Sunday, October 28, 2007

Old Orchard Juice-Sweepstakes, Coupons + More!

Old Orchard Juice is having a sweepstakes- Win Juice for a Year! Also print a free coupon for $1. off 2 juices, or order one of their mail-in offers! [Update 3/08-current promotions include win a SUV sweeps and more.]

Old Orchard Sweepstakes

Castrol Sweepstakes, Scholarship, Coupons, Podcasts

Castrol Oil is currently having some awesome promotions! You will find sweepstakes you can enter to win prizes, a scholarship opportunity, and coupons to save on oil! If your car, van, or truck leaks oil like my van does, the coupon for $6. off a case of oil will come in handy!

Castrol Promotions

Kelloggs Cereal-Freebies and Sweepstakes

At the Kellogg's Website I found a page that lists all their promotions! You can find out what toys are in which cereal boxes, enter a sweepstakes, or learn how to order one of their many mail-in offers. The mail in offers are great- all require proofs of purchase (UPC) from Kellogg's products (but you could get some of these from friends) and though some are free, some require a "postage and handling" fee. Still, it is neat to see you can order a Shrek bowl or straw, a Little Mermaid fleece blanket, Cholesterol test kit, T-Shirt, or even an inflatable Boogie Board! There are lots of offers here, and I think I'm going to start collecting cereal box UPC's!

Kellogg's Promotion Page

Free stuff from Walmart!

I don't really like to shop at Walmart. I prefer to support local small businesses. With that said, I must say I don't mind Walmart sending me stuff for free! Their website always has freebies available. They change about every week, and if you look around a bit you may find freebies not advertised on their freebies page. Some freebies I have gotten from Walmart include: laundry soap, dryer sheets, Ziplock sample, and shampoo.

Walmart Freebies

In My Mailbox

This month I have received several free items in my mailbox! I will include links where appropriate so you can order them too!

-Hormel Foods. 3 coupons for $2. off any Hormel Product. I received these coupons after calling to complain about a new product I had purchased. They were microwave meals and the food smelled strongly of plastic, even when taken out of the container to heat. I was unable to eat them because of possible plastic toxicity.

-Quaker Oatmeal. 4 coupons for $4. off any Quaker product. I received these coupons after calling to complain when I found the remains of a bug in my instant oatmeal. Ugh! Great customer service though, and these coupons will come in handy!

-Lewis and Clark Poster set and Study Guide. I ordered this online for the Lewis and Clark unit we are doing in our homeschool. This is an excellent set! About 10 full size, color posters and a neat study guide to help me teach the unit! This is for teachers (homeschool and traditional) and priority is given to grades 5 and 6 teachers. This excellent set didn't cost me a penny!

-Scholastic Magazine Samples. Scholastic produces a bunch of magazines for the classroom on a variety of subjects! The samples are great- I was able to look them over and show my daughter so I know which ones will work best for us in our homeschool.

-K'NEX Free Sample. I ordered a free sample from K'nex for my daughter- it was a small package with K'nex to build a little car! She has already built a couple other things using them. This is a really neat freebie! [Sample offer is over 3/08]

-Greenies Sample. I ordered a free sample from Greenies (my cats love these!). I received Roasted chicken flavor for cats- a fairly good size sample!

Good Freebie Site

As you may know, many so called "freebie" offers are not really free. Some are just plain scams, some require purchase, some tell you to email 10 or more friends and get them to email 10 friends and so on. Some offers require a lengthy survey that never really ends or delivers massive spam to your email. I will never list that type of freebie in this blog. Most freebie sites do list these, but I found one that doesn't! This site lists genuine freebie offers and allows users to comment on the offer. So if someone finds it isn't a real freebie, you will know. The site seems fairly busy-today I have had trouble loading comments but everything I clicked was a good offer. So check this one out if you are a freebie hunter!


AbsurdlyCool Freebie Finder -- Automatically find the best freebies online!

Free Pizza for Homeschoolers!

Schools around the country have participated in Pizza Hut's Book-It program for many years. It has been found to be a successful program encouraging children to read by offering the incentive of a free personal pizza from Pizza Hut when the child has reached their monthly reading goal. Now homeschooled families can participate as well! Signing up for the program is free, and homeschool teachers will be sent coupons for each participating child for the school year, as well as instructions and hints for making the program a success. I signed up in September and have received my child's pizza coupons for the year! This is an excellent program and is completely free- no gimmicks.

I have seen some people selling these coupons on Ebay recently. This makes me angry. If people abuse Pizza Hut's homeschool policy then it is possible they will stop making this available to homeschoolers. So please do not buy the coupons from Ebay, and do not request them if you are planning to sell them. Be honest, and keep this program available to everyone!

