Viral marketing is a very powerful tool. For well over a decade the music and video game industries has used it to advertise their products. Just think for a second how you heard about the latest video games, I’m betting for the most part it was just word of mouth, from your friends, on internet forums, magazines, and gaming websites.

But these aren’t the only ways of using viral marketing; once of the lesser known applications is referral schemes, the likes of which can be seen in any Google search along the lines of “free PS3”.

The freebie scene, as it’s known among its users, has been around for a while, but is shrouded in much scepticism. This is largely due to various people and organisations trying to take advantage of it, in often scrupulous ways.

So what is this freebie scene, and how does it work?

Well, referral schemes make promises of getting free gadgets, such as free iPods, PS3s and iPhone 3Gs; the kind of offer anyone would take up, if they could be sure it was genuine. It’s fairly easy to just shrug it off, as many did initially, labelling it the “free iPod scam”, but the scepticism is starting to subside.

This is largely due communities like the eXceem community, on which people post pictures of the free gifts they’ve got through these referral schemes.

But how can they possibly afford to send these gifts out and still make a profit? It’s actually quite simple, the system works because when you sign up, to be able eligible to get your free gift, you complete an offer with one of their sponsors. There are many offers available, including a free trial from LoveFilm, and various other offers with gambling websites, the post office, sky, and others. A lot of people are put off at this point, because to complete an offer, you need to give away credit card details. But look at the companies with which you can complete an offer and you’ll see that they’re all reputable companies, so really it’s no different from buying from amazon or using paypal. In the case of the free LoveFilm trial, you only need a credit card for verification purposes.

After completing this offer, you get some friends to do the same. The number of referrals you need varies depending on your selected gift, but for each friend you refer, the sponsoring company pays the referral site a fee for getting them a prospective customer. This fee varies in amount, but it’s usually around £30. So if you refer 9 friends, the referral site gets paid around £270, and they can then afford to send you, for example, a free iPod Touch.

It still sounds a little suspicious, even if the maths works out, so it’s natural to want some info from some reputable sources…

 What do the press have to say?

There have been various press reports on the freebie scene, from the likes of the BBC and CNN, which can be found on youtube:

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 7:13 pm and is filed under Electronics, Free Gadgets, Gadgets & Toys, Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.