Freebies?! Word of Mouth?! PinchME, BzzAgent, Influenster, Crowdtap

I’ve randomly scoured freebie boards to find samples and random junk (ok, not always) to get sent my way. What can I say? I love getting mail and the random surprise! Problem is, I can never remember what I signed up for, whether or not I got it, or if it was in fact junk or amazing.

I’d kind of laid off for a while. But this year I finally had a decent amount of cash to make for a decent amount of Christmas shopping–I’d been a little more low budget the last few years, so it was time to splurge. I downloaded some apps to help out with managing Black Friday deals, and I was off.

Well, one of those apps had some other stuff, including a freebie section on their forums. So I was hooked again. After a few coffee samples, lotions, and who knows how many 2014 calendars, I stumbled across PinchMe.

It’s new, and I figured why not!? Basically, sign up, snag products when they go up, try them (shipped free), and fill out a survey. I can handle this!

Signed up, filled out my profile, and managed to snag my first box of goodies.

• A Wild Ophelia Beef Jerky chocolate bar – OK, I love chocolate, but the veg in my won’t let me eat the jerky, so that one is for the BF, who likes both of those (though, not sure if together is what he had in mind).
• Suave Skin Solutions Advanced Therapy Body Lotion with Cocoa Butter & Shea – Winter and dry skin are here. I’m game.
• Gevalia Mocha Latte – Still loving chocolate, and coffee is a combo I can live with. Also just got a Keurig, so interested in seeing how it does anything other than regular coffee.

Just got these the other week. To sum things up, chocolate was gross, lotion was so so, coffee was delicious!

Samples supposedly go up every other Tuesday at noon (eastern!). And I guess you normally have to wait until your previous order has arrived and been reviewed before you can get a new box. But for the holidays, they put up another sample set, so this afternoon, I managed to scoop up another three items out of four available. The fourth being diaper rash cream, so I suppose no need for that on my end. So I’ve got another box on the way, so we’ll see what happens there…

But this just got me started! From here, I found Bzzagent, Influenster, Crowdtap, and Smiley360.

Within a week, I got my first Bzzagent campaign, and my samples arrived last week. What did I get? Cottonelle^® Toilet Paper together with Cottonelle^® Fresh Care^™ Flushable Cleansing Cloths. I gave them a so so review, just not totally for me. But even with a mostly negative review, I got high marks! I still have a few actions to finish, but I’ve gotten my score up to 6.3/10 so far! (higher score = more campaigns).

I’m in my first Smiley360 Mission, but waiting on samples to arrive. Emergen-C. I had this stuff years back when someone claimed it was a hangover cure. Now, I was feeling woozy as is, so it didn’t go over all that well. Let’s see how it stacks up when I’m feeling a little less under the weather. OH, there’s also a starter mission for just joining. So if anyone would be kind enough to click this link: http://smiley360.com/2685686.cfm You’d be helping me earn “smiles”!

Influenster. Nothing really here yet. Just filling out reviews (which is always fun). My scores don’t seem to update, so not sure how this one is working out.

Crowdtap. So far this one seems like a lot of work with little gain. I joined late in the month, though, so who knows. You earn points for answering questions or uploading pics/screens, commenting on things, etc. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, though! Still kinda fun so far…

Since I initially started writing this up, I also found the L’Oreal USA Consumer Participation program (waiting on my ID), swaggable (another product eval site?), and Paidviewpoint (cash for surveys? Yes please! But be honest, they test you!!).

My goal with this blog is to keep updated on the products I receive, my thoughts on them, and my interest in these sites.

If anyone out there reading needs or wants an invite, let me know! We can help each other out!