I Got a Wii 4 Free

Several posts ago, I went on and on about wanting to get a Nintendo Wii. I already have a PS3 which is great for me, but my wife and soon to be gamer Daughter may have some problems getting with the control system and some of the games I own aren’t exactly for more than one player or family oriented, at that. So, I went on a quest to get a Wii for the family. Now, compared to the PS3, the Wii is priced pretty low. However, where you make up the difference is all the additions. There’s the extra controllers and nun chucks. Not to mention the charging station as I’ve been told the controllers will drain a set of double AA batteries in a week. On top of that some of the games require some fancy peripherals like the Wii Fit Balance Board or Zapper. Once you get to the register, you could be looking at $500 and that’s before you really get any games. Speaking of games, the catalog of Wii centered game titles is a bit on the weak side. Anything that I can get for the PS3 I will probably do so unless it’s a family oriented title.

So, after much consideration and a good long look at my bank account, I decided that I was going to get it for free, just like I did with my PS3. Ever the cheap ass gamer, I immediately went and signed up with my old friends at Trainn on Your Nintendo Wii 4 Free. However, I really didn’t have the time to devote to another IFW site, right now, so I'm keeping it to get the $250 cash for free, instead. Looking at other options, I figured I could just start putting money aside or use any holiday or birthday money but that is always a problem when I look at my outstanding credit card debts. Every time I get extra money I throw it at my savings or debt. Since the Wii is a luxury item for me, it ranks low among my priorities.

Then, on a whim, I checked out my Visa Rewards Points that I’ve been accumulating over the last four years. When I signed up, I originally intended to use them towards plane tickets so I could take my wife on a real honeymoon. But, it would be years before I would be able to redeem enough to make it worth the wait. I checked the catalog over in full and found that for 400,000 points I could get a Wii. I thought, “Wow!” There it is. Then I checked my balance. I had half that already accumulated. It would take another 4 years to produce the rest at my current rate. Not to mention, I’d pretty much have to spend nearly $200,000 just to get all 400,000 points. I checked the catalog again and saw that I could redeem my current balance for around $220 give or take if I opted for cash or gift cards. That’s when it hit me. The price of a Wii is $249. I have almost that amount. I did it.

That’s half the battle. All the peripherals would cost close to that same amount. I feverishly put into place another plan of attack. Using my Paypal account and my checking account, I cycled 20 transactions a month of $1 each. Starting off with a $20 withdrawal from PayPal to my Checking account, I then put $20 back into my PayPal account, $1 at a time. Each transaction was worth 25 points giving me a monthly maximum allowance of 500 points. For every 2000 points I can redeem them for $4. Granted, it takes me four months to build up 2000 points by that method, my usual spending habits will make up the difference quickly giving me a monthly accruement of close to 7000 points. Every two months, I can redeem that for $28. If I can be disciplined enough to do the redemption, I can pay myself back in a few months time. Additionally, my birthday just occurred and my family gave me cash. Totaling all of that up, I now had more than enough to buy the Wii and all the extras.

Somehow, life has its moments and all of this got put on hold when my Mother-In-Law was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Her treatment and recovery have been nothing short of miraculous considering that she was diagnosed on March 12th, tested over that weekend, went in for surgery on March 18th and was home on March 20th. She’s due to get her stitches out March 26th. My wife felt extremely bad for dumping the entire world on me in order to help out, which was nothing. I babysat, drove my daughter to various babysitters, and just kept her at an even keel. But, she wanted things to get back to normal so, she took me shopping after her Mother got out of the hospital. This past weekend I had to go to four businesses to get everything but we managed to do it.

At Best Buy we got the Wii, charging station with extra nun chuck, and Wii Play with extra controller for $400.
At GameStop, I picked up House of the Dead 2 & 3 for $31.00
At Wal-Mart, I got the last WiiFit for $90.
I added 2000 Wii points for $21.00
And I bought 2 third party Zappers on eBay for $24.00

In all, I came out ahead by about $32. I also managed to recoup close to $10 by buying the gift cards for Best Buy at our local grocery store which gives you $0.10 off a gallon of gas for every $50 you spend. I dropped my price for gas from $1.99 a gallon to $1.19 a gallon on my next fill up.

