Wednesday, January 30, 2013

January Samples Experiment Part #1

So as an experiment I started signing up to get sample products. Previously I had had very little success with this. Most of the time even the ones I completely filled out ended up never coming in the mail... sound familiar?

As a result I quit trying to get them and thought they were mostly a waste of time. Then I had someone explain to me that you will get about every other one. The reason is the company get's more requests then they have samples made up to send out (they don't just make these up as requests come in they order a lot of anywhere from 300 to 10,000 on average of specially marked ans specially sized samples) then he company budgets shipping (it's not cheap to send out that many little packages), and finally they budget the staffing it will take and how long they are willing to pay staff members to box, label and ship out samples for free. When you factor allt hat in those little sample boxes are worth a lot of money to the company!

Thus you just have to know you're not going to get every single one you sign up for. Often the company has already run out.

Then there is your cost to factor in... what cost of free samples? Well sure!!! You have to find them, fill out the form, and wait. Filling out each form only takes 30 second (if you turn on your auto fill in) to 3 minutes. So how much is the sample worth to you?

For this experiment I decided to spend no longer than 10 minutes a day signing up for samples. I started December 20th, and keep in mind most samples say 4 to 8 weeks to arrive. Some days I didn't sign up for any samples... other days I only did one.

By January 15th this is what I had gotten in the mail:


3 Atkins Diet Bars (one of which I really liked) approx value $1.25 each = $3.75

Pampers Baby Wipes Sample (I buy these all the time and loved the extra fluffy ones they sent!) value .30 cents. = $0.30

Aero Shot (Which I couldn't find the other 2 flavors that came but there were three of these) full size containers value $2.99 each. I didn't' love the flavor (comparable to the bite with 5 hour energy) but they worked great! Total value: $8.97

Dishwasher tabs with rinse aid in them 2 total tabs. Approx value $0.23 cents each for a total of $0.46

And a few high value coupons! Total cash value: $13.48 

Since this is my first time conducting this experiment I am not going to give it a rating! But I will let you decide if that is worth it or not. I have listed for you below a few of the websites I have found the most helpful and accurate when gathering samples! And... I will be posting a part 2 to January here shortly... after February I'll start rating how well I did!

1 - My Free Product Samples: http://www.myfreeproductsamples.com/
2 - Free Flys: http://www.freeflys.com/MoreFreeSamples.php
3 - Brand V Savings: http://www.bandvsavings.com/category/freebies/