Hey Kids, Want a Free iPod? Well, Almost Free.

Yeah, lamest post ever, but I want that free iPod, and I bet you want it too.

This is about something you’ve probably heard of, may have participated in, or maybe you just thought it was a scam. I thought it was a scam, or at least something destined to fill my inbox with an additional 50 spam messages per day, but apparently it’s all legit. I even found an article in Wired Magazine about it.

Here’s how it works in a nutshell…

Someone invites you to sign up. You sign up, make sure you’re not subscribing to anything you don’t want or need, but you do have to sign up for one of 30 or 40 services. I chose the one month of Blockbuster Online for $10, which I plan on cancelling before the month is up. Then you get five other people to sign up, and each of them have to subscribe to something, like the Blockbuster offer.

Theoretically you could get five people to sign up for the one month trial with Blockbuster, reimburse them for their expense, and you’d be out $60 total but you’ll get a $250 product. That’s it.

I’m trying it out because a friend of a friend actually got the iPod, plus the Wired article convinced me it’s legit. Plus there are a bunch of other articles at http://info.freepay.com/pressroom.html.

Want to try? Here’s my referral link - http://ipods.freepay.com/?r=28940592.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, what do you think about this as a marketing technique? This reminds me of a tactic Sprint used many years ago. They figured out that it cost $300 to acquire each new residential service customer, so they sent checks out for $100 and if you signed up you could deposit the check. Bing! New customers for 1/3 the normal price. I think that particular plan fell apart when the competitors started doing it as well, but if I recall correctly my father ended up with $300 in his pocket by switching back and forth a few times.