Article in Wired about those free ipods
 

Unless you're extremely gullible, the promise of getting a free iPod from FreeiPods.com looks extremely dubious.

But surprisingly, the site appears to be legitimate. The program almost certainly isn't a dodgy pyramid scheme; it's a new form of online marketing supported by companies like eBay, AOL and Columbia House.

And while lots of happy customers are popping up all over the internet brandishing new iPods, analysts are skeptical of the economics.

Here's how it works: FreeiPods.com promises an iPod or a $250 gift certificate to anyone who signs up for various online promotions and persuades five other people to participate.

Subscribers are given a choice of 10 different offers, including a 45-day trial of AOL and a two-week trial of Ancestry.com's genealogy service. Typically, the offers are free and easily canceled.

Once the trials are over -- for both the main subscriber and the referrals -- the free iPod is dispatched.

"Of course I was skeptical, but I didn't see any harm in trying," said Collin Grady, 22, from Salem, Oregon, who received his free iPod earlier this month and wrote about it on his blog.

"They never once asked for a credit card number and I didn't have to pay shipping," he said. "I just told them where to send it.... All in all, a very painless process."

Indeed, some customers are so delighted that they've set up affiliate websites, called "conga lines," to persuade others the program isn't a swindle.

"So many people on the web think FreeiPods.com is a scam; I just wanted to prove them wrong," said John Sauer, a 19-year-old student at Boston's Berklee College of Music, who runs Free iPods and FlatScreens .com.

Another site, 17-year-old Tyler Derheim's FreeiPodGuide, features pictures of the delivery truck outside his house, his receipt and, of course, his new iPod.

FreeiPods is one of several websites run by Gratis Internet, a Washington, D.C., "customer acquisition" company owned by Peter Martin and Rob Jewell.

"I can definitely understand the skepticism," said Martin. "A lot of people believe there's no free lunch, but it's definitely not a scam. It's 100 percent legitimate. We're shipping (iPods) every day."

In a joint interview, Martin and Jewell denied the site is a pyramid scheme, like the myriad matrix schemes advertised on eBay, which also promise free iPods.

Instead, they explained, Gratis Internet is paid a bounty for sending potential customers to sites like AOL, eBay or RealNetworks.

"We're a marketing firm," said Jewell. "We're sending these people to our advertisers. We cringe when we hear 'pyramid' or 'scheme.' We're more closely associated with viral marketing, with the subservient chicken, than Amway."

They declined to specify the bounty, and said the firm doesn't deal directly with the companies involved. Rather, Gratis Internet is commissioned by third-party marketing agencies, such as San Francisco's Adteractive.

For the last four years, Gratis Internet has operated customer-acquisition programs through FreeCDs.com, FreeDVDs.com, FreeVideoGames.com and FreeCondoms.com.

The company has sent out more than $3 million worth of free merchandise, Martin said, including 5 million to 6 million condoms.

Since the launch of FreeiPods.com in June, the site has dispatched more than 2,500 iPods, Martin said, worth more than $1 million.

But in the last few weeks traffic has exploded. Martin claimed nearly 1 million people have recently enrolled in the program, though he said the majority are using phony names and/or addresses

Martin said about 200,000 are using "confirmed identities," and are in the process of receiving their free iPods. The process takes between six and eight weeks, Martin said. If all are redeemed, the company will be giving away $50 million worth of iPods.

Jewell insisted FreeiPods.com would be able to keep up with demand.

"Its really important people trust us and get their iPods," Jewell said. "We want people to get their iPods because it helps our legitimacy. We count on our users to validate us."

Diego Canoso, Adteractive's vice president of sales, said FreeiPods.com is a lawful and well-run customer-acquisition program.

"We've been working with these guys for more than three years," said Canoso. "They are very good at what they do."

Canoso also declined to specify the advertisers' bounties, but said they can range between $25 and $90, depending on the program and the kind of customer it attracts.

"The money we give these guys (Gratis Internet) is enough to fulfill the promise that the customers come in for," Canoso said.

Canoso said while $90 seems like a lot, it is peanuts compared to the millions spent on TV and magazine ads, which don't guarantee new customers.

"Companies like Columbia House (and) credit card companies, they're happy to pay for customers," Canoso said. "They're happy to send out iPods because they're getting customers in return. Capture is expensive, and they're paying after they've acquired the customer."

And while a lot of customers cancel after the free trial, enough don't to make it worthwhile, Canoso said.

Gary Stein, an analyst with Jupiter Research who follows online marketing, said he was skeptical of the program's economics.

"It seems too good to be true," he said. "You can imagine getting a free CD, but a free iPod is a really big break."

However, Stein said the program is lent some legitimacy by the involvement of Adteractive.

"Adteractive is reputable, without a doubt," Stein said. "It would be a lot more questionable if they were working on their own."

Stein said affiliate marketing has typically been associated with "bottom feeders," but has become more respectable, and profitable, since eBay started paying bounties for new, registered users.

"Affiliate marketing is really taking off," Stein said. "EBay has given it legitimacy.... There's definitely still scoundrels ... but there's tens of thousands of people involved. It's backyard entrepreneurial."

Adteractive's Canoso said FreeiPods.com is at the forefront of performance-based marketing.

