about all these new free deal websites

I'm starting this thread because of the multiplication of free deals websites that are based on either the RAFS project script or phpbb. While I'm not questioning here whether these deals are legit or not, I'd like to point to some potential issues with them that I think everyone should be aware of before joining. The main issue has to do with how much start-up capital the owner puts in these deals. We've started discussing this at our website and on others and I'll just paste here what I've already said. I think we could all benefit from starting a discussion here about this new type of free deals that now appear on a daily basis.

[quotebd53b0780b]We just started a discussion about these on our board and our conclusion so far is that unless the owner puts a few thousand dollars in it, it just won't work. In addition, when they don't have any start-up capital at all, well run conga lines or conga circles can just kill these budding deals in no time they just won't have the money to follow up on the demand for gifts that successful congas would create. And it seems to be the case with most these websites, at least a couple of them, I think, are run by high school kids who invested just the money for the script. And the fact that they advertise their websites on forums that have conga lines demonstrates how little they understand what they're getting into... It's like a financial suicide.

In order to survive they're left with very questionable strategies, like not giving credit to people who did sign-up for an offer. Typical answers to support tickets opened by experienced people who have completed several other free deals

[quotebd53b0780b]I rechecked and I don't have any notice of you doing the offer. You will have to do another offer.[/quotebd53b0780b]


[quotebd53b0780b]If you didn't receive credit for this offer then you must have done something wrong.[/quotebd53b0780b]


[quotebd53b0780b]I don't have any record of you doing this offer. I can't give you credit for it if I don't get paid.[/quotebd53b0780b]


Because they end up in a situation where, because they can't even send order for half of the completed people, they'll start playing in a very unfair way. Or, if you want to assume they're honest, either there's a bug in the script or the advertisers are scamming them.[/quotebd53b0780b]

Please, let us all know what your opinion about all this is. Comments from the owners are also very welcomed.

I agree with you, l0th. No startup money means that this site owner has to sit on their hands and wait for the advertiser's checks to roll in. Even if the site owner has the best of intentions, the users are going to get screwed over.

Unless you can invest the money to send out the products as soon as people earn them, EVERYONE is going to be sitting through the long waits that Gratis just managed to abolish.

thanks CG, I'm glad I have support for this thread here. I really think we need to treat this question globally because there are just too many new sites popping-up right now and the amount of offers people can sign-up for is really limited. At this point, I think I'll just save my sign-ups for a new Gratis, OfferCentric, or 'tech' site.

I won't give any sign-up to any of these deals before at least two batches of orders for [b601adc7fdd]all[/b601adc7fdd] the people who completed their requirements are sent. I think that's the least time we can wait before we're sure the deal is legit [b601adc7fdd]and[/b601adc7fdd] the owners have the necessary financial back-up to keep it running. None of them has done that so far on freesounddock.com I got completed before the first batch of orders was sent and my order # is 27, so I have to assume the owner sent orders for less than half of the completed people (I think he sent 10 orders, maybe 12).

Yeah, I'm saving my signups for Gratis sites mainly, and OfferCentric if they come out with something I lireallyli want. I'd really like users to refrain from posting every single "free" site that comes out, because I don't want this site to become cluttered with that kind of stuff. I know all of us that work on the site/chatroom take pride in it being a good source for valid info, so I don't want people to start associating the forums with links to scam sites.

I couldn't agree more 10th. As soon as I saw the announcement of the RAFS project I got nervous. I wasn't nervous because of possible competition, but because I don't want a few bad sites to give the free gift business in general a bad name. People have no idea how much work free sites are.

First off, the startup capital is a must. You don't just have to wait 1 month to get your check, you actually have to 2 months. i.e. you will get your check from November at the end of December. Start your site on November 1st, and you need to wait until the end of December. We actually were under budget with our startup capital. We started off with about $25,000 set aside just for gifts, and ran out of money within 5 weeks. We now have over 500,000 users, and have shipped out everyones gift up to December 10th or so. Also, with so many users comes a lot of customer service. I would guess that I spend a total of 6 hours a day answering emails, and doing live customer support.

There are way to many PHP cookie cutter sites out there that shouldn't be. Many of the owners of these sites haven't thought this through. They got the script, put in some pictures of the products, and launched. I would be very cautious before joining.

tcoop25,

it's great to have you in this discussion for several reasons. I have only good things to say about your websites I joined tech4free and got my iPod at my door less than 10 business days later (granted, I was among the first ones and things are certainly not that fast now), and you guys have been very helpful each time I or members from my board had support requests. So yeah, it's great to have the input of someone who successfully started one of these deals while there was already some serious competition (Gratis and OfferCentric).

It's also great from you because you give us some figures here. We'd been wondering how much entry capital would be necessary to start a deal like this and, while we were quite sure that investing just $100 was certainly not enough, I wouldn't have expected such a high figure as the one you give us here.

That's one more reason not to trust these websites most of them start with no money at all (I know one owner was even in debt before getting started and hopes to use the website as a way of paying back his negative balance...) and the best case is one who has set $2000 aside for this.

I also agree, people opening this kind of free sites don't know what are they getting into. I know most of them have really good intentions and want it to work but the demand is to high at the beggining for their little starting capital. At the beginning is when most people get completed due to the congas specially the circles in which no one waste referrals and that's when they can't handle it and start not giving people credit in order for them to get some money to keep up their sites.

