How To Get Free Stuff Archives

How to Get Free Stuff to Review, Provide Feedback, and Spread the Word About

This post is part of The Free Stuff Series: How to Get Free Stuff You Actually Want.

Wouldn’t you love to know how to get free stuff to review? How about getting free products or services and in return, all you need to do is provide feedback and spread the word about the product or service?

If you are the type of person who loves to tell your friends about all the great products, you find then this post is for you. If you have a lot of friends on social media or you just like writing product reviews, then this post is for you!

Businesses know word-of-mouth advertising (WOM) is powerful stuff. There are many programs that you can sign up for to spread the word about new products, and most will send you coupons so that you can try them first.

For these types of offers, you may be required to fill out a short questionnaire or survey, host a party or just tell all your friends about the product to receive the free product. While this does take a little bit of extra time, you’ll often be rewarded with some great free stuff.

Get Free Stuff to Review: Below is a list of some of my favorite businesses that use word-of-mouth advertising.

BzzAgent – Connecting people and their favorite brands since 2001, BzzAgent is the leading social marketing company. What’s that mean to you? They put products in the hands of hundreds of thousands of real consumers and help them share their opinions about them with friends and family via reviews, Facebook posts, photos, and videos, blog posts and more.

I have been a member of BzzAgent for a long time, and I have received many great products to test out (Sonicare toothbrush, Poland Spring delivery service, razors, makeup, and more) and keep in return for my feedback and sharing of the products with my friends and family.

Houseparty.com– House Party makes it easy to have a party in your home and get exclusive access to awesome products for you and your friends. They provide the fun; you provide food, your friends, and feedback and promise to have an amazing time.

I have done house parties for Bare Minerals and Arm & Hammer, and they were fun and rewarding.

Smiley360 – Joining the Smiley community gives you the opportunity to try some of today’s most popular brands, as well as discover new brands. Members can qualify for Smiley “missions” where you’ll receive a free product or experience to try.

Influenster – Influenster.com is a product discovery platform and review site that helps members find new products to try and get advice so they can make informed purchases. They help their members compare products and guide them on how products can be integrated into their life. They inspire a love for products and encourage conversation, discovery, and reviews. Influenster invites their most active and social media savvy members to participate in exclusive reward campaigns.

I’ll be adding to this list when I find more great programs, but for now, I hope you enjoy these favorites of mine and if you have any favorites be sure to share them in the comment section of this post! Want more?

Missed any part of The FREE STUFF SERIES? You can find it here:

Need help with budgeting and saving money? Join my email list below and get money-making and saving tips, promotions, and exclusive freebies sent right to your inbox. Sign up below!

This post may contain affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy here

Shampoo and a towel with a text overlay that says "free stuff at your local drugstore".

This post may contain affiliate links which help me run my blog. See more about that here.

Getting FREE Full-Size Products From Your Local Drugstore

One of the strategies I am going to cover is how to get free products you use on an everyday basis, right from your local drugstore. Each week most drugstores will feature certain products for free. If you look at the sales flyer each week at your local drugstore, you will notice certain free items.

CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, and others will often have free (after rewards) items each week. You can stock up on toothpaste, mouthwash, cosmetics, and all sorts of stuff for free; I have not bought toothpaste and mouthwash in years using this strategy!

So why would they give away products? They are using the loss leader strategy as you learned in the first section of The Free Stuff Series. The strategy for you would be to just buy the loss leader items. Since most areas have a drugstore on every other corner you are sure to be passing one on your way to work or in your daily travels so stopping in one to grab a free item should not be a problem or waste of gas. Plus if you’re picking up a prescription or maybe some milk (usually really cheap at CVS) then it’s convenient.

How does this strategy work for you?

The first thing you want to do is have your drugstore’s reward card because that’s how you will get the free products. The reward card is free at most drugstores and fast and easy to signup.

The second thing you will want to do is to check out the weekly sales flyer either at the store or better yet use a smartphone app like Flipp to view the weekly ad right on your smartphone ahead of time. Look for your free items (I will show you examples below).

Usually, the first item you buy, you will have to pay for upfront, unless you already have accumulated some rewards.

Let’s look at how this works (it’s easy!)

First, look at your weekly drugstore ad online, in-store or in the newspaper. Look for items that will be FREE after rewards. For CVS it may say “FREE” after Extrabucks, Walgreens will say after Register Rewards or Balance Reward Points and Rite Aid will say after Plenti Rewards. You may not always see the word, “Free”; it may say something like “pay $3.99 for Crest and get $3.99 back in rewards” so look for that difference in wording.