"The model is beautiful," he said. "(The companies) are paying for a specific customer after acquiring the customer. It's not branding. It's not non-responsive advertising.... It's low-risk marketing. It's a very efficient system."

There is a record of a resolved complaint against Gratis Internet at the Washington, D.C., Better Business Bureau.

The complaint doesn't specify the grievance, or grievances, and the bureau's director said she couldn't elaborate. Martin and Jewell said they had no idea what the issue was. It was likely a minor "glitch," they said.

FreeiPods.com is certified by Truste, which means the site adheres to the organization's privacy standards. It does not mean the site can be trusted to send out free iPods.

AOL and Ancestry.com didn't respond to requests for comment. The Federal Trade Commission said it doesn't talk about individual companies unless the company is being prosecuted.


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so, on the advice of wired magazine, i signed up....and not to sound like a complete spammer, here is my referral code...

http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=8130498

the offer I did was the video professor cd for photoshop, it was very painless and only $6.95

call me a spammer, call me what you want, but if wired magazine says to do it, you can't go wrong

oh yeah, here is the link to the original article

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125...w=wn_tophead_2

haha a couple of my friends kept trying to get me to do it, kept telling them it was a scam

so maybe i guess i mite be wrong

fuck dude, i thought for sure it was something just to get people to sign up for shit...some crappy ponzi scheme....i guess I was wrong too

that company has given out over $3 million in merchandise, that is crazy shit

I would give it a try, but they only ship into the US.

This concept has been around for years. I used to heavily promote this concept in 99 which was basically a bunch of free affiliate offers that paid out cash to the surfer for trying them out. Obviously its evolved to bigger incentives. The main problem is that when you incentivize it to the degree of a free ipod you invite fraud or just basically a flood of junk signups by people with no interest who intend on cancelling any trial from the outset. What happens is after a couple months the advertisers have enough data to evaluate their ROI and discover that they aren't getting a good return. Once the advertisers dwindle, the quality of prize goes down and eventually it dies out till another marketer with advertisers and prizes appears on the scene.

What would be interesting is if someone could actually put together something like this for porn. Surfer agrees to a bunch of trials in exchange he gets a prize and has to refer his friends. Obviously sponsors would have to agree to the incentivized signups probably for a reduced payout to the marketer. Would only work I guess if the porn was good enough to hook the surfer past the trial.

Free AVSes do something very similar to it already... not a bad idea though :thumbsup

hmmm....you got me thinking now...

There's lots of variations to the concept. If you had a script that could let the surfer input his cc one time and it would sign him up to five different sponsor free trials at the same time, but make him have to go to each sponsor separately if he wants to cancel the trial. Send him a prize and hope that at least 3 of the trials stick, but I suspect you are inviting chargeback heaven. Nowadays, I don't think too many sponsors are willing to risk their chargeback % for a creative marketing experiment.

yeah, it would be chargeback hell...if only there was some way to avoid that.....and with chargebacks having to be held at such a low % now, no one would ever be up for that shit

Dam, US only.

These things can be mass produced pretty cheap in China :thumbsup

yeah its real, they make their money back from data mining the fuck out of you

ohyeah, when I signed up it was shitloads of info, then I got the free photoshop cd from that learning cd place...and it was $6.95 shipping...so I know they make some money from that too

but fuck it, i already have like 4 referrals from a few posts on the net and in here....so my ipod should be coming soon

In Australia every company seems to be running competitions where the prize is an ipod. I presume that Apple are shipping them out in bulk at special prices to build up brand awareness.

How long before everyone says "I'm over it" and gets sick of them? :)

i doubt anytime soon, the free xbox from sponsors went on forever, and you still see it pop up every once and a while...fact is, if your giving something away for free, there will always be takers

The trick is to get in FAST and get your ipod before they realize they're losing money and stop the program. :thumbsup

fucking bastards

haha, i seriously doubt they are losing any money...

they also do www.freeslatscreens.com
they have been doing this a while...and not only do they get money from the one offer you have to sign up for, but they probably sell the info you sign up with to 1000 sources for nice dollar amounts

rofl

oops

that was supposed to be www.freeflatscreens.com

just to keep you all updated..

so fart so good, the referrals are recorded in real time, so once someone completes the form, it updates on my end...
people are weary of filling it all out though, i have 15 referrals and only two have completed

everything can be mass produced cheap in china...LOL

anyone want to give it a whirl and help me out :)

i signed up for the aol with musicnet since it had the longest free trial period :)

http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=8178096

oh yea don't use your main email address, they spam the fuck out of you!

hey thread jacker....back the fuck up!

:1orglaugh

I'm getting 5 spam mail a day since I signed up

rofl, well, with something like this you have to come to expect that

I get redirected to some PS3-ad. I guess that's another way they make money, by redirecting non-US people to ads.

holy shit, this thread is 4 YEARS OLD....LOL

not really a surprise....

Interesting. The economics probably works because of scale. It probably costs several dollars at the most to manufacture ipods which these companies can make up in spam advertisements. But I guess it remains to be seen.

Edit: old thread.

It seems they're still offering this so maybe we can conclude that it's working.

Sooo... did you get the ipod after this many years?
WG

wanna make a bet?

ill take "no" for 50

i'll take no for 500$ :1orglaugh

awesome, more people to download iPod Porn :)

yeah, got it like 2 weeks after completing the shit, it has since failed and is collecting dust