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Ralph Johnson is the Head FOD. He cracks the whip over a merry band of internet marketers at FreeOfferDetective.com. They research "Free" Offer sites around the web. Then they write informative and (hopefully) entertaining articles about what to expect from these sites and what options internet bargain hunters may have on them.

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Categories of Free Offers

July 11th, 2009 • Related • Filed Under

 

Two From Column A

Free Offer sites are web locations where you can obtain incentive items such as laptops or major gift cards if you participate in a number of the presented offers from selected advertisers.

There are two types of offers on these sites: the risk free trial (RFT) and the outright sale, including subscriptions.

Risk Free Trial

As the name implies, the RFT is a way for you to try out a product for a trial period. For this trial you pay only the account start-up costs, usually a small bookkeeping fee, or the shipping and handling charges, or both. This is why Risk Free Trials are also known as “Free plus” offers, meaning Free Plus Shipping or Free Plus S&H. Most health and beauty offers are RFTs. At the expiration of the trial period, you become enrolled in a membership program that automatically sends you the product at regular intervals and for which you pay a special membership price. Memberships continue until cancelled.  

 

Outright Sale

Just what it says. These are plain old “buy this product” offers, and many are at reduced pricing. These offers include book clubs, DVD/movie clubs, and straight subscriptions such as satellite TV services, monitored alarm systems, web hosting deals, and the credit monitoring reports. These are all offers which declare the associated costs at the time of sale. In other words, you will know you need to buy X number of books/DVDs over the next 2 years and the prices start at $14.95, etc. Or, you know what the monthly fee for the satellite service will be and that you’ll have to purchase a dish antenna.

These are in contrast to the RFTs where the shipping charges vary depending upon where you live, and the post-trial membership fees are usually found in the offer’s fine print. Nothing wrong with that, certainly, but that is a distinction separating the two categories of offers.


Although acknowledged and explained by the researchers at FreeOfferDetective.com, such membership programs—and their costs—are NOT taken into account when considering the dollar offset between “free” and what the main incentive item will actually cost. The FOD review articles concentrate only on finding the cheapest way to qualify for the main incentive item, not on what ancillary costs may be incurred on the way.

Here’s wishing you the Best of Bargains,

Head FOD

FreeOfferDetective.com

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