Many people are skeptical about free offers: they say they are either lame or fake. Well, those who have been hunting for freebies for years can contradict that by saying that collecting freebies is both fun and often really useful.

Freebie hunting is art: you should know how to spot a new free offer as well as avoid being scammed (and spammed).

This post lists some useful tools that will come in handy to those who would like to try freebie hunting and see how they can benefit from that.

1. Freebie Hunter Aggregators & Collectors

These are actually plenty: people blog and discuss freebies everywhere. Here I am listing only the most trusted ones – those that I have checked and tried myself:

ListFreeSamples is a well-organized, clutter-free online freebie collector

The Freebie Blogger and The Freebies Blog are two decent blogs posting daily updates on legitimate free offers.

International Freebie Resources:

• PriceNetwork (Freebies) (Canada);
• ShopFree (Australia);
• Free in UK (as you may have guessed, UK).

2. Freebie Scam Lists & Discussions

Scam.com is your first choice if you are a freebie hunter and want to research if some freebie is a valid one. It’s a discussion forum for users to share their sad experience (to warn others) or to ask for an opinion on some cheesy offer. It has multiple sections, most active of which are:

• Internet scams;
• Work at home scams;
• Contests scams;
• Mail order scams;
• MLM / Pyramid scams.

419eater is an active freebie hunter discussion board that you can actually get addicted to. The sub-forums I enjoy most of all are :

• General discussion of scambaiting;
• Scam help, hints and tips;
• Scam audio (If a user has recorded a funny conversation with a scammer, or received a voicemail, he can share it);
• Scam email (Funniest (and not only funny) scam messages received from members)

PurPortal is a huge searchable database of scams which seems to be updated regularly. There are 4 sections: scams, urban legends, viruses and phishing sites. Besides, it has a whole separate category for email spam.

And Also Some Bonus Ones:

• List of freebie hunter sites that are spam, scam or phishing put together and updated by Buxr guys
• 5,700 Chinese scams put together by FireTrust

Freebie Tweets

Twitter is buzzing with conversations on any topic – there you have good chances to hear people share their own experiences with some cool free offers (and possibly make friends with fellow freebie hunters).

My favorite tool to track anything on Twitter is Seesmic – because it is easy to use, highly customizable and clutter-free. Here’s how you can use Seesmic for spotting new freebies:

Step 1: Configure Seesmic to update you of new search results:

Step 2: Search Twitter using Seesmic for freebies (if you are interested in some particular freebies, restrict your search by using additional keywords, like “make-up freebie”, “oriflame freebie”, etc)

(The search will be automatically search and will be tracked by Seesmic until you delete it).

Step 3: Sit back and watch Seesmic update you of new freebies being Twittered:

Any more freebie hunter tips? Share them in the comments!

Image Credit : Aurelian Săndulescu