The other day, I was confronted by a referral on the Anything4Free trading forums. He was worried that, if he put in all of the effort now, freebie trading wouldn’t be worth it in the long run in terms of the time spent. He wanted my advice on the matter.
“Hey Christina,
I started a trade with you some time ago. Sorry it’s taken so long. Been a lot of stuff going on. I did have some questions for you, since I’m pretty much new to this whole freebie thing, with only a couple trades under my belt.
Basically, I’m just worried that eventually this whole thing will be a waste of my time and too much work for the little profit I get back from it. The trial offers are pretty much static – they don’t change much – and I have already been having problems finding offers I’m genuinely interested in. My question is, won’t all the offer possibilities dry up with method 1? I don’t find too many that are worth doing… like, they cost too much to where the profit made off of them is hardly worth it. Do you just have to eek by to get your trade rating to four and then start doing method 2? Is that really the way to make money with this?
I enjoy the strategy of it, and making $ of course. I’m just worried I’m going to be disappointed in the long run.
Thanks for your time,
-serv”
After reading about Serv’s concerns, I realized that I’ve gotten similar questions in the past from other referrals. I decided to write my answer here, so that everyone can get a glimpse of what I went through to get to this point (a trade rating of almost 100) and how much money I make now freebie trading at my level.
So that you can fully understand what I’m talking about, you should read my Project Payday review, which discusses freebie trading in more detail.
Hi Serv,
I understand how you’re feeling. I had the same worries when I was first starting out. To be honest, I moved on to Method 2 of freebie trading after my 5th or 6th trade. You won’t make a lot of money with Method 1 (maybe about $5-$15 per trade in profits), and, like you had mentioned, offers are pretty much the same across every freebie website. There are some freebie websites that have more offers than others (ZipNadaZilch and ZeroPriceTags come to mind here), but you still will run out of reasonable offers after several trades.
When I was doing Method 1, I just did all of the free trial offers I could find (mainly credit report and identity offers), the gaming offers where you only deposit $10 and play games with that money (King.com, GameDuell and WorldWinner) and the very cheap offers that only charge you up to $10 (so that I still made a profit). I was able to make it up to my 6th trade, I believe, before I ran out of good offers to do. Then, I used the freebie websites I completed offers on in Method 1 for Method 2.
Actually, before I move on, I had checked back on a few freebie websites for new offers to do after 6 months of trading and quite a few new ones have been added. I was able to complete more trades for other traders, as a result, to expand my trade list. So, new offers do get added every now and then. It just might take a while.
Method 2 has proved to be alright income for me, though I advise to just use freebie trading as a hobby. From past experience, you most likely won’t be able to make a living off of freebie trading alone, but it can provide you with a nice residual income stream that you don’t have to put a lot of work into (besides answering questions, such as this one). On average, I make a few hundred bucks a month. I like to diversify my online income, so I also write for other companies, blog and so forth. The earnings I get from freebie trading contribute to my overall online income, and, to be honest, I enjoy it – the Method 2 side of it (I wasn’t too crazy about Method 1).
To provide an example of how much I earn on a monthly basis (so that you’ll be able to better determine whether this is worth your time), I’ll provide you with a break-down of what I earned last month. I like keeping a record of where my money is going and what I earn through online income with a spreadsheet. The following results are coming from my last month’s earning history that I’ve recorded.
August 2010
Anything4Free Membership Purchase: -$29.99
Anything4Free Referral (Total) Referral Fees (money I’ve paid to referrals): -$835
Freebie Website (Total) Earnings: $1,231
Freebie Trading Profit: $366.01
Keep in mind that last month was one of my best months because my trading thread was stickied (put on the top of the list for a month), so I was getting about 3-10 referral inquiries a day. Generally, I’ll earn a hundred bucks or so for the month. It also depends on the freebie website you’re recruiting for. BigCash.AllFreebieWorld pays out about $72 per referral on bonus days.
So really, it’s all up to you. I just take part in freebie trading because it’s a fun hobby to get into. I enjoy answering questions, since that’s pretty much all I have to do in order to get paid. Occasionally I’ll help a referral get off of hold (if, for example, the referral is using the same IP address as another person in the household). But that’s pretty much all there is to it in Method 2. Of course, the money I earn on a monthly basis is incredibly low. However, I combine it with my other online endeavors so it pays off in the long run (for me, at least).
If you don’t diversify your income and only stick with freebie trading, the money could be useful to pay for gas or raid Amazon for books (I’m guilty of doing this quite often), but don’t expect to make a living off of it.
I hope I was able to help.
Christina
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Tags: Freebie trading
I've been making money with my writing since 2008. With this income, I'm able to travel the world, indulge in my hobbies, and govern my own life. And the best thing is, I love every second of it!
Hillary Bost (1)
Thank you so much for all the helpful info on freebie trading. I’m a total noobie and havn’t signed up for the forums yet, when i do I’ll probably go with something like fair4fair or just geoffinphx. What do you think? Anyway, thanks again for the blog, it was very helpful. When I get going on this I’ll look you up for some trades. Take care, geoff
Hey Geoff,
Either one looks fine to me. I’m glad this article is useful to you.
If you have any questions about trading, don’t hesitate to send me an email by filling out the contact form. I’m always eager to help.
Christina