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April 16, 2006

I like Freebie Finder, but…

Michael Arrington

27 comments »

Freebie Finder, mentioned on LifeHacker last week, is a list of free offers, aggregated from from other websites. The only issue I have, and it’s a big one, is why hasn’t creator Andrew Cantino added a simple RSS feed for new free stuff that his engine has found?

Either way, its a fun site. I now have a bunch of free Lenny Kravitz MP3s and $5 Starbucks gift card. Cool.

Update: Andrew added a RSS feed for the site.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 16th, 2006 at 12:39 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. FreebieFinder at RipperDoc’s Clinic

    April 16th, 2006 at 8:51 pm

Comments

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  1. Jeff

    April 16th, 2006 at 1:37 pm

    I would think the three chunks of Ads by Goooooogle Ads might provide clues as to why no RSS…

  2. Don Wilson

    April 16th, 2006 at 1:39 pm

    Looks like it’s in need of a good layout too.

  3. Saul Weiner

    April 16th, 2006 at 2:01 pm

    It would be great to have a profile where you can state your preferences so that only the free things you care about are shown to you… like Zixxo

  4. Abhishek

    April 16th, 2006 at 2:12 pm

    Jeff,

    You are right about the ads for no RSS.
    However the Freebie guys can use services like Pheedo to take care of this.

    http://www.pheedo.com/

    I would like to see Michael’s opinion around RSS advertising.
    As the consumption of feed readers grow up the content providers have utilize innovative methods to keep making money using advertising within RSS.

    Abhishek

  5. Andrew Cantino

    April 16th, 2006 at 2:25 pm

    Ah, yes, the repeatedly asked for RSS feed! I’m actually working on adding an RSS feed as we speak (literally). It’ll be done in a day or so, with a few other new features.

    I’m glad you guys like my site!

    -Andrew

  6. Andrew Cantino

    April 16th, 2006 at 2:35 pm

    It does bring up the question, though, that if my business model is based on AdSense, how do I effectively monetize this if I give out RSS?

  7. Abhishek

    April 16th, 2006 at 2:38 pm

    Andrew,

    Check out this feed from New Scientist. They have ads built in using Pheedo.

    http://www.newscientist.com/fe.....nline-news

    You can try something like this.
    Dont forget to send me the 10% of RSS ad revenue for the idea ;-).

    Abhishek

  8. met

    April 16th, 2006 at 3:36 pm

    Why not fatwallet? (coz its not web2.0? :) )
    It has more people looking out for freebies.

  9. Chaz

    April 16th, 2006 at 3:36 pm

    Looks like they’ve added RSS now, via Pheedo. Very cool.

  10. met

    April 16th, 2006 at 3:37 pm

    forgot to post the link to the “free stuff” forum for fatwallet. It has RSS so you don’t have to visit the forums.

    http://www.fatwallet.com/forum.....p?catid=22

  11. Andrew Cantino

    April 16th, 2006 at 3:46 pm

    Et voila, RSS!

  12. Chris Yeh

    April 16th, 2006 at 4:43 pm

    The service should also have ratings and feedback so that people can indicate which ones are now closed.

  13. Josh

    April 16th, 2006 at 4:45 pm

    http://www.pheedo.com/f/freebie_finder

  14. Andrew Cantino

    April 16th, 2006 at 5:13 pm

    Chris, that’s in the works as well.

  15. Sam Davyson

    April 16th, 2006 at 5:43 pm

    How is this in any way Web 2.0?

  16. Cooleon

    April 16th, 2006 at 6:05 pm

    Don’t trust that Starbucks Connection website. They are not operated by Starbucks, and I think they are using Starbucks’ logo without permission.

  17. poe

    April 16th, 2006 at 6:09 pm

    sam, stop being such a party pooper 2.0! :)

  18. Gautam

    April 16th, 2006 at 7:57 pm

    Looks like this site needs some graphics.

  19. Jason Coleman

    April 17th, 2006 at 5:13 am

    Andrew, with regards to monetizing the site after RSS: I don’t think you’ll have as big a problem as you think. My guess is a lot of your click-throughs will still come from people accessing the site from a search engine.

    Also, the types of users who are likely to setup the RSS feed are probably not the types of users who click on ads as much anyway. One more point: I don’t know about other people, but because my Google homepage only shows the last three RSS items by default I still visit sites like TechCrunch and eHub occasionally (if not every day) because they produce more than 3 pieces of content per day. Your freebie finder is consistently producing > 3 finds per day.

    In conclusion: (1) You’ll still have search engine traffic. (2) People who setup feeds aren’t as lucrative as other users. (3) Some people who setup feeds will still visit the site. (4) BONUS: The publicity and word of mouth created by the RSS will probably draw more people to the site, more links to the site, and more PageRank.

    Good Luck.

  20. Sam Davyson

    April 17th, 2006 at 8:12 am

    Poe: Ok. It is just odd to see a site that doesn’t have all the Web 2.0 gimmicks. I mean that overally padded input forms. The non-pushable image buttons. The large text. The stars …

  21. Scott Kingery

    April 17th, 2006 at 9:56 am

    Here is a handy site I’ve been using for a while. I think the RSS feed is new. Not freebies but whats on sale at Frys:
    http://www.frys-electronics-ads.com/

  22. Mike

    April 17th, 2006 at 1:58 pm

    For UK readers, there’s http://www.bargainspy.co.uk which does a similar thing of gathering bargains (and feebies) from various places and aggregating them on a single site.

    Bargains/deals/feebies can also be voted on, which promotes them to the front page top-10.

    There is also RSS, email alerts for certain keywords (defined in a users profile) and a custom RSS feed per user based on their keyword list.

    However the keyword stuff hasn’t been released to the general public still.

  23. Andrew

    July 3rd, 2006 at 8:08 pm

    I just want to let people know that Freebie Finder has been updated significantly with categories, countries, comments, and freebie ratings:

    http://absurdlycool.com

  24. Josh (iFalconr)

    July 13th, 2006 at 11:14 pm

    This is a pretty cool site. Do you guys know how complicated it is to create something like this (which consolidates relevant RSS feeds). If Andrew reads this, I guess you would be the most qualified to answer. Thanks!

    iFalconr’s Smart Bargain Finder

  25. viking

    February 27th, 2007 at 11:36 pm

    why not stroll around some online discount deals depot, such as Fatwallet.com, Dealunioin.com, from which you can digg out some nice deals as well as free stuff , if you are lucky

  26. sage2

    February 28th, 2007 at 9:43 pm

    thanks, just got freebies from http://www.dealunion.com, since joined their promotion contest before Christmas!

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