After my shopping spree, we came home and put our Daughter down for a nap. I figured I could get everything set up and have some time to play. Two hours later, I had it all setup and was settling down to do some zombie shooting when the little one woke up. Figures. I have been able to get in some game time and I’ve become addicted to beating my own records on Wii Sports. The Fitness part of that game said I was 64 on Monday and 29 on Tuesday. I just turned 34. I don’t think it’s very accurate. I will say that all the hype about injuries are real. My body is hurting. My arms hurt, my shoulders hurt, and my legs hurt. With any luck I’ll end up with a pulled Wii knee. It’s that twisted sense of humor that prompted me to put up these two shirt designs on the store. I’ve already sold one and bought one for myself.

We're doomed, aren't we?

Free Wii 4 Me: Part Two

Part Two: Wii-Wards

Someone ought to tell me to tone down the puns. I’m beginning to really reach……I guess it could be worse. I could have said, “Wii-ly Wii-each.”

So, in Part One I explained how my Father-in-Law got a Wii for Christmas and I got a little jealous. Now, I am going to outline my plan for getting one for free. Honestly, the more I think about this plan, the more I think I should have just did my Wii site instead. It would have been less work. I just didn’t want to have to pimp my site in order to get referrals. It’s a lot harder to convince people that it’s legitimate. By that token, I decided to do this myself. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I realized I could pull it off in earnest. The gist of this concept relies on me utilizing my Debit and Credit Cards. I’ll try to be as clear and to the point as possible explaining this, but I cannot guarantee that I won’t ramble and spin off into a tangent along the way. Ready…?

STEP ONE: REWARDS CARD

My bank has a program that offers rewards points for purchases using my check card. For every purchase I make in the store using it as credit instead of debit earns me 2 points per dollar. Every bill I pay online like utilities, mortgage, car payment, etc. using my account earns me a bonus of 25 pts per transaction. Unfortunately, I don’t have the ability to do the 2 pts/1 dollar method. If I did, my mortgage alone would get me thousands of points each month. Regardless of how I earned points, I didn’t get caught up in the hype of redeeming them right away. They weren’t set to expire anytime soon and the catalog of prizes was a bit laughable.

At first, I didn’t think much of my rewards card. I joined up four years ago when the program began and figured that I would just accrue points until I had enough for plane tickets and hotel stays. Then, I could take my wife on a real honeymoon. We just went to Niagara Falls for a week and she spent most of it with the flu. A couple of airline tickets would probably run me something like 400,000 points. Since I started earning rewards, I’ve accumulated about 100,000. With that I could get a free putter. You see the ridiculousness of the redemption? It’s like that scene from The Jerk where Steve Martin is explaining what you can actually win from the weight guessing game. “Uh, anything in this general area right in here. Anything below the stereo and on this side of the bicentennial glasses. Anything between the ashtrays and the thimble. Anything in this three inches right in here in this area. That includes the Chiclets, but not the erasers.”

Every so often, I’d check in on my account and see how I was doing and I’d also look at the catalog to see if there was any new items that I would enjoy. I skipped the low end stuff like water bottles and travel bags and went right for the items that were worth over 100,000 points. There it was, a Nintendo Wii, and for only 200,000 points! Well, I was half way there and it only took me four years to do that. Just think, I could get a Wii by the time they introduced the next generation of gaming console. In reality, that means that I would have to spend another $50,000 to get it. Sarcasm aside, I decided to check the low end items to see if I could get something I could tolerate. For 2000 points, I could get $4. Wow. That’s 500 points for a dollar. Well isn’t that crap….wait a minute. 500 points for every dollar. I get two points for every dollar I spend and one dollar for every 500 points I redeem. If I redeem my balance now, I would $200. That’s not too bad. I did some checking throughout the rest of the catalog to see what else there was. Here’s a rundown.

$4 Visa Cash Value Award for every 2000 pts
$15 Visa Cash Value Award for every 7500 pts
$25 gift card to GameStop for every 11500
$40 Visa Cash Value Award for every 20,000 pts
$50 gift card to Best Buy for 22,500 pts
$100 gift card to Amazon.com for 40,000 pts
$100 Visa Cash Value Award for every 50,000 pts

Doing some quick math I determined that Amazon, at 400 points to the dollar, has the best point to dollar redemption ratio giving $250 for my total rewards. The straight Visa reward is 500 pts to a dollar, while Best Buy is 450 and GameStop is 460. Suddenly, I began to formulate a plan. Redeem the points for Amazon gift cards and buy the Wii for an addition $50.

