Riyonuk-
A free____.com (aka 'freebie') website works by offering a coveted item to you the consumer free of charge, with participation in their program.
For most companies, there are two types of "programs" :
1. Referral Based
2. DIY (do it yourself)
In a referral based program, you sign up with the specified free website normally by giving them your information, and are then shown multiple "offers" to have people you know (aka your referrals) do. These offers range from free or paid trials on products or services, credit card offers, or buying certain items. You are then tasked with finding a certain number of people to do these offers before you can then earn your gift. The number of people you have to find is dependant on the price of your gift, so if you are trying to get a free PS3 you will have to get more referrals to complete offers than say for a Wii.
A working example of this would be the following:
sign up for freeCAGGIFTS.com to recieve a nintendo wii. Go out and get 5 other people (friends, family,etc) to complete 1 offer each on the corresponding offer pages found on the website. Wait for all offers to tell freeCAGGIFTS.com that your referrals have completed the necessary offers needed, and recieve your free gift.
On Do-it-yourself (or DIY) sites, the process works exactly the same except you are the one completing the offers, and there are no referrals involoved.
Now, a few things to note here:
1. most if not all offers found on these sites will only allow you to complete an offer once (or sometimes once every six months), so if you get gung-ho about doing this, don't think you can sign up for netflix 6 times and get your gift; it doesn't work that way.
2. These freebie sites stay in business by getting paid by the offer sites for your referral, so attempts at offer fraud is frowned upon. Most of these sites have strict rules concerning offer fraud and will DQ your account, so be sure to read all the terms and conditions before investing your time or money into the pursuit of free swag.
As for the "how are they scams" question, I think the anwser is that while some may be, if you follow the terms listed on the site, you will most likely recieve the gift you are after. Taking the extra time to research the specific site you are looking at will go a long way to tell you whether or not they are legitimate, and will save you time and money in the long run. In other words, when it comes to this kind of stuff, look before you leap.
And with that, I think I'll stop. There are a TON of other things you can learn about freebie sites, but the above is just a little overview to get you started. If you want to learn more about stuff like this, check out
www.joshclark.com. Its a free forum filled with info about freebie sites and people to anwser your questions.
Good luck,
-V
