Before you decide to dive headfirst into making money with Freebies, there are some terms you need know and learn the meaning.  There are several new words and acronyms relative to the freebie industry that you may not have heard of before.  The freebie trading industry has a language of its own, and knowing and understanding these terms will lead to your success. Here is a list of the most popular terms.

IFW Network: Stand for the networks that produces a series of IFW (Incentive Freebie Website). 

Affiliate: The middleman between the Offer Company and the IFW site. When you click on an offer it is redirected through the affiliate company and they are who gives us credit for completing the offers and pay the IFW for each credited lead.

Avatar: A user’s representation of himself or herself on a forum and other communities in the form of an icon/picture.

Thread: A page post on a forum. 

BUMP: BUMP stands for Bring Up My Post. Anytime someone posts in a thread, that thread goes to the top of the list and is more visible. You are allowed to BUMP your trade thread twice per day, so people take advantage of doing that.

CC: Credit Card. Most offers require the use of a credit card. There are some sites that are no-cc sites. However, these do not count towards your iTrader Rating at the Free Lunch Room Forum

Cookies: Parcels of text sent by a server to a web browser and then sent back unchanged by the browser each time it accesses that server. It is the means of communication between the offer sites and IFWs. They need to be transferred in order for you to get credited. Read more about optimizing your cookies here.

DIY: A “Do it yourself” site. These sites do not require you to refer anyone. You get incentives for just signing up and completing offers on your own. It isn’t as lucrative as referral based sites, but it is a way of making some extra cash.

FLR: Free Lunch Room – A trading forum that used to be sponsored by Project Payday. It is very “newbie friendly”.

CalyStyle 101: A Freebie Trading forum that offers great ressources and video tutorials on how to make money with freebies as well as affiliate earnings.

Forever Green/Repeatable: When a Freebie/IFW site is forever green/repeatable, it means that once you have met the offer requirements (gone green), you no longer have to complete any offers. You can continue to refer individuals and cashout as many times as you like. It’s a beautiful Thing. For a list of Forever Green/Repeatable sites, click here

Gone Red/On Hold: When a referral has gone red, that individual has violated one or more of the IFW’s Terms of Service, and his/her account has been put on hold until the issue is resolved. When this happens, the referrer reserves the right to a refund.

Green: When your referal has gone green, this means that they have signed up at a freebie site and completed the offer requirements of that particular site.

IM: Instant Messaging (IM) is a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text. The text is conveyed via computers connected over a network such as the Internet.

ISP: An Internet service provider (abbr. ISP, also called Internet access provider or IAP) is a company or business that provides access to the Internet and related services.

MCR: Manual Credit Request. If you complete an offer and didn’t receive credit, you can sometimes fill out a Manual Credit Request to the IFW and they will investigate it further. However, many sites do not allow this any more.

PM: Private message. When communicating with users via a forum (e.g. FLR), you usually use a built-in messaging system. This is referred to as sending a PM.

Prize: An incentive that freebie sites offer you in exchange for meeting the offer requirements and referring individuals to complete offers. Examples are iPods, computers, laptops, TVs and cash in your PayPal.

Referral Link: A link that is assigned to a particular individual that has their unique user ID so that they can send others as there referral.

TOS: Terms of Service.

TR: iTrader Rating (TR) shows the number of trades an individual has completed with other individuals at a certain forum (i.e. the Free Lunch Room, Anything4Free, Referral Swapper).

I will be upating this post with addition terms over time. If you have some terms you would like to add, or  you need additional explanation please leave a comment.

All right, after reading about the business of freebie trading, you are finally ready to complete offers?  To go green and make some money… GREAT! HOWEVER, there are some things that you NEED to know in order for you to get credit and turn green. Because If you do not get credit, you do not get paid. 

Why? 

One thing that you need to know is that the entire crediting process is all about COOKIES. Cookies are simple text files that get stored on your computer, and serves as a means of communication between sites. In order for the freebie site to know that you completed the offer, the offer site needs to transfer a cookie to your computer, which is then read by the Freebie Site and you get credited – a process that happens automatically.  Because affiliate company don’t know that you’ve completed an offer they won’t pay the Freebie site Network, then if the network is not paid, the referal won’t turn green… if the referal (you) doesn’t get is green he won’t be paid because the referer (me) won’t be paid by the Freebie Site.  (get the idea?)  GOOD!

In order for your computer NOT to act like a cookie monster and eat your cookies so that you don’t get credited, lets talk about what you need to do to set your browser up for crediting success. 

TIPS ABOUT COMPLETING OFFERS

1.  It’s a Good idea to use Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. Other browsers bring unnecessary issues.  (Firefox in the most suggest browser to use)
2. Set your browser to accept all cookies. 
3.  Disable any Popup Blockers and Anti-Virus programs.
4. Before completing your first offer, you must CLEAR COOKIES and re-login to the freebie site. Then complete the offer.
5.  After completing the offer, leave browser window on the confirmation page for 10 minutes. That will allow the browser record the confirmation page information…
6. If you aren’t credited instantly or within the specified time, do not panic. It takes a while sometime. Also, there is a risk that some offers will not credit there is no warranty. In some cases, you can submit a Manual Credit Request (MCR). However, most sites are moving away from this because of the amount of fraud that arises.
* NOTE: YOU DO NOT NEED TO CLEAR COOKIES BETWEEN OFFERS AS LONG AS YOU ARE WORKING ON THE SAME FREEBIE SITE. IF YOU START ANOTHER SITE, YOU NEED TO CLEAR COOKIES. SO ONCE AGAIN, LET ME EMPHASIZE, DO NOT CLEAR COOKIES BETWEEN OFFERS!

 That’s Pretty much it. As long as you have done the steps listed above, you should be fine. If you (for some reason) decide to use Internet Explorer, I have some instructions below on clearing cookies in Internet Explorer.

Clearning you Cookies with Internet Explorer
IF you choose to use any other browser these are the instruction to clear your cookies in Microsoft Explorer

Internet Explorer 6

·     Select “Tools” > “Internet Options” > “General”.

·     Under the heading “Temporary Internet files,” click on “Delete Cookies…”

·     Click “OK” for the “Delete all cookies in the Temporary Internet Files folder?” prompt.

·     Click “OK” to exit.

Also, I recommend that you start with free offers or offers that are inexpensive ($1 trials or so). If you do this, you will spend less than $5 to start, and everything else will be from your profits. I also recommend that you look for offers that usually credit instantly, or in a relatively short period of time.

 Happy Greening!

When deciding to jump into freebie trading the most common mistake is to start completing offers without being organized.  It is very easy to forget about trial offers we’ve completed and then being charged the full subscribtion monthly fee because we forgot to cancel before the trial ends. 

It is also fairly easy to spend to much in comparison to what we are being paid to go green.  Well, this is why I’ve putted togheter a simple and easy to use tool that I like to call “The perfect FreeTrader’s organisation sheet”. 

It will allow you to input all the required infos about the freebiesites you are working on, the amount you’re being paid, how much you pay for completing offers, some statistics on your trades on so on…  and it’s your’s for FREE!  YUP… simply leave a comment to request it and I’ll be glad to transfert it to you! 

So be good and work smart!