STEP TWO: GET MORE REWARDS

Whether I choose to redeem points now for gift cards or cash or wait until I have 200k to get the Wii outright, I decided that maybe I should step up the process a little. Every little bit helps. I went to my bank’s website and looked at their FAQs. Here’s what I found.

Regular Activity
CheckCard purchases - 2 per $1
credit card purchases - 5 per $1
Home Equity Line of Credit access card spending - 2 per $1
Small Business Line of Credit access card spending - 2 per $1
Checks, online bill payments, PIN purchases at point-of-sale, direct debits from checking - 25 per (up to 500 points monthly)
First time use of the first three items above - 5,000 each

Bonus activity
Open an use a new Home Equity Line of Credit - 5,000
Open an auto loan 5,000
Open and use a new Small Business Line of Credit - 5,000
Add direct deposit to a checking account - 5,000
Open a Personal or Student Savings account with a preauthorized monthly transfer (PAT) or any other type of savings account without a PAT - 5,000
Pay a bill for the first time with Online Bill Payment - 5,000
Open a new mortgage - 50,000

I’ve already been rewarded for most of the 5,000 options and I’m not about to get a loan or mortgage just to get a Wii. I already went through my monthly expenditures and found that I average about 2500 points a month through various purchases and bonuses. That still puts me on track for four years until I rack up another 100k. There has to be a way to get more points without having to spend more money than I already do. That’s when it hit me.

STEP THREE: PAYPAL

I found this out by accident. This actually serves another purpose which I’ll explain later. When I was working on my Free PS3 account, I frequently add funds to my PayPal account for support. It’s a long story, don’t worry about it. Anyway, I noticed that every transaction earned me 25 points. That got me to thinking. I can transfer money from my checking account to PayPal for free as long as it takes the usual three to five business days. I can also transfer money from my PayPal account back to my checking account for free as well. What if I set up a revolving door of transactions? The only way to be safe about this was to keep the amounts small. I didn’t want to be overdrawn on either side.

1. I transferred $10 from my PayPal account on a Monday.
2. On Tuesday, I went in and added $10 back to my PayPal account $1.00 at a time.
3. After the cycle was over, I had the same amount in both accounts that I had when I started.

I just made 250 points without spending a dollar.

Ok, it’s not a pretty process and according to the rules, you can only earn up to 500 bonus points per month this way. The concept behind this is to maximize my rewards. If I’m only paying five bills online every month, then I’m only getting 125 points. I’m throwing away 375 points a month, that could be building towards my Wii. It seems petty, but here’s another angle. Forget about the Wii. Think of that 500 points as a free dollar. After four months you can redeem 2000 points for $4.00. You can use that $4.00 to pay off a credit card. In this struggling economy, paying the minimum balance on credit cards isn’t going to cut it. Every little bit helps. If you start redeeming your reward points for cash, you can start to work down your debt. Thanks to Me Vs. Debt for this tip.

STEP FOUR: COMPOUND

In looking at the list of gift cards I can redeem for cash I noticed that perhaps the GameStop route is the best method of redemption. While I lose 40 points on the dollar for the gift cards I also found other ways to get cash from this particular outlet. I recently won an eBay auction for a game. It was for my brother’s birthday. He also has a Wii. Apparently, everyone but me has one. I opted for the Buy It Now button and paid $34.95 for a brand new Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures with free shipping. When I got the game in the mail it was the XboX 360 version. After I calmed down, seeing as how I had now missed my brother’s birthday due to this error. I explained my case to the seller. They apologized profusely and overnighted me the correct game and told me to just keep the wrong one. I suspect that this was more than just shipping error since it looked as if they had to go and buy the correct version which had a price tag of $44.95 on it. Not only did I save close to $15 on the game, I have a free Xbox 360 game to barter or sell. I can take that to GameStop and get some store credit towards my Wii. I don’t know what the trade in value is but it’s free money.I could also just take the cash from the points redemption and buy gift cards for GameStop in my local grocery store. For every $50 I spend I get $0.10 off a gallon of gas. For my 200,000 points I could get $0.40 off resulting in about $5.00 saving overall. That $5.00 can go back towards the Wii fund and now I’ve whittled down the cost further.

