Yet another facebook freebie – sign up for the Visa Business Network (it’s a facebook application) and have a $100 facebook advertising voucher sent directly to your inbox!

I haven’t tried affiliate marketing yet but this seems like a great opportunity to get my feet wet. It could make me some cash, or it could be a bust. Basically what I’ll try to do is find a good program that I can promote on facebook to a target audience, and attempt to make more than the cost ($100) back. The good news is that since the voucher is free, there’s really no risk – I wont actually have to spend anything!

If anyone has some programs they’d like to recommend shoot me a comment. If you have a referral ID I’ll sign up under it if I decide to give your program a spin. And of course, I’ll document the whole process on the Spiffy Owl if anyone else would like to try it out!

Have facebook? Then you’ll want to jump at this chance to win $200. I did, and won, and got the cheque in the mail this morning!

This contest is running every week until December 21st, and unfortunately for the company (and fortunately for you!) there is almost no interest in this contest. Zip. Nada. Zero. None. The week where I entered, I was only competing against one other person. The odds of winning are pretty freakin’ good.

Here’s what you need to do: head on over to the Sprout website and download their program. I checked it over and it looks clean from any viruses or trojans. Once you’ve signed up, start using the Sprout reader – basically what you need to do is find really WEIRD news stories. Once you have something good, click the Show Location button at the bottom, and copy the URL and headline of the article.

Then, simply log on to facebook, and post both in this discussion board. You can enter as many times as you want so keep on surfing until you find something juicy! The contest closes every Sunday at 9:00pm. As of this week, I only see one person entering! Good luck!

Here are a couple of quick thoughts about Sprout. Sadly, despite their (failing) contest efforts, I really despise their program. Clicking the ‘happy’ and ‘sad’ leaves is supposed to help narrow down the types of stories that you enjoy reading, however it’s riddled with bugs and frequently gives me stories that I’ve ‘sad-leafed’ over and over again. Many of the pages it spits out aren’t even news stories, or in other languages. And most of the news stories it spits out aren’t interesting or weird or funny. When your program can’t do the one thing it’s supposed to do well – WELL – take it back to the drawing board!

Perhaps its most heinous crime is hijacking my choice of web browser. That’s right, Sprout is a stand-alone program, with it’s own built-in browser. One that is painstakingly slow, and frankly, kind of ugly. I see what Sprout was trying to do here, but they should take a leaf (hah!) from StumbleUpon. Don’t develop a stand-alone program, try a Firefox extension, a toolbar, something that lets the user control their browser when surfing the net.

I’ve won Sprout’s contest but that’s not enough to sway me to use a flawed program. I’ve uninstalled it this morning, but wish Sprout the best of luck in developing something that works!

Remember when I taught you how to milk the internet cow for free junk?

Well, I’ve decided to run a little experiment. Make a list of offers that I’ve applied for, wait a couple of weeks, then see which ones have followed through.

They were all discovered on RedFlagDeals – head on over if you’d like to give a go at this too!

SkullScrews Earplugs
I’m not a distributor and I don’t own a company. I don’t have employees who are in danger of losing their hearing. But I am a third-year Uni student who needs peace and quiet when I study, so free fruity-coloured earplugs sounds delicious.

Free Alpine Swag
This mysterious offer doesn’t actually tell you what you will be receiving after you fill out the survey for free swag. I’m guessing they probably change up the items based on stock.
You’ll need an Alpine UPC code. Here are two: 776029701623, 776029701173.

Free Ocean Spray 2009 Recipie Calendar
The calendar hanging on my wall has been perpetually stuck on December 2007. I think it’s about time for an upgrade.

Free Head and Shoulders Sample Pack
Free Head and Shoulders mini shampoo and conditioner bottles. Good for travelling so you don’t need to swipe the little bottles from Hotel rooms.

Free Dove Body Wash
The process is a little convoluted – you have to sign up on this site to get a coupon to use on another site, but the body wash you receive is the real deal – regular sized, and not a tiny trial sample.

Free Nestle Carnation Breakfast
Short of harassing your local soup kitchen, there’s another way to get free food.

Free Fragrance Samples
I actually can’t stand it when people wear scents, it makes me gag. But now I can gag whever I want to by opening up my free Exclamation sample fragrance bottle thing.

Give these offers a try if you’d like! They are all 100% FREE.

That’s right! I received my cheque from Screenscape just yesterday, sweet deal.

One of the staff actually told me they would only be sent out once a month, and that the November cheques would be mailed today, so either they made an exception for me or decided to send them out early. If it’s the latter, I hope they change their payout scheme at least to once every two weeks – if they can approve poster submissions on the weekend, they should be able to fill out cheques more often than once a month!

At any rate, I’m $150 richer, and pretty pumped that I’ve covered a good portion of my holiday shopping. Complete review of the ScreenScape program coming soon.

I love free stuff. And I love getting mail. So while getting a parcel addressed to YOU is exciting enough, getting a parcel containing FREE STUFF is even better, to the third power.

A friend of mine recently told me about the Freebies section of RedFlagDeals.com. He’s been checking there every couple of days for the past year or so for free stuff. Apparently he’s amassed a pile of glorious junk, containing Mach3 razors, boxes full of Biology DVDs, cases of cereal, tampons, and much more. I want stuff too.

The great thing about forums is that they serve as a communication tool for the general public. Rows upon rows of freebie threads are posted over at RedFlagDeals, but you can easily weed out the gold from the rubble by simply reading what people have to say. If lots of people have reported receiving their free stuff, that’s obviously a good sign.

Spam Email
If you don’t have one already, you should get a new email solely for use on the internet. That way you won’t clog up your regular, important email address with confirmations, notifications, newsletters, spam, etc. I highly recommend signing up for a GMail account. This puppy can hold a ridiculous amount of storage space (7265MB and counting) and can easily sort the spam from the not-as-spammy emails.

A Neat Trick
Some forms (accidentally) let you sign up multiple times for the same offer. You can easily backspace and change you name, but if they request unique email addresses as well you don’t need to open up another GMail account. Simply add a period somewhere in the letters before the @ symbol (so instead of thisisatest@gmail.com, use this.isatest@gmail.com) – you’ll still receive email, but the form will consider it a different address. Hurrah!
As far as I know, this is something that may not work with other email providers, but I know it works in GMail.

Auto-Fill
Next you’ll need a way to semi-automate the sign-up process for your free junk. You need an auto fill program installed in your browser – you enter your information once, then it detects forms on webpages and automatically fills them in with a click of your mouse. This saves a copious amount of time and is indispensible if you plan on signing up for dozens of free offers.
I highly recommend downloading the Google Toolbar (yes I am a Google slave) which comes equipped with the AutoFill extension.
Now simply go to your AutoFill settings, add in your name (fake names work!), your address (you’ll need your real one so you can actually receive mail), and the ‘spam email’ account you’ve just created.

The Hunt
Now that you’re equipped to apply for free stuff, you need to find them! I’ll be blogging about great places to find free offers as I discover them, but if you live in Canada the RedFlagDeals forum is a good place to start.

Good luck, and happy hunting!