techreferralguide.com

Overview

Welcome

Welcome to techreferralguide.com. Your guide to "free" technology on the web! Please take some time reading over this site to gain an understanding of how it all works. You can use the tabs at the top of screen to move backwards and forwards in the guide.

Free technology using the referral system may seem like a scam, but in fact it is not. It is far from it! The company actually makes a lot of money from the referral process. Basically, to start out, the user has to sign up to a website that offers such a free item using their e-mail address. They then have to complete an offer, which is on an external sponsor website, by signing up to that website also. So does it cost money to complete a referral offer? Well, there are many different types of referral offers out there. Some cost only £5 (and everything is secure when you give your card details over the Internet, of course), but there are some that are free. For example, the Lovefilm trial referral offer requires you to sign up to a free trial but not pay anything. All you do is simply cancel the trial near the end of your free month and you have got in with a free referral. I actually did this myself, and it works.

Read on to see how everything works, and how the company in question benefits from the advertising and sponsor profit, how the user benefits from actually receiving the item, and how the profit that the company makes is significant enough to merit doing this.

How it works

So, how does it all work?

Well, first and foremost, this "referral system" is a very effective marketing tool. Take a look at the diagram below to see the usual method of getting one of these "free" items.

 

 

 

The image above is a basic graphical flow diagram of how the process works. There are three major steps that you have to go through in order to receive an item from a "freebie" site.

Step 1: You sign up to a freebie website depending on what item you would like to receive. This is obviously the easy part, because all you need to do is input your e-mail address and create a password. You will then be able to log on any time with your e-mail and password.

Step 2: You choose the item that you want to receive by choosing it from a drop down list or by clicking a checkbox. You will then need to do something called "completing an offer". Each freebie site has a large list of offers and you need to choose one and complete it in order to start. To "complete" an offer, the freebie site will have a list of offers available with little pieces of text underneath them explaining what you need to do to complete an offer like "deposit £5 and play through the entire amount to complete this offer". In this case, all you would need to do is exactly as it says. Create an account on the external site, deposit £5, bet it through any means, and that's your offer completed! That is it!

Step 3: Once you have completed your offer, the company in question makes money (albeit small in comparison to the free product, many people choose to continue using the company), and you are given a link (like http://www.blabla.com/27398). You need to give this link to your friends who, on their own computers at home, click on it, sign up and complete an offer like you have done. This is called a referral. Once you have the required number of friends referred, the company ships you your free item!

So, is it really worth paying out that much for a company just to get people to try your product? Well, it only works if some of the people stay with the company, which they do. The true entrepreneurs who invented this scheme claim the advertisers are very happy with the results.

The tried and tested methods of advertising are no longer working as well as they used to. People are watching fewer and fewer ads on their television and when searching on Google using the Internet. Around only 30% of British & American people believe the claims made in advertisements, and so it is getting harder and harder for companies to reach the customers; which is why they are prepared to pay them.

At the end of the day, as long as you have five friends who are willing to complete an offer (and they choose the offer where they don't have to pay, like the LoveFilm free trial), you willget an iPod. End of story.

To see how you can get one and see screenshots of this in action, choose the Step-By-Step tab at the top of the screen!

 

Step-By-Step

Your Step-By-Step Guide

So, you understand the process that you go through to claim your free item, and want to go for it. Well, this is a step by step of how you can do it without any problems, risk free. These are basically the steps that I myself took, and many of my friends have taken, in the right order. I will break everything down into steps along with a few screenshots.

Nextgengiveaway is a website on the giveaway network that offers a free XBOX 360, Playstation 3 or Nintendo Wii in exchange for completing an offer and having your friends do the same. This is the website I will be taking screenshots of for this guide which you can click to see a full-sized version of.

Step 1 - Joining the freebie website

This is the simple part. You need to join the nextgen website and choose the free item you would like to receive. In this case, I have chosen NextGenGiveaway. The site is well known and it's owner is a frequent visitor of community sites where people work together to help get each other referrals. CLICK HERE and you will arrive at the site shown in the screenshot below, or go to: http://NextGen.Giveaway.co.uk/index.php?referral=238066.

Click above to see the image full-size.

There are two things to note on this page. Firstly, you can choose the item you would like to receive by choosing the corresponding radio button (checkbox) in the top right of the screen. Secondly, the bright orange box near the bottom right of the page is where you input your e-mail address. When asked, input any other details like your address so the company know where to send the item when you have completed your offer.

Step 2 - Taking a look at the offers

Up to now, you should have registered and gained access to the NextGen Giveaway website. That's the easy bit done! Have a look around the site, see how it works. It's pretty simple; there are hardly any navigation buttons and there are only a few account related links at the top right of the screen which allow you to change your password or address if you like.

Once you have taken a little look around the NextGen site, click the link near the top right of the screen that says "Complete an Offer". The screenshot below shows this link along with the beginning of a list of offers which you will see.

Click above to see the image full-size.

On this page, you can see all the offers that the company is offering in order for you have done your referral. But don't click anything yet! There are some offers that are better than others, some which take a long time, and some which are almost instant. Basically, the Gaming/Gambling offers are the fastest.

If you have never done a lovefilm trial at your house, then you can do this if you want. I actually did the free trial months before I stumbled luckily onto freebie sites and it's really simple. You can get some DVD's sent to your house, send them back and this is a free trial so what you do is cancel before the end of the free trial. That way, you will have paid nothing. The only downside to his is that it will take two weeks for your offer to be completed.

