Layout of the Typical Free Offer Site

A Shopping Drama in Three Acts 

Most free offer (FO) sites present their wares in three stages:

• The Preliminaries
• The “Money Pages”
• The Bonus Round 

Act One – Introduction

The preliminaries include the front page display of the “headliner” incentive item which attracted your attention in the first place.  You will receive this item for free if you qualify for it by participating in a required number of ad/offer banners on the three selection pages that follow.  Said participation will not be free, which is a bone of contention for the uninitiated who don’t realize that the offer of the free incentive item is being made by the web site owner, NOT by their individual clients who rent space on that web site to advertise their products for sale. 

Then comes the registration form where you provide an email address and your personal demographic information. After registering, you will proceed through several “survey” pages where you may optionally fill out forms that allow you to garner some side benefits.  These may be specific product brand information or some small giveaway item.  When you arrive at these pages, you will find the entry fields already pre-populated with your personal information and, whether you choose to participate in the survey or not, you will likely receive follow-up e-mails and perhaps even correspondence to your registered address. 

Act Two – Where the Rubber Meets the Road

The “money pages” are the focal point of the free offer site and will display a cornucopia of ad/offer banners from the individual brand name companies doing the advertizing on the FO site.  Over the three silver/gold/platinum selection pages there may be as many as 150 ad banners from which to choose.  As mentioned earlier, your choices on these pages will cost money.  And, you must make a specified number of choices per page—usually 2 on each of the first two pages and approximately 9 choices on the last page. 

Act Three – Free Offer Redux

It is becoming increasingly common for free offer sites to provide another complete set of selection pages for you to obtain another incentive giveaway item.  These bonus pages, which are not present on all FO sites, allow you to choose from a list of offered items, then repeat the selection process over another set of silver/gold/platinum pages. 

You will find that although incentive items offered by individual FO sites vary in type and value, the three-part layout of their web pages seem to be a fairly standard design.