Pizza Hut Book-It Program

Friday, October 12, 2007

Absolutely Free Computer Games!

I remember some of the computer games I played in elementary school. My absolute favorite was Oregon Trail, and I loved Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego! I spent a lot of time searching the net for these games (free, preferably!) and finally found them! This website has tons of classic games, including the aforementioned games. All are free to download, spyware and adware free! So far I have found this site to be a legitimate download site. It is legal and doesn't put junk like viruses or trojan horses on my computer! It is slow to load but worth the wait. You can download the games directly to your computer and once you have done that you can play anytime! NOTE: Unfortunately, I couldn't get Oregon Trail to work. It could be my computer, or it could be the file on the site. Just don't want you Oregon Trail fans to get too excited! All other games I downloaded work fine though!

Here is the site:

Home of the Underdogs

Other trusted game download sites:

Download.com

Music Download- Free, legal, MP3 download site. Trusted site!

Favorite Pet Freebie

I have several cats- not quite enough to be crazy but enough so that my family thinks I'm crazy! Well, my cats like treats. I found a company who has been offering freebies for about 2 years without fail! They will give you a sample of their treats for your cat or dog! I have never ordered the dog freebie as I only have cats, so I can only tell you what I have gotten for my cats. I have ordered free samples from them several times over the past couple years (they seem to let you order once every 6 months or so). Once they sent a full size package of treats, once one small sample pack, and a couple times 3-5 small sample packs of different flavors. And always a $1. off coupon on my next purchase! So go there, get your cat or dog a treat, and be prepared for treat addicted pets! Even my pickiest cats love these!

GREENIES

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Google Adsense- Make money with your blog or site!

I just signed up for Google Adsense for this blog. Do you see the ads at the top of the page? Every time someone clicks on one I make money! If you have a blog or website, you can make money with Google Adsense too! All I did is sign up for Google Adsense, wait for approval (they want to make sure my site isn't pornographic), and then I posted the html code on my site. It was easy, and I hope will be profitable.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Your children can earn free stuff by reading!

My daughter loves Highlights Magazine, and would love a subscription. It is a bit too expensive for us though, so she just reads them at the doctors office. Now, she can earn a free 6 month subscription! I recently found a website where kids can earn points for books they read. When your child reads a book, you help him/her look it up on the site. Then your child takes a 10 question quiz and earns points! The site has a huge directory of books to chose from-you can eve print out a booklist and head to the library. Prizes that can be earned include the aforementioned Highlights subscription, books, bookmark, candy bar.
Teachers, you can sign up your students!
Here is the link to the site:
Book Adventure

How are your writing skills? (No experience necessary!)

Several months ago I found a site called Associated Content. I love it! Since I was a child I have enjoyed writing, and now I can write and get paid for it! Anyone can join, and you don't have to have awesome writing skills to make money. Sometimes I wonder how some of the writers graduated fifth grade grammar! It isn't a blog, like this. You can write about pretty much anything you want. I have written articles about mental health issues, parenting, and news articles. You can do product reviews, report on the news, create "how to" articles-anything really. There are 2 ways you can get paid-upfront payment and performance bonus. You will get performance bonus for all your articles-this is based on page views. You can also submit your article for an upfront payment and AC will make an offer you can accept or reject. My last 2 articles were accepted with payments of $5.67 and $3.13. Surprisingly, my shorter articles seem to get better offers. Check it out, this might be your thing too!

Join Associated Content

A couple quick mentions-Freecycle and Sweeps site

It is late, so I'm going to let you know about a couple sites I really like.
First is the best sweepstakes site online. On this site you will find REAL sweepstakes and contests, not ones that make you go through a million survey questions for you to then find you really don't get anything at all. I hate those! It is worth it to register on this site, as then you have access to notes which often let you know if a certain sweep is worth your time or not. Read the forums, and introduce yourself! There are thousands of legitimate sweeps on this site, and lots of folks have won lots of stuff. So here is the link for the sweepstakes site:
http://www.online-sweepstakes.com

The next site I'll mention tonight is a place where regular people give away stuff they don't want anymore! This is really neat because almost anything can be given. Once I furnished nearly all of my apartment with items I received here. Also, I have been able to easily get rid of extra stuff laying around my place! Some things I can gotten include: Violin for my daughter, clothing, furniture, cat litter. Some things I have given are: DVDs, VHS tapes, kids toys, clothing, furniture. I will give the link to the main site where you can find a group near where you live. There is a Yahoo group for almost every geographical location in the world! So join and find what you need and give what you don't! Here's the link:
http://www.freecycle.org