If all this seems rather silly and overly complex akin to a Rube Goldberg Device (i.e. Mouse Trap Game), that’s because it is. For all the calculating and planning and spending I could easily just go to the store and buy the damn thing. But this is about something more. It’s about getting it for free. Call me cheap, call me lazy, but these are the little challenges I like to on and see if I can make it happen. It may take a few months to acquire enough reward points or free gift cards, but so what. It’s fun to do. Besides, this will give me just enough time to teach my Father-in-Law how not to throw the controller.

Free Wii For Me: Part One

PART ONE: Wii Didn’t Buy It For You

If you follow my blog with any regularity…..which I know no one probably does…you know I am a pretty enthusiastic gamer and gadget head. For the better part of the decade, all of my gaming has been done on Sony platforms, namely PS One, PS2, and PS3. I haven’t gotten into the PSP for the simple reason that I don’t even like carrying around a cell phone. A PSP is like three times the size.

I also didn’t want to start collecting various game consoles because I barely have time to play anything and I don’t have the money to spend on such things. However, anytime I can get one cheap or even free, well, I’m there. I’ve been trying in earnest to figure out how to do this for the Wii. Now, I can sit here and promote some Incentivized Freebie Website for a Free Wii. But, I know that it requires more work than I can commit to right now. It’s not that I don’t think those sites are trustworthy. After all, that’s how I got my PS3 for free. It was also the subject of my first ever Blog Post here at MAMS. But, I wanted to see if I could do it a little quicker. It took me almost four months to complete the process on the PS3 and I just don’t have the free time.

I really wanted to get a Wii but having to find one in stock or pay $300 for one was a keeping me from just going out and buy one. I also have a friend who has one and they confess that there isn’t a lot of Wii specific games out in the stores. Yeah, there’s Music and Wii Fit, but beyond niche gaming, Wii has just as much available content as my PS3. I had pretty much decided to wait until prices came down considerably. Of course, by then, I could have cashed in on my Free Wii program.

That was, until this last Christmas. I’m turning into my Father when it comes to Christmas presents. It would be easier to get a confession out of a prisoner at Guantánamo than a Christmas list from my Father. Now, when my wife or family asks me, I tend whittle down “what I really want” to “what I would be comfortable with if someone bought it for me.” I mean there are tons of DVDs and games I would love to have, but I hate to see someone pay for something I can find cheaper on my own. I don’t expect my family to sift through eBay or the bargain bins at media stores to find me a cheaper version of what I want. I also tend to become a little particular when it comes to movies. I try to be extremely specific in criteria by telling them middle tier pricing, which usually means “2 Disc Special Edition” and wide screen. This usually results in me getting something else from the list instead. Still, this past Christmas, I decided to be a little sarcastic and said to my wife and her Mother. “I want a Wii.”

I really didn’t expect them to take me seriously, but somehow that stuck in their head. I was serious. I did want one, but I didn’t want them to buy it at full price. When my wife got back from her annual all night shop fest with her Mother, she informed me that there was one Wii left at the store and they bought it. Before I could feign modesty and inform her that she wasn’t supposed to buy me one, she let on that it wasn’t in fact for me. It was for my Father-in-Law. I was a little surprised, to say the least. And it’s not like they just decided to get it for him, spontaneously. He actually asked for it.

To understand what we’re dealing with here is to provide you with a little background on my Father-in-Law. Now, I love the man dearly. I mean my wife’s parents have done more than I can say to help us out. They are extremely generous and a riot. That being said, my Father-in-Law isn’t exactly technically inclined. Well, that’s not an accurate statement. He is a retired technician and is working part time for a company doing contract and prototype work for the government. Test bench work and such. He’s very smart when it comes to mechanics. He’s also a skilled craftsman and has picked up the bass guitar in the last three years. In all, that’s not bad for a 70 year old. But, he’s a bit of a novice on things that involve microchips and small electrical components. He’s constantly messing up the settings on his television remote and the extent of his gaming capabilities is an old NES with Duck Hunt up at his hunting camp.

Needless to say, I am going to have to help him with this thing. It’s kind of like having to train someone new in your job because you are being let go. But, I will be more than happy to set up and teach him the Wii. It might be the only way I get one, for now. Just to show you how much of a good sport I am, I bought him Tiger Woods 2009. Now, if I could only get him to take it out of the box. It’s now the middle of January and it’s still in the closet.