One of the easiest offers to complete is the Coral offer. It's very popular, and costs only £5. Now, you have to be aware that some sites like this require you to be 18 or over. Well ignore that, because all you do is input a different date of birth during registration and you're set! You also have to have a credit or debit card to deposit your £5 with. This shouldn't be a problem, as you can get a debit card (like a Visa Electron from Abbey) for free from the age of 16. Also, during all transactions you will notice a little lock in the top right corner of your browser. This means that all transactions are secure. So you have no need to be worried or even wary about your details; everything is safe and secure.

[At the very end of this guide, I include an e-mail I sent to Coral to have my details removed from their databases, and their satisfactory reply. Don't worry, I have covered every base!].

Step 3 - The Coral Offer

So, for this guide, we are going to complete the Coral offer. It's the fastest to get a "green" or referral. You can find the coral offer link by scrolling down the page offers page on Nextgengiveaway and clicking anywhere in the box. See the screenshot below for the box that you should be clicking in.

Click above to see the image full-size.

Once you have clicked anywhere in the box, as shown in the above screenshot, a completely new window should pop up. This is the Coral website, and this is the website that you need to complete your offer with.

First and foremost, you need to sign up to Coral. You can do this by clicking the signup button. Take a look at the screenshot below. It's pretty obvious where you need to click, but I have labeled it any way.

Click above to see the image full-size.

Once you have clicked this link, another window will popup where you can register your information. The screenshot below shows this window as it will appear on your screen.

Click above to see the image full-size.

Once you have filled in all your details, chosen a username and password and put your date of birth in to show yourself as over 18, click the proceed button in the bottom right of the screen. This will lead you to the main Coral page where you can place your bet and therefore complete your offer! The screenshot below shows a version of Coral's main page.

Click above to see the image full-size.

Now, after this you need to locate the part of the site that allows you to deposit money. This might be in your My Account section of the site. As stated earlier, I sent an e-mail asking the company to remove all my details from their database and as a result I can no longer access the website and provide a screenshot. But the area is obviously there. Once you have found the place that allows you to deposit money into your online account, you put in your card details and choose the amount. In this case, you only want to pay £5 so be sure to put only the number 5 in the box. Once you have clicked accept/okay and the money goes onto your account, you can then go ahead and bet your £5 to complete the offer.

Bet your money on anything like a horse race. It's easy enough to find out how by viewing a horse race and look for the word "bet". Once you have bet your money and spent all £5, simply log out and wait a while for your NextGenGiveaway account to be updated.

Step 4 - Offer Completion

Now that you have completed an offer, you have done your part of the deal. After a few hours or maybe a day or two, you can come back and check on your NextGenGiveaway account. Once the company has received confirmation that you have bet through your £5, your account page will update to show this. See the following screenshot.

Click above to see the image full-size.

Step 5 - Friend Referral

This is the point that you get your friends to do the same. With NextGenGiveaway, this is really simple. Just click on the Account Status link near the top centre of the page and you will be taken to the offer referral / account status screen. Take a look at the screenshot below.

Click above to see the image full-size.

So, we haven't referred anyone yet. You need to refer some other friends in order to get your product, who will need to do the same as you have just done. In fact, they can even use this guide to do so! Click the "refer friends" link at the top of the screen to view your referral link. But make sure they use your referral link, not mine: See the screenshot below.

Click above to see the image full-size.

So, you need to give this out to your friends, and then tell them about this guide which explains it all. I'll use my friend Matt Timmins, a friend from College.

Matt, you complete drunk!

Matt has decided to sign up under VC Bet instead of Coral, because he's awkward. My account page now shows that he has signed up under my referral. You can check any time when someone has done a referral for you. See the screenshot below.

Click above to see the image full-size.

So Matt needs to follow this site and do exactly the same. Your friends need to follow this site and do exactly the same. Your friend will need to type or copy/paste your referral link which you will give to them into their browser and sign up just like you did. Once you have your friends do this, your PS3 is shipped automatically once you get enough referrals!

Step 5 - Relax, and wait!

That's it! Once you have got all your friends to complete the offer, you're sorted. Your console will be sent to your address that you have registered under the My Account section of the website at the end of the month, and you will receive confirmation and shipping dates in your inbox. Oh, and make sure you check your junk mail box because sometimes they might go into there!

After you complete the steps above, your account is submitted for review, to make sure you didn't cheat the system, and very soon it will then say your account has passed review and you can have your Playstation 3 shipped (or whatever product you chose). Your address will be confirmed and your item will be shipped.

Step 6 - Optional E-mail step

I sent an e-mail to Coral once I had completed the offer. The e-mail was as follows:

"I do not want to get myself addicted to online gambling. Please could your remove all my personal details from your servers/databases/records including, but not limited to, my name, address, contact details and credit/debit card details. If there are any problems, or I need to get a third party involved, then please contact me by e-mail and I will be happy to comply. Thanks very much."

The reply I received was this simple e-mail:

"Dear James, thank you for your e-mail. All your details have been removed from our records. Thank you for using Coral."

This can also be verified because I am actually not able to log into any account or create an account with Coral anymore: which is the reason for a lack of betting screenshots before.

Final Thoughts

Please remember the following important points when getting your "free" referral item:

• The offers are strictly one offer per household. The companies have strict methods of checking and enforcing this rule. So, don't log into the site to check your referrals on any other computer or let anyone sign up on your computer.
• Referral verifications can take up to 5 days to come through, after which you should create a support ticket to have it done manually.
• Check out Exceem, a free community website where people come together with thoughts and advice on how to complete offers, which are the best etc.