Signing up for freebies, samples, or to print online coupons

I received a very good question from one of our readers today. She asked what to do when signing up for these deals. She stated she signed up for a freebie offer and started receiving tons of emails. She also asked how to get around this. Now she is new to couponing as some of you are and when I sent her the answers to her questions I decided to post to all of you some advise on the subject as well.

Here are a few things you need to know when you sign up for freebies, Samples, or to print online coupons.

• Make a 2nd email account- You will find that as you sign up for free products or contests, that you will start to receive A LOT of spam. But you will also get more offers for coupons, and other useful information. I would HIGHLY recommend that you take a few minutes and set up a 2nd email account(yahoo and google are good to use since they are free). This will ensure that your personal email account stays just that - personal.
• Don’t give out to much personal info- You will need to give them your name, address, phone and email. Many companies want a lot more info too, they want to know, birth dates, how many kids you have, and much more. They want this info to find out more about the people that are using their product. So if they ask how many kids I have I tell them, BUT if they ask their names, I will use a different name. I don’t think and I am sure you don't either that anyone needs to know what my kids names are, just for a free bar of soap. When they ask for my birthday I always give them the the correct month and year but I change the “real” day. This helps protect my personal info. NEVER give out your credit card or SS# for a giveaway, unless you have done a lot of homework and know its legitimate. If they ask for your phone number, unless you actually want telemarketers calling, don’t give the correct number. (When I started doing this I made the mistake of giving out my phone#. I used my mobile # and I had 20 calls in the first week.)

We hope this information has been useful and happy couponing. If you have any more questions or anything that may need to be addressed please email us. Remember, alot of valuable information from our website comes from you, our followers.

Thanks,
Melissa