In Part Two, I’ll explain how I intend to get one for free or very cheaply..

Money can't buy you happiness, but you can Buy it Now on eBay

Part One of a series entitled, If I Were a Rich Man.

Like most grown ups, who came of age during the Alex P. Keaton, Gordon Gecko, and Reaganomics fueled capitalism era known as the 80's, I had a desire to be rich. Of course, I had no ambition to do anything to get rich other than scratch a ticket or make nice with a well-to-do old person and then just wait it out. Unfortunately, life is not like an 80's movie, which I feel is such a bummer. Can you imagine? One day, you’re a minor league pitcher in Jersey, playing for the Hackensack Bulls, and the next one you inherit $30 million dollars in which you have to spend every dime in 30 days to inherit $300 million. The things you could do in 30 days only to realize you have 10 times that amount waiting at the end of the month.

We've all played that "what if" game when we were younger. Hell, I do it on a regular basis when I walk around my home looking at what needs to be done, what I can afford to get done, and what I'd love to really do if money was no object. In grade school we would gather around a sheet of paper and play MASH to decide our financial and marital fates. Those of us with Rain Man like mentality could figure out how to render the most desirable outcome hoping to change our fates and not wind up living in a shack, married to the smelly kid, towing around 5 kids in a Brown Ford, and working as a garbage collector.

See, I misspent my youth, not on sports or honing my studies, but on scheming to make it rich. First I decided I was going to become a stock broker, buying and selling my well to financial freedom. During my college years I had various entrepreneurial endeavors going at once. Several times throughout the year, poster vendors would set up shop in the lobby of the dorms our outside of the Student Union hawking their wares. For $12 or $20 you could have a classic black and white poster of Jim Belushi wearing a college sweater or the ever popular brightly colored poster of your favorite alcoholic drinks and their ingredients. Of course if you were the more pretentious of college student you had the Van Gogh Starry Night poster or The Mosaic Poster of Bob Marley smoking a fat one. I, too, dropped about $25 on both the "Briefcase Full of Blues" and the famous Reservoir Dogs "walk" scene posters to adorn my walls all the while they developed blue adhesive putty stains that would decrease their resale value when I needed cash. I personally felt the posters were a little overpriced and saw the opportunity to sell movie posters at a cheaper price while netting me %100 profits. I combed the local video stores getting free movie posters and stockpiled them in my dorm room. With a third grade art degree and a computer account, I created a snazzy little ad to post all over campus. I made probably somewhere in the realm of $40 which pretty much covered beer and pizza for a couple of weeks.

Top 10 Most Cliché College Dorm Posters of All Time

Next, I answered some ad in the school newspaper that promised huge amounts of cash by just passing out fliers. I paid $20 for the packet that gave piss poor photocopies of scams and pyramid scheme fliers. All I had to do was pass them out affixed with my phone number and when someone called me; I sent them out the scam program and kept a percentage of the cost. Again, because of my student computer account, the only investment I had to make was the initial buy in of $20. I could use the computer labs to reproduce the fliers and just wait for the phone to ring. Unfortunately, I developed a sense of conscience and began reading the crap that was contained on the fliers. I knew the programs were worthless and targeted towards people who had an overwhelming desire to get rich quick, people like me. I ate the $20 and tossed the packet.

During the summer months while I toiled away in an amusement park for minimum wage, I orchestrated a tee shirt sale for my department that consisted of over 100 people. I paid one of the park caricature artists to draw an amusing scene that depicted the trials and tribulations of our jobs. I took it to a local print shop that handled silk screen printings for local sport teams and finagled a heck of a volume discount based on pre sale numbers. Then I figured out a cheap price for the shirts with just enough mark up to cover my expenses and netted my a few dollars for my trouble. I figured out that the first year I ended up selling about $600 worth of shirts and the second year sales jumped to an even grand. Still, I didn't see a large profit because I didn't want to cheat my friends and coworkers out of their money.