I also want to thank tcoop25 for sharing his thoughs and experiences with us. The numbers he posted for the starting capital are extremely high and if he's saying that he run out of it in 5 weeks I don't want to know what this PHP and RAFS sites owner will do with just a couple thousand set aside for this.

On a side note we opened a poll asking people which free sites they liked better and the Tech4Free sites are on top of even OC so you (tcoop25) should be proud of yourself for doing such a great job. BTW, I got my ipod from tech4free today. Thanks!!!!!!

At www.techgadgets4free.com they are running on a 2.5K Capital, you think thats enough?

That site looks like CRAP. I don't trust any free sites built on PHPbb

here's a post from Jeff who runs freesounddock.com (that I believe to be the oldest and most popular of the forum-based deals)

[quoteced6c5439c]10 were sent in the last batch, and I've sent out 3 more already from RAFS money (plus all iStuff orders from the RAFS money). My next check should support 16 orders, but I am going to try to pay for the rest out of my pocket.[/quoteced6c5439c]

He posted this yesterday, so it looks like he'll keep sending out orders but that it will actually [bced6c5439c]cost[/bced6c5439c] him money to keep up with the people completing their requirements.

He's send out orders for order numbers 1 to 13 since last month. Someone else just posted his order number was 32, so Jeff would have to send orders for at least twice the number of people he did last time. If that increase remains stable over time (that would mean 40 $300 orders to send out next month), I don't really see how he's going to keep up with the demand. Unless he can keep paying for the orders the check from the advertisers doesn't cover....

In any case, it seems like the advertisement for the RAFS project script should be revised where it says

[quoteced6c5439c]Those sites run smoothly and make a great amount of profit[/quoteced6c5439c]

It should at least say that the owner shouldn't expect to make a great amount of profit in the first few months (if ever).

Thanks for keeping up with the updates l0th, very helpful and I'm sure you've discouraged more than a few starry eyed kids

thanks.

actually, I don't intend to discourage everyone. On the contrary I mean to encourage people to put a few thousands bucks in those deals before getting started.

Certainly. I meant you may have discouraged a select group that may not have been successful due to their lack of capital. If I felt like I had the time and money I'd be getting into it too...but I just dont.

Whats wrong with the php bb type sites? It's just been a few sites that have come out that have given it a bad name all together. The owner of the pocketpcs4free, cellphones4free, videogames4free, (and soon to be) giftcards4free has made a big profit using this script Would you feel more secure joining a site with a totally new layout and script, knowing that the person has some idea of what he's doing instead of buying the one that everyone uses?

I feel more secure joining a website in which the owner has put some significant start-up capital. I've received all the gifts for all the Gratis, OfferCentric and 'tech sites' I have joined. I've been completed for a month at freesounddock.com and my order will be sent out depending on how much money the owner can take out of his pocket. It seems like the money he made from his websites only covers about half of the orders that should be sent and it also looks like this ratio is now going down. He even had to send the iPod photo he got from Gratis to the only person completed on freeipodphotos (there are quite a few others that have one or two yellows that are strangely not credited for the offer they signed-up for)... How ridiculous is that?

I wish I could help it, but it seems to me that because the owners of most these websites don't have the money to follow up on completed people some are now resorting to very strange policies for giving credit (or rather, for not giving credit and pretend the script can't be wrong when you open a support ticket). At this point I think they'll have just a few options very soon

_ close the website
_ put a lot of money in from their pocket
_ give credit to 90% of your referrals, regardless of whether or not they did something wrong, so that they can still receive as much money as possible from advertisers and send as few gifts as possible.

Now, you can ask how Gratis acts different. You're right. I think Gratis resorted (and still resorts) to a completely arbitrary hold policy to prevent people from getting their gifts or at least to create delays. But Gratis has at least some capital how many gifts did they send out in the past two weeks? I'd say a lot. If they didn't, I bet the first and only person to receive his gift from freeipodphotos would still be waiting...

[edit [quote44e0151821]The owner of the pocketpcs4free, cellphones4free, videogames4free[/quote44e0151821] Please give us a link to some proof anyone received anything from these websites. If that could be more than a couple people, that would be great]

Gratis is getting worse, it is just horrible now.

[quotea58c908e68="l0th"][edit [quotea58c908e68]The owner of the pocketpcs4free, cellphones4free, videogames4free[/quotea58c908e68] Please give us a link to some proof anyone received anything from these websites. If that could be more than a couple people, that would be great][/quotea58c908e68]

I meant FreeGamingStuffli
On the freegamingstuff, he sent out the first batch about 3 weeks from launching the site and shipped over $2,000

I don't know about the pocketpc's site, but I know he's shipped well over $1,000

The cellphone site is too new, and not enough completions to ship yet.

thanks for the info blingking.

Is this based on info from the websites owners themselves or are there customers posting proof anywhere?

[quotea7504d8fb2="l0th"]thanks for the info blingking.

Is this based on info from the websites owners themselves or are there customers posting proof anywhere?[/quotea7504d8fb2]

I've been talking to the owner way before he started this and he had a good idea of what he was doing. The freegamingstuff hasn't arrived for anyone yet, but should before christmas. I got the figuires from talking to him on aim a couple days ago. And someone on gearlive (I think Gohan) got paypall ($450) from pocketpcs4free