Freebies: Christmas Everyday At Your Doorstep
Dec/090
Do you take pleasure in checking your mailbox everyday? For me personally, I quite enjoy receiving promotional material, searching through the latest bargains and hot sellers. However for most individuals, the answer to this question is a resounding no. When the pile of bills has a volume greater than your junk mail, you know you’re in strife. However, for some of us who’ve discovered how to get free stuff and other freebies sent to our address, receiving mail has suddenly turned into something of an exciting adventure. Once you learn and begin to apply for free stuff, everyday is like Xmas. From free food or supplement samples, to free magazine subscriptions or to the latest fragrance to hit the market, getting stuff for free has never been so enjoyable.
Quite possibly over a 12 month period you could end up with: free t-shirts, colognes, chocolates, health care items, quality brand health care, toothpastes, lotion and of course the free food that’s offered throughout the year. How do I know? Because I have received all these items and more on a frequent basis.
You may think this is a con or I’m trying to get you to sign up for something but I’m not! So why are corporations giving away products and other great freebies? Well it’s the age old answer that in this highly aggressive and fast moving consumer culture we live in, companies need to make a point of difference to their loyal customers plus need to lure new customers to their product or service. By giving away freebies, if they have a superior product, brand loyalty is unlikely to keep an individual with a single brand. Giving away free stuff tests the customer’s loyalty to their current product. So basically it’s one big huge mother marketing ploy to get your business. And believe it or not, it works! Research has shown that often after consumers have been confronted by food demonstrators standing in the aisles of supermarkets giving away free samples will often pick up the product and put it in their shopping basket.
So how to do you go about getting free samples? Well one of the ways is to go to the official site of the company and see if there are any current promotions whether it sample giveaways or coupons that save you a lot of money. Another strategy is to find a website that gathers together all the best and legitimate freebies together so you don’t have to spend hours on the Internet searching. This is where sites like www.freestuff4free.com become extremely handy. Grabbing the most up to date freebies from around the Net which is updated daily, the searching has been done for you. All you have to do is go to their site and apply for all the free stuff that you’re interested in.
Not only do you get free stuff, you actually save money and reduce waste consumption. Think about it, if you try something in a small sample size that you didn’t spend any money on and you like it, you will purchase it in the future knowing that you’re actually going to use it. If you don’t like it, you will not have wasted any money on a full size product that you will use once and never use again. So it’s in both the consumer’s best interest and the company’s best interest to hand our free samples.
So what are you waiting for? Free samples await you!
More about FreeStuff4Free
FreeStuff4Free.com is a website that specialises in finding coupons, free samples and freebies. This site is visually compelling and easier to navigate than text based free sites. The site is updated daily and dead links removed regularly. There are no scams and all freebies are 100% legitimate.
10 Things in Life That Aren’t Fair — and What to Do About Them (Part 2 of 2)
Sep/090
“If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.”– Johnny Carson
In Part 1 of this series, I discussed some of the ways that life deals us a bum hand, and some of the ways we can deal with that. In this post, I continue the list, starting with some oddnesses about factors that seem to play as big a role, if not even bigger, as individual merit in determining or life success.
1. Most CEOs are tall.
90% of Fortune 500 CEOs are of above average height. Some 30% – compared with only about 4% in the general population – are 6’2” or taller. Since it’s highly unlikely that a random sample of 500 people would show this great a deviation from the national average, the only explanation is that tallness conveys qualities that are seen as “executive material” even when the tall person might lack those qualities or be merely humdrum. By extension, shorter-than-average people with incredible leadership skills might be passed over in exchange for less-stunning but taller candidates.
What to do about it: This is even tougher than appearance issues, since there’s no good way to increase your height (you can wear lifts, I suppose, but will always risk exposure). Again, confidence is key, and the handful of shorter-than-average CEOs out there (less that 3%) are distinguished by their confidence. Study the behavior of shorter CEOs like Jack Welch or Barry Diller. Think “tall” – be seen, make yourself heard. Shorter CEOs also tend to be those that work their way up in a company, so commit for the long haul; taller CEOs come from executive job searches, where they have less personal history and more “flash” in play. And, of course, you can become an entrepreneur – hopefully you wouldn’t replace yourself with someone taller!
2. People buy brands.
Brand loyalty is one of the major factors influencing people’s buying decisions. Part of this is “following the leader” – if I know the brand, it must be because people are talking about it, thus it must be good.” Part of it is packaging design. And part of it is comfort in previous knowledge – the brand you know and kind of like is a better bet than the one off-brand you don’t know and might love or hate.
What to do about it: Commit yourself to trying something new every so often – maybe every month, replace a favorite brand with a brand you don’t know and see how you like it. You pay a huge premium for branding, often at the expense of quality, so it’s worth it to shed a brand here and there. For durable purchases (as opposed to consumables like food), develop a systematic way of comparing your brand against the competitors – Apple (or Microsoft), Ford (or Chevy), Nike (or Adidas) might not always be the best way for you to go, even if you’ve had good experiences with them in the past.
3. People do, in fact, judge books by their covers.
It’s a publishing industry fact – book covers are what grab and hold attention long enough for a purchase to be made. If it were something about the content, you’d expect authors to have some say, but often they have no contractual right to even see the cover before it’s published, let alone approve or disapprove. (More often, authors can disapprove, but publishers reserve – and usually exercise – the right to ignore the author’s disapproval).
What to do about it: If you’re in the authoring game, let book cover designers do what they do best – they know their domain far better than you do. For buyers, check reviews – lots of handheld software allows you to access Amazon and other sites with reviews while you’re standing in the store. Also, get used to using your library – most libraries have online reservation systems that are nearly as effective as Amazon at getting your chosen books to you in a couple of days. That way, you minimize the risk of blowing money on books that turn out to be less than the cover promises.
4. Most people would rather not choose at all than choose between two equally good options.
This is decision paralysis of a sort – when presented with two equally good options, we freeze. Two options where one is clearly better we handle fine, but not where they are equally good, or for that matter, difficult to compare on the same criteria (the apples v. oranges dilemma).
What to do about it: The standard response to difficult decisions is to list pros and cons, but where things are more or less equal, or where pros and cons aren’t comparable, this isn’t helpful. A better option is to re-frame the decision – the think out a way of looking at the choices in a way that is comparable. One way to do that is to look at goals and objectives – what is the goal you hope to meet by choosing one or the other, and which one is better suited to that goal? This moves you past the immediate characteristics of the objects under consideration – that is, one tastes delicious, the other offers two hours of solid motion picture excitement, so if your goal is to have fun for as long as possible, you might spend your $10 on the movie and not the super-sundae.
5. The best ideas often get lost for lack of funding, competence, or experience.
The people who think up brilliant ideas aren’t always in a position to make them happen. They lack sales skills, people skills, marketing skills, or, quite often, just enough money to bring an innovation to market or the mainstream. Or a start-up gets bought out by a monopolistic corporation simply in order to quash their project.
What to do about it: If you’re in a position to do so, seek out start-ups without the skills to succeed and support them however you can. If you’re an idea person yourself, seek out people with the skills you lack – do not could on your idea to succeed for its greatness.
Well, that about covers it – as before, I’d love to hear what you think is unfair about life, and how you’ve dealt with unfairness in your own life. Let us know about it in the comments.
Dustin M. Wax is the project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He is also the creator of The Writer’s Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he’s not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of Don’t Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.
Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.