Finally, I gave up the schemes and settled on my collegiate career in Theater Arts, because quite frankly, I really did not have any marketable skills besides acting. I tend to think I was pretty good, too. I had it all planned out. I would finish up college, work the summer stockpiling money, and then make my way across this great nation of ours to Los Angeles where I would instantly be discovered and given my own sitcom and blockbuster movie deal with sequels to keep me busy into my 40's. What I realized was that I really didn't like the politics and backdoor dealings of Hollywood and I didn't want to starve for my art becoming a waiter to pay the bills on my less than one bedroom apartment over a biker bar, tucked ever so snuggly between a pawn shop and a tattoo parlor. So, I never left for L.A. Instead, I opted for staying here in good old Southwestern Pennsyltuckey and just became part of the working force...as of all things a waiter. Actually, I started out as a bartender.

After college graduation I worked on an assembly line assembling rear projection screen televisions. You could say I worked in television, putting the mirrors on the casings. Then I had a slick idea, I would start flipping bottles of spirits like Tom Cruise in Cocktail. So, I left the assembly line and began working my way through bartending school while I tended to paint balls and golf balls at a nearby recreational park. During the day, I would learn about parfaits and high balls while at night I worked for minimum wage (a slight downgrade from the television assembly line) getting run over by brats in go karts. After completing my grueling two week course at bartending school, I flipped through the job leads, and set out to make my fortune schlepping drinks. I foolishly put in my two weeks notice at the golf course and concentrated on looking for that job that promised Cocktails and Dreams. I ended learning a very valuable lesson that summer. No one was willing to hire a bartender right off the street with no experience, no matter how much they were trained. I didn't even get to flip any bottles. That was a separate course that cost a few hundred dollars and I already dropped $500 on the bartending school.

Luckily, I had the kind of parents that let me live with them post college and pre life long career. I finally got a job working as a bartender in the banquet department of a hotel. We made more than minimum wage and tips were under the table. Soon, I moved out of my parents' place and into one of my own. While, I didn't live high on the hog, I always had money for food and rent. Eventually, I went from being a bartender to being a banquet captain, which allowed me the opportunity to work morning shifts and gave me more money. Through the good fortune of knowing....er dating the right people, I was able to leave the hotel for greener pastures. In three years I had gone from having no income to making almost $25k a year. In all those years of scheming to get rich, I turned up nothing but nickels and dimes. Yet, by having patience and doing a little work, I went from having no job, to $7.50 an hour as a banquet captain to $12.00 an hour as a customer service representative. It didn't stop there, either. In another 5 years I managed to get promoted three times. I now have a house, two cars, and some of the basic luxuries of home. I got them all just by working. Of course, I now have a daughter and it throws a huge wrench into the works.

Oh yes, expenses will mount up and I've been back to my wily ways of not so much getting rich, but making extra cash to cover expenditures. I've done it all from trying to sell pithy t-shirts and buttons adorned with this blog's logo. I tried to get in on the Tickle Me Elmo craze ywo years ago by buying a couple of them, hoping to turn around and throw them on eBay when supplies ran low around Christmas. I ended up getting stuck with two Elmos for over a year. Everyone had the same idea and instead of there being no supply and a huge demand in retail outlets, there was a huge supply and little demand on eBay. I ended up selling them with some creative auctions that told the story from my wife's point of view. She was extremely agitated by the fact that I spent money on these things and couldn't sell them. The anecdotal listings struck a chord with some folks who were willing to bail out a disgruntled housewife, but not a stupid husband the year before. I had got the idea from another eBay ad about worthless Pokemon cards that netted a few hundred dollars based on the listing being written from the point of view of a frazzled mom in the grocery store with her kids.

Let's see, there was also the idea about selling "Get Rich Quick" and "Money Making Home Business" eBooks on eBay for a dollar a piece with the ability to reproduce at no cost. No, of course, I didn't buy them. A simple search on Google revealed a treasure trove of inexperienced webmasters that left their index directories wide open for me to pilfer the .pdfs from and post up for auction. Hell, I've even resorted to selling nothing on eBay. That's right, nothing. I did some research on Mystery Auctions and found that people were willing to spend a dollar or two on "digital envelopes." The digital envelopes "happen" to contain a word describing a dollar amount and that gets paid to the buyer through their PayPal account. Different monetary amounts are scattered throughout hundreds of these "envelopes" ranging from fifty cents to five dollars.
Everyone who bought an "envelope" stood to make at least 30% of their investment back while some actually made 500%. Now, this was all designed so that the amount in the envelopes was always less than the total cost for all available envelopes and the concept of the "mystery envelope auction" was more about giving and receiving positive feedback while offering the chance to make back five times what you spent. While somewhat scam worthy, I never stole money from anyone. I always clearly worded the auctions so that everyone understood the concept while not violating eBay policies. Over the last few months eBay has cracked down on these auctions and I reaaly don't want to risk losing my account over the $20 I would make per auction. During my heyday with it, I ran quite a few auctions and was able to raise $100 to buy my PS3. Again, I didn't buy it for full price, I used a mehtod from what's called an "Incentived Freebie Website" to get it for 1/4 the cost. I detailed all this in my first entry and as you can see I have listed a few along the side of my blog.