For the $3.99 example, you would spend $3.99 plus tax upfront and get $3.99 back on your receipt as a coupon or extrabucks (for CVS) or Points/Register Rewards for Walgreens and Plenti Points for Rite Aid. Then you will go and use the $3.99 you get back from that purchase to buy another item that gives rewards back so then you will get them free.

For example, sometimes there is a limit of two on these deals. You would buy the first one and then use the $3.99 you get back in rewards to buy the second one so that you will pay nothing out of pocket but the tax on your second item. Plus you will get another $3.99 back on that item you just paid nothing for!

Take a look at the picture below of a CVS advertisement and an example of a FREE item.

This Item has a Limit of 1 as you can see from the very small print at the bottom. So you would pay $8.99 and get $8.99 back in Extrabuck rewards that can be used on anything at CVS! If you had a coupon on this item, you would pay less and then still get $8.99 back! So say you had a $2 off coupon, You would pay $6.99 and get $8.99 back! You just made money! You can keep track of what you bought and the limits at the bottom of your receipt. Remember you must scan your CVS Extracare card at the time of your purchase.

Here are two examples of what it will look like at RiteAid and Walgreens.

Rite Aid Coupon Matchup

Coupon Matchups at Rite Aid — RiteAid Flyer

This Rite Aid ad seen above shows that there is a .50 off coupon that can be loaded online to your card, you will need your free Rite Aid Plenti Rewards card and have it registered online so you can log onto your account and load the coupon. If you do not already have a card you can get a free one at the register

You can also search the coupon database to see if there are any other coupons out there. I have seen $1 off coupons plenty of times for this product.

Example:

Buy Sure or Brut deodorant
Use $1 off coupon or the .50 off one that you loaded to the card, Pay $0.75 or $1.25 now
Get 100 Plenti points back worth $1

In this example, depending on what coupon you had you would either pay 0.25 for this deodorant or get it free and make 0.25 on it! Plus there is a limit of 2 so if you had two coupons you could get two free deodorants!

You can find out more about Rite Aid Plenti Points here.

Walgreens Coupon Matchup

Example:

Buy Sure or Brut deodorant
Use $0.50 off coupon
Get 1000 points back worth $1

You can find out more about Walgreens and how their balance reward points work here.

Combine Rewards with Coupons to Get Free Stuff

I just showed you how you could actually make money by combining coupons with already free items, but now I am going to show you how to make items free by using coupons.

As you are looking through your weekly sales ad, some items might not appear free at first, but if you combine them with a store or manufacturer coupon, they will be.

For example, if the $3.99 toothpaste only gave $2.99 in rewards back, you could use a $1 off toothpaste coupon which would bring it down to $2.99 at the register, you would get $2.99 back in rewards resulting in it being free. Are you still following?? Not sure if there are coupons out for the item you want to buy? Make sure you check out the coupon database.

Instant Freebies

In some instances, you may get an instant freebie after coupons without having to use or earn any rewards or points. For example, every time you go into CVS you want to scan your card at the CVS Coupon Machine (see picture below). These coupons are CVS coupons and can be combined with manufacturer coupons to score free and discounted items.

In the example below the coupon machine prints out a coupon for $2.50 and there is a coupon for 50 cents in the paper which will make this Colgate toothpaste FREE! So nothing out of pocket!

Free Stuff at CVS — Photo Credit: CVS.COM

If all of this seems overwhelming to you or confusing, coupon bloggers make it easy for you because each week they will list what is FREE at each of these stores! I may start posting coupon matchups again in the future if my readers want them (let me know in the comments, and if I get enough interest I will post weekly Free Stuff Matchups) but until then, I will share with you some of my favorite coupon bloggers in just a bit.

Not sure what a coupon matchup is? Below is an example of a coupon matchup for CVS and how it would look on a coupon bloggers website.

In the weekly coupon matchups, it will show you the sale price, the amount of rewards you get and what coupons to use to get it for free. Some of my favorite coupon blogs are Living Rich With Coupons and Money Saving Mom who posts weekly coupons matchups, just click on the store name and you will get the coupon matchups.

You can learn more about how to shop at CVS on our CVS Shopping page. Rite Aid and Walgreens have similar reward programs, and you can find out more about them on the Walgreens and Rite Aid websites. If you want more examples from any of these retailers or if you have questions, please leave a comment on this post, and I will answer it as quickly as I can.