Tired of School

Several companies want you to use their products. That is, they want you to spend money on the products they sell. One way to get you to start buying is to send you a free sample; if you like it you should buy more…right? It doesn’t always work the way they want it to. I seem to remember carrying 3 cases of Snapple to my dorm room as well as 2 years worth of deodorant after a poorly planned event at my college didn’t have the expected turnout. The people “proved” their success by the number of samples given away, so those of us who showed up could take whatever we could carry.

1. Look on the Internet

Now, you could scour the internet for free samples. You can usually find a free razor, shampoo, or deodorant. Well, not free, you will be giving up valuable personal information and likely get spamed for life. If you do this then you want to be careful not to give a company any information you don’t want them to sell. In fact, you may be signing up for a free sample from a company unaffiliated with the brand you think you are giving your email address too. That is, I could offer you a free Colgate toothpaste sample to fill in a form. However, I am not affiliated with Colgate at all. I’d send you the sample at a cost of about 50 cents and then sell your email address to 50 people for a quarter a piece.

2. Write the Company

Sometimes if you write a company and ask them for a sample they will send you one. More times they will send you a coupon. Even more times, they will send you nothing. While it can be fun to send out a letter to see if anything shows up in the mail. It doesn’t always get you the thing you wanted.

3. The Effective Way

This is almost like #2, but it has a twist. Think for a moment about all the people around you and who would want to advertise directly to them. Call the company and tell them you are surrounded by students about x age and you think they could benefit from using their product (e.g., deodorant, toothpaste, etc.) because of poor personal hygiene. Tell them you plan to pass product samples of this product from the first company willing to send you a box of the stuff to hand out. Now, don’t lie here or you might have some legal action. You will really need to hand out the samples. However, there are usually samples left over at the end of handing them out, so you still score; woot!

Going against my own advice, I found a website that offers free misprint t-shirts. I’m going to try it out. Click here if you want to give it a go.