So, there it is. I've spent my life looking for an easy route to fame and fortune when the only real wealth has been derived from having a family and doing honest work. Who knows, in another 5 years I could be the CEO of a fortune 500 company.....or I'd be willing to sell you information on how to become one for little to no money on eBay. Check my feedback!

Do you want a FREE iPhone? So do I.

Just click here and follow the instructions. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Here we are. My first ever blogpost on the blogging, blogosphere. Blog me up the blog! How about it? Are we having fun yet? Sorry, had to get that business out of the way. I am in no way shape or form a big blogger but I thought I would vernture into the realm to get a few ideas rattling around in my nugget. First off, let's sell something. Because, that's why we do this, to make money, right?

So, what's up with the title? Ahh, yes. Last year, I got involved with what are called IFW's or Incentivized Freebie Websites. I wanted to get a PS3 and didn't want to spend $400 on one. I'm a new father and the pretty much the sole provider for my family, so I wasn't about to go shelling out $400 for something I'll get to play maybe once a week in between bottles and diapers. That's right, even though I am the "man" of the house, I do my share of dirty diapers and feeding of the little one. Why? Because, I'm a sucker. Actually, I want to be involved with my daughter as much as possible. But, now and again, it's nice that she takes those 2 hour naps allowing me to go pickup hookers, run from the cops, and blow up random cars all in the name of mindless entertainment ala Grand Theft Auto. This little gem of a drug hooked me into buying my PS2 when GTA III came out and with GTA IV on the near horizon, I wanted my PS3 ready and waiting for nap time.

Now why am I talking about a PS3 when this little dity is all about the iPhone? Because, I already got my PS3 and am working on another piece of geek gadgetry. That's right. I got the PS3. In the IFW world, they always advertise getting your PS3 or whatever for free. This is where you hook many and lose all. Everybody who sees the word free will instantly click and sign and pay... Wait, PAY? I thought it was free. Actually, it is entirely possible, yet highly probable that you will get anything for free in this world...except a dirt nap. Yet with these odds, it is still possible to do so. Let me explain.

I go to a site that promises a free iPhone. All I have to do is sign up for a free account. Try out.....pay attention here becuase this is important.....try out one of the website's offers through various vendors, complete the requirements, sign up 10 or more friends, and receive my free iPhone. Now, remember I said, pay attention? Good, that's where it no longer stays free. You see, in order for this or any other IFW to send you the iPhone, they need to secure so many referrals in order to get paid. The retailers, numbering in the hundreds all have an agreement with the IFW. They pay the IFW for every person who signs up and completes the requirements set forth by them. For an example, I used Stamps.com. This website offers a free trial for a month and $5.00 in free stamps just for trying out the service. All you do is sign up with your credit card and a pending charge sits on your account for 30 days or whatever the billing cycle is. After you complete the requirements of the trial and cancel your account. The IFW recognizes that you've completed part one of the needed steps to get the iPhone.

Sounds confusing, huh? It is, and that is where people get hopelessly lost and decide to cut their losses. Let's try and make this a little clearer.

1. I sign up at a site called http://www.myfreewhatever.com/. As of right now that site doesn't belong to anyone. They are offering a free iPhone if I sign up for a free trial at Stamps.com. I get a unique referral link to use for my friends.
2. I sign up for the free trial at Stamps.com
3. I print $5.00 in free postage.
4. After a month, I cancel the service.
5. I get credit on http://www.myfreewhatever.com/ for completing the Stamps.com trial.
6. I sign up 10 friends and they do the above steps using my referral link. www.myfreewhatever.com/index.php?ref=12345
7. I somehow convince, torture, shanghai, pay 10 people to do the above.
8. All of the vendors who got completed trials pay http://www.myfreewhatever.com/ $XX.00 for each referral. They use that money to send me my iPhone.

It sounds like a lot of work, huh? It is. I signed up for a PS3 site in August. I completed the trial by September and it took until Decemeber to gather up enough referral signups to get my PS3. At first, I did what any n00b would do. I posted an ad on eBay. After all, that's where I got the idea. Man, I nearly sank the ship right there. I copied and pasted an ad and changed the link in hopes of getting all my refs in a week. Truth be told, I got 20 sign ups but no one completed an offer. I created an ad with tear off strips promoting my long ass URL which got another 3 or 4 signups, yet still no completed offers.

I started getting really frustrated. I was ready to be like everybody else and just give up. Of course, I'm stupid for that. I want to drag this on as long as possible. Then I joined a couple of message boards devoted to IFW's and freebies. Right off the bat I learned that using eBay was considered spam and could cause me to violate terms of service......like anyone reads those...and would cancel my account. I learned a lot of things about how to go about getting signups. In essence, I learned that I could pay people as little as $15 to signup and complete the process. I went from getting the PS3 for free to having to pay for it. I resigned myself to the idea that if I really wanted this to work, I should invest say $100 in the effort. Any more than that and I agree that I need my head examined. After all, the website said it would be free. Technically, they were right. The free trial didn't cost me a dime. I cancelled before it posted to my account. Had I been a little more aggressive and completely stopped working at my 9-5 job and devoted more time to collecting referrals, I could have done it. But, I wanted it NOW!

So, I started posting in the sections that allowed me to advertise and offered to pay people for signing up at my site. I even offered to trade links for other free items on the outside chance that I may come back to them later. Soon, sign ups started pouring into my site and little green checkmarks began appearing next to the names. I became excite because I was finally getting somewhere. I paid these folks money through PayPal to signup and try out the site and now these people have these....wonderful.....little....RED...X's...next to their......name. What the hell, just happened? Maybe, I should have made a mental note when these people communicated to me using broken english and insited I PAY NOW. That's right, I ran into a group of referral brokers. Usually, they are from outside the US/Canada area and pose as your everyday freebie junkie. They answer your ad and offer to do the site using the least amount of adjectives as humanly possible in communicating. Then, they pay a fraction of what you offer to some person with an internet connection to go on the site and sign up. After that, they move onto the next person and repeat the same process using the same site and same vendor....a no no in some IFW's. If you sign up for a free iPhone with one site, depending on their structure, you usually cannot repeat the site again. Likewise, if you use Stamps.com to complete the requirements for an iPhone site, you cannot complete Stamps.com for say a Wii site. The vendors won't recognize new interest and people are likely to just try and fly leaving the vendor high and dry.

After all was said and done and I managed to get $0.20 back from my scam artists through PayPal, I noticed that I had enough referrals for a PS3. I placed my order and within 14 days, I had a PS3 sitting on my front porch complete with a game of my choice. I ended up spending $150 on the site and made $50 back from someone who screwed up in my favor. Then, the kicker, my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Usually, I hated having to tell her what to get me, because I never know. I made an offhanded comment, "How about $100 for a PS3?" She wrote me a check.

So, there you have it. I did get the PS3 for free......kinda. Now, I'm going back and trying to get the iPhone. Well, actually, I have no need for an iPhone. They're way too expensive to manage. I've heard the horror stories about the bills. But, the IFW site that is offering the iPhone also has an option to choose $490 or $580 in PayPal cash instead. The way I figure it, I can make roughly $200-$300 using the same method I did to get the PS3.

Now that you've read this whole blog entry and are bleeding from the eyeballs, I will offer you the proof of this venture.

This here is the picture of my PS3 box lying on my spare bedroom floor. Ugly carpeting, huh?

Here's a screenshot of the site I used showing I completed all requirements. Note, I did change the link because I am no longer accepting signups since I completed the site. If you really want to sign up, you'll be able to figure out the address.

Quick shot of the little green checks and red X's. They're magically delicious. I blurred the email addresses to protect from spam.

Finally, the clincher. The Amazon slip from the parent site shipping my PS3. Again, I've blurred out my address as to protect angry mobs from showing up at my door.