morning thoughts- freebies, giveaways, and surveys

It's winter, and everyone I know is either fighting an illness, or getting over one, or watching their spouse or kids do the same.  We've been pretty lucky in this house so far- a couple of colds, Tom had the flu but it only lasted about 24 hours, Mia's only had one ear infection.  Other than my sinus-and-double-ear-infection over the past week, our house has stayed relatively healthy... until yesterday.  Whee!  Charlie's sick, Tom thinks he's getting sick, I'm still getting over the afore-mentioned infectionpalooza, and Mia is just fine, thank you very much.  So far.  We're leaving for Florida on Valentine's Day, so I'm hoping everyone gets the sickies out of their systems NOW so we can have an awesome, relaxing, warm time.

Since we haven't been leaving the house much, I wanted to tell you about the mail I've been getting.  I sign up for a lot of freebies, Facebook giveaways and samples.  I always sign up for them using my maiden name, which gives me a false sense of security.  I have a junk email address I made on gmail that I use for any giveaways that I'm not really interested in.  That way, the company doesn't have my real email address and I don't have to go through the process of unsubscribing to all the spam.

In any given week, I usually get 2 or 3 product samples and a good number of coupons.  I also recently joined a consumer opinion panel that regularly emails me surveys.  Sometimes I'll get to the end of the survey and they'll ask if I'd be willing to test out a particular product and give them my feedback.  I've already received two full-size free products to test, which is great because the kids think it's fun, and both were products I either needed or would have bought if I had seen them in a store.  I earn points by doing all of these different surveys, and once I get a particular number of points I can redeem them for cash.  I really don't mind taking surveys, and I LOVE testing products, so it's really a win-win for me.  It's not lucrative, that's for sure, but getting the free products to test is worth it in my opinion!

The company I do these tests for is called Synovate.  Other than being a panel member, I'm not affiliated with them in any way, and I don't get anything if you sign up (they don't do referrals).  I just think it's a cool opportunity and I thought some of you might also enjoy it.