Swag highlight: Influenster

Living the good life is fun, but very expensive. Living in a big city like Chicago makes the cost even more. But one can still live that champagne life on a beer budget if one tries hard enough. A way to help offset that cost is through swags. Swag stand for Stuff We All Get. And I usually get them at parties, events and the internet. Thanks to the internet, anyone can sign up and get these things mail to them free of charge. If you want small samples, go to the free stuff page of fatwallet and slickdeals and simply sign up. The really GOOD stuff requires an exchange of online work, mostly through Word of Mouth Marketing. Bzzagent, Crowdtap, PinchMe and Influenster are my top three sites for such things. However, I've been slacking on keeping active on these sites. I'm going to try to make more of an effort and I'm going to start with Influenster.

I love Influenster - they provide the members with boxes of sample products based on their area of expertise, and in exchange, members promote these products via social media such as facebook, twitter, youtube, and other blogs such as this one. I've been a member of Influenster since October 2, 2011 and currently have an impact score of 1852, which is high, but not the highest.

I've received 2 boxes since I joined. The last one was a year ago and one of the items- the Rimmel Scandalous Mascara- was reviewed with this blog post. (Sorry about the bad eye-makeup job. I love makeup but am nowhere near professