailboxes overflowing! Bye for now!

Hey folks, my name is Adam, and some of y’all might have met me on the forums. I’m 24 (Age of Aquarius on Jan 31st), and I’m getting married at the end of April. Mostly, I just like getting free stuff, and a ton of free music too. My wit is mostly funny to myself, but maybe some of you guys will appreciate it too. I got hooked on freebies because of Goob’s site, and I’m just glad I can help you guys get some of the fresh ones from the forums.

I’m 17, a freshman at Louisiana State University where I’m majoring in Chemistry and Psychology, and live at home with my mom, grandma, two cats and a dog. I play guitar and tennis and spend most of my time with my friends. I used to work at a bagel shop but it closed down and now I’m focusing on school. I love the internet and I love freebies! I’m a starving college student, how could I not love freebies?

Colt hails from Chicago, IL. By day he is consumed with his graduate studies at a Chicago university. By night he eagerly reads freebie and deal forums in search of the next best freebie to report to the fine readers of heyitsfree.net. With his trusty sidekick, Luke the Beagle, at his side, no freebie shall escape his sight (except during Thursday nights when The Office and 30 Rock are on, or during Tuesday nights when House is on).

Hi, I’m Maggie. I’m a sophomore in high school and obviously like to write, read, and talk more than I should. This is the first time I’ll be writing for the viewing pleasure(or maybe some other horrible emotion, depending on how my skills work out?), so I might seem a little… off, to put it best. I’m thought of to many as “that weird, short, lesbian chick” at my school, though I’m only two of the four (short and a chick. Well, maybe a little weird to them?). I’m diabetic, musical, and love acting, and can talk on and on about anything for quite a while. I’ll spare you that lovely habit, and save all of my typing for some fun freebies, and… yeah. Whoo, and hello there.

So there you have it. Your new deliverers of freebies!

Attention all Hiffers: If you’d be willing to talk to a reporter for an upcoming article about HIF, please message me on the forums or contact me and let me know how long you’ve been visiting HIF, where ya live (just city and state, I don’t need your address :)) and a phone number that you can be reached at. (Noting a good time to call you would also be appreciated!) The reporter is super nice and I imagine this would only take a few minutes of your time.

Thanks guys, you rock.

The workload between trying to keep the site not only running, but fresh, as well as managing the forums, coming up with new contests, trying to find some cool sponsors, etc. has outgrown my free time! And that doesn’t even leave room for trying to develop all the cool ideas for the site that could set us apart from 99% of the other freebies sites out there, as well as all the other random projects I have going on at the moment.

So the time has come to bring on a few fellow writers here at HIF!. Please, you didn’t think I’d just give up and close shop, did you? I freaking love freebies! And I love all the readers, commenters, and contributers even more! So here’s the deal - if you love freebies as well and think you have what it takes (don’t worry, it’s not much. If I can do it, anybody can!) to post on here, then send me an e-mail.

The few basic requirements are:

• A love for all things free!
• Basic writing skills (that means, correct spelling, punctuation, grammar, the usual. Microsoft Word is a great friend when it comes to this area if you have trouble :))
• Be interesting! You don’t have to have the same dry wit as me, but you need to be able to take a freebie and write something funny/witty/humorous/whatever about it!

Ideally, the perfect candidate would have the above skills as well as the few mentioned below!

• Prior experience with Wordpress or something similar. This is optional, as WP is VERY easy to learn (it’s made for people who know little about computers) and I’m willing to teach/help. But it’d be really nice if you knew it ahead of time!
• Experience with finding freebies. I’ll be glad to share whatever resources I use to find the freebies if you don’t know of any already, but if somebody came to me with a resource I didn’t know about and had the above skills, chances are they’d be on the shortlist.
• The ability to filter out crappy freebies. Anybody can find links to free brochures for Montana tourism, but who actually wants one? You need to be able to weed out the scammy/crappy freebies, seeing as how 90% of the offers out there qualify as those. We only want the good stuff here on HIF!

So now you know what I’m looking for, but you’re wondering what’s in it for you! Well, that’s pretty easy!

• This will be a paid position. I’ll be paying each writer per post they make up to a certain amount every month, so that everybody is paid equally. But let me stress one thing - if you’re in this for the money, don’t waste your time. We don’t make much money here at HIF! Industries and thus, I have very little to pay people with. As the site grows and (hopefully) makes more money, I would be able to pay you more. But as of now, I can only modestly reward you for your work - but hey, most sites don’t even pay their writers!
• Your own HIF! e-mail address if you want one. (ex, joe@heyitsfree.net or sally@heyitsfree.net)
• You can write as little or as much as you want each month. If you only have time for a few posts a week, that’s fine. If you have a bunch of time the next week and want to go all out, then more power to you!
• Once we get some sponsored freebies around here (I’m still pestering companies about that!), you’ll be first in line to get the samples and enjoy them.
• Firsthand knowledge and experience of how running a freebie site works!
• A custom user tag over on the Forums. You’ll be the envy of everybody here. Hahaha.
• The ability to tell your friends and family that you work (hey, you’re actually getting paid!) for a one of the coolest freebie websites on the net! Wait, not just freebie sites, but one of the coolest sites on the net, period!

This would be the perfect job for college students, retirees, stay-at-home moms, people who goof off on the computer at work - in essence, anybody who has a little free time every day! I haven’t decided how many people I’ll be hiring now since it’ll depend on how many applicants I get, how much people think they can write, etc. But every application will be looked over and responded to by me personally.

So e-mail me your application and let me know you’re interested. In addition, include any samples of your writing (it doesn’t matter what the topic is) that you might have, how many posts a day/week/month you think you might be able to do, and why I should pick you! Here’s to keeping HIF open, free, and awesome!

This is just a reminder folks about the super cool Scavenger Hunt over on the forums that is opening right about now! The first person to complete it will win a free DVD of their choice and everybody else that completes it will be in a drawing for yet another free DVD. More info can be found in the link provided or in a post I made a few posts down from this one.

I hope everybody has fun!

Man, I love it when drunk drivers slam into power poles and knock out my power for the day, don’t you?! I didn’t know what to do with myself as I couldn’t search for freebies all day. So instead I opened something called a “book” and “read.” It was weird. I don’t ever want to have to do that again!

To make matters worse, now my home internet connection won’t connect to any of my websites. Not a single one! So until I get that resolved, the only way I can update this and my other sites is through my neighbor’s open (and painfully slow) wifi connection and while I’m at work. This has got me thinking that maybe I should look into getting a few extra hands to help me out around here and on the forums…But more on that later!

Since this internet connection is moving about as fast as I can sprint (which is slooooooow), go check out the forums for your freebie fix. I’ll try and update tomorrow at work.

I’d be thrilled if I could get a new design for Hey, It’s Free! sometime soon. Ideally, I’d like to have a fluid 3 column layout. Only having this one sidebar on the right severely limits the number of link trades I can set up, which in turn limits the traffic we can get from that method. Plus everything feels way too cluttered over there, I’d like to have a whole new sidebar to help spread things out. The fluid aspect is a must, as I can’t stand seeing all this blank space on the sides with my large screen resolution. I’m looking into taking a free theme out there and modifying it like I did with the current theme, but it sure would be nice if I could simply find what I wanted to start with right off the bat

So if anybody out there designs Wordpress themes, knows of somebody who’d be willing to help me out, or knows of a layout already created that I might be able to use, please let me know!!!

And while we’re on the topic of hopeful changes, is there anything you’d change about HIF? Any features you’d like see installed/created/morphed out of small woodland creatures? Then be sure to let me know about it in the comments! I’m looking to take HIF “to the next level” per say and increase the traffic around here!

It took an extra hour (due to watching a chunk of Major League, one of my all time favorite movies.), but I think I’ve got things working here. At least well enough for me to call it a night. Again though, if you see something completely not working, drop me a line.

Hey, It’s Free! is most likely going to be down for an hour or so tonight between midnight and 1AM EST while *WARNING! GEEK TALK AHEAD!* I move some files around on the server. Namely, I’m getting rid of the /wp/ you see in all of the web addresses around here. There’s no point in having that in the url and if anything, it’s detrimental to gaining search engine traffic, which is what every site growing wants as badly as a drunken sailor wants his sweetheart back in Iowa.

And speaking of drunken sailors, I figure the alcohol will be broken out around 12:05 tonight as I scream at the computer for not setting up the .htaccess or RSS forward feed like I want them. Basically, I’ll want to make sure that everybody who has a link to either of them currently will still be able to get to the page they want without having to change anything. Which means I get to take on the job of patching everything up for them. Doh.

*GEEK TALK HAS ENDED!*

So if you see a few things not working tonight, don’t worry about it.

Now, come tomorrow morning, if stuff is still messed up, then please drop me a line and let me know.

Merry Christmas, folks!

I’ve gotten some e-mails over the past few weeks asking if I was ever going to open up a set of forums here on Hey, It’s Free!, so I decided it was probably a good time to get my act together and see if I couldn’t get some put together. I’m still learning all the nooks and crannies of the forum software, but I’ve got enough put together to go ahead and launch the newest section of HIF!

Hey, It’s The Forums!

My vision for the forums is that they will help HIF! grow and expand. I’ll still accept freebie submissions through the contact link over on the right, but I also hope that people (including myself!) will post freebies they find on the forums! So in theory, there will be even more freebies to be found in there and then I’ll take the cream of the crop and stick them here on the front page for those of you who aren’t participating in the forum fun. In the very soon future, people will get “points” for posting freebies, which can then be redeemed for prizes / privileges (ie, a cheaper prize = you’ll be able to change the rank under your name. A bigger prize = me sending you something in the mail, etc.) I’m in contact with a few companies who are discussing sending out special freebies to me to give out, so I might tie those in or something if things work out. As you can see, the possibilities are seemingly endless!

As of now, there are two members. Goob (me) and John (the test dummy I used to see if things were working). By the end of today we better not still be the only members! So go join up and start posting!

I’ve said this before, but it looks like it’s time to say again. Please DO NOT leave your address in the comments here on HIF. All it gets you is an entry in my giant excel file, which has a tab for people who leave their personal info. It allows me to track repeat offenders, who now will be greeted with a one-week ban. I’m not trying to sound like your mom, but I’m honestly doing this for your own good. Having your info out there for any and everybody to see is not only foolish, it’s dangerous!

I’m not even sure if I should be posting this. Let’s just say this isn’t my best work when it comes to video editing and acting. Ok, maybe this IS my best acting possible, right on par with Keanu Reeves and Pauly Shore. But being mentioned in the same group as Neo himself is A-okay with me. I found out about the contest only hours before heading off the Argentina for the week and I figured that’d be as good a premise as any to film. So we filmed a few scenes with my digital camera, took some pictures, and when I got home, I had 48 hours until the deadline to compose the video and find some music.

The only problem was that there really wasn’t a storyline! It was hilarious; I was simply sitting in front of my computer, looking at the photos we took, trying to pull out of them ANYTHING funny I could think of. And thus, I ended up with what you see below. It makes absolutely no sense, but then again, neither do I half the time. So enjoy!

Well, this time the lack of updates over the past two days was all my fault. If anybody’s gone over and read through some of the old posts on my personal site, they’d know I once lived in Australia. Well, I’m back over here now for a short visit before returning home for a bit. So my apologies for not being able to post lately! But I’ll do my best while over here to make sure I get some freebies up and going every day just like back home. In fact, here’s one I found for a free 2007 Good Health Calendar, so if you haven’t signed up for calendar yet, check this one out!