In order to find safe and legitimate freebies and giveaways online, you need to know where to look.  Anyone can type 'freebie' into a search engine, and find thousands of 'free offers' that promise free XBox 360s, Wiis, and PS3s.  They will find thousands of offers of free dinners at the best restaurants, free airline tickets, free screensavers, free software packages, and more.  If a person signs up for everything they see, they are going to waste their time, get more spam mail than they can read, and probably get little to nothing in the mail.  On the other hand, if you are looking in the right place, you will often find free samples of cleaning products, bath and body products, advertising freebies (pens, frisbees, sometimes clothing, etc.), free food samples, and some legitimate software offers.  You may find better stuff, but it is unlikely going to be a Free XBox!

The key between finding legitimate freebies is based on where you are looking!  There are hundreds of websites out there that advertise boldly where to find free stuff, but they are often just as trashy as the fake offers they review.

This Hub is primarily going to discuss the 'types' of free offers online (yes, there are a number of them), and it will focus on two Websites where you can you get some pretty nifty things for free (or very cheap).  These offers may be for trial sized items, full sized items, completely free, free after a mail-in rebate, or just really cheap. 

Though most, if not all of these offers will take some sort of time to commitment to get (even if that is just filling out a form or two online, or filling out a survey). So it is up to you to determine if such offers are really worth it, and I will help you make that choice. And on to the types of freebies out there.

• Free After Rebate: Some could argue that these offers aren't really free, especially because most Mail-in rebates can take 4-8 weeks to be processed. Well, the nice things about these offers is that if you need them and they are something you were planning on purchasing anyway, then you are going to pretty much only pay whatever the interest on your card is while you wait for the rebate.
• Free: These are items or trial-sized offers that are legitimately free. You fill out an online form, wait for 2-8 weeks (or longer) and receieve your little package in the mail after you have forgotten about ever filling out the form. It's almost like Christmas!
• Frequent Buyer Programs: These are not just cards that you swipe at your grocery store or Best Buy™. Think of the ever-popular Coke™ points. Both of these plans offer regular customers free products after buying products for a certain amount of time, or a certain amount of merchandise.
• Free After Shipping: This is a grey area. Be careful how much you are paying for shipping and handling, because it could potentialy worth more than the "freebie" that you are getting. You can find good deals this way, just make sure you know that the S&H will be cheaper than just buying the item yourself.
• Super Cheap Stuff!: I can give the same warning here as I did about items that are free after shipping. Make sure that the price is really worth it. More importantly, make sure that the stuff you are getting + shipping and handling is worth what you are getting. Just like something that is free after shipping, you can find some legitimately great deals in this way!

 Thank you for reminding me of that fact.  I promise I was getting to it.

www.FatWallet.com

The primary purpose of this website is to have you purchase products from their online affiliates, and they will give you a certain percentage of your purchase back (usually a percentage in the single digits).  They also offer an RSS feed of super cheap or free items that their users have found on the Internet.  The best feature of this site is the forums, where you have dozens of people searching for deals in several different categories, including a Freebie category.

www.SlickDeals.net

This is a website with a similar business model than FatWallet (or perhaps vice versa).  Again, in SlickDeal's case, the same basic principal holds true.  Their main site with the best deals they have found, and their forum on Freebies are really the best features of this site.  They don't have a similar program where you can buy things online, and get cash back, but it is equally as robust of a community.

Hey, I like freebies, but I also like great prices on stuff that I need or want!

Ok, ok. You have talked me into it. I fill mention some of the websites I have found in my web crawling days where I can find some great loot for cheap!

• woot.com - This site offers one item a day, and only one item a day. The items that they offer range from consumer electronics, to small appliances, to "bags of crap". The price is usually great, and you can check their forums for reviews of their current offering. The current community is complaining of consistantly worse quality. I still love them!
• Buy.com - They sell everything - and often for prices cheaper than most places.
• Ben's Barigains - Similar to Slick Deals and Fat Wallet.  Not as good of a site, though.  I haven't had too much experience with their Freebies forum, otherwise I would list them as a good site to try.  The Front Page itself seems a little sloppy, enter at your own risk.

• If something is listed as free, don't give them your credit card number.
• Set up an email address for spam mail. I would suggest Gmail, as I have used them for years, never deleted a thing, and am still filling up my inbox! :)
• If it is something for new babies, pregnant mothers, or people with medical conditions (like Diabetes), pass on it. Someone who really needs it should get these types of things.
• Use a web browser like Firefox that will automatically fill in forms for you. This will save you a TON of time in filling out your address.
• Don't order it if you have no use for it. This is a waste of your time, and the company's money.
• You will probably never win a 'contest' you see online, I wouldn't bother taking the time to fill something like that out if I were you - YMMV.