Today I have a really great guest post from Steph who is the owner of the How To Live The Life You Want For Less UK blog. Steph is 19 years old and writes about things from her personal, first hand experience. She solely believes that first hand experience is the only way you can write about something with complete honesty, so you can guarantee she won’t write about something unless she’s tried and tested it first! You can also find her on Facebook. Over to Steph…
I’m sure that everyone somewhere wants to be able to save money on their everyday expenses. Some do it with extreme couponing, some use referrals to get money off of their next order, and sometimes their friends first order as well. Some however, like to trawl the internet for all of the latest freebies. Personally, I like to do all three, but finding freebies are my favourite because normally, if you’re careful about it, you don’t need to spend anything to get them.
The problem with most people when looking for freebies however, is that they will only do a google search and look on websites that promote the latest freebies here in the UK. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always allow you to find the best freebies out there and, when you want to be getting any freebies, good or bad, you have to remember that being able to get your hands on a free product is a privilege, and not a right. With my freebie hunt I like to utilise apps as well as websites, catalogues that I pick up in store (you can also get some great money off coupons) and, I also write to companies asking for freebies in return for product reviews. An overview of these ways to get freebies are as follows:
Websites
Freebie websites are easy to find and tend to have the most up to date information on sample giveaways, chances to get free products by testing them and so on. Simply searching ‘Freebies UK’ in google brings up a mountain of results that can often overwhelm the person if they are new to freebie hunting. However, websites also have several big problems, one being that you can get into a circle of applying for freebies you wont use for example, there’s no point in asking for that free sample of baby food if you don’t have a baby, or that car shampoo if you don’t have a car to wash. 2. Unfortunately, sometimes some people will take advantage of freebie hunters and scam those trying to find freebies by asking for your phone number in a survey and then sending you text messages that cost you, the bill payer. When searching online, I like to have strict rules about what freebies I will get and ones that I won’t. I also have a rule that if there are surveys which don’t allow me to say ‘not interested’ on the questions and on the same survey, want my number to win a competition when applying for freebies, I usually skip.
Apps
I love apps! If you’re on o2 you NEED to download o2 Priority (note from Emma, you can actually use the o2 Priority app without being a customer), I cannot reiterate this enough to people! Things I have got from my lovely app include but are not limited to: Coffee, food, gifts, chocolate, drinks (currently a 500ml Nuva water from boots is free) plus, full sized toiletries, wrapping paper, house moving/storage boxes and packaging, clothing (earlier this year, I picked up a free England Rugby shirt) and more. I could be here all day listing all of the freebies I have bagged from just one app! I also have Unidays ID (a great app for students!) which has also gotten me some freebies from time to time, as well as lots of student discounts! Student Beans is another good app for students also!
Catalogues
You cannot go wrong with this! Boots, Waitrose, Superdrug and others have free catalogues that you can pick up and at the back there is normally a whole page or two of coupons! From time to time, these have normally included a freebie of some sort, I’ve managed to bag a free eye test in a boots one before!
Writing to Companies
This always works a treat and is something I’m learning to do more often. Writing to companies to ask for a freebie in return for an honest review of their product is a great way to build business-customer relationships. If you blog like me, then you can take this further and offer a review of the product on your blog so that your viewers can read a honest review about the product. Many people don’t think of this one but it works a treat, especially when the company sends out a full sized product!
I know I didn’t write this one above because I wanted to give you all a little extra way of getting so good quality freebies! Many of us have friends involved in direct sales/network marketing/MLM. A few of my friends that are like play games in their groups or on their profile, where you all say a word and then the last person to say that word before the host says the other word wins a free product. This has worked for me loads and I’ve managed to bag some great products without paying a penny!
The other good thing about freebies is that you’ll often get a couple of vouchers with the samples which always helps you to stretch your budget that little bit further. Doing all of these will benefit you hugely and, like me when I first started realising that there is more to freebie hunting than browsing online, you’ll be able to start saving massive amounts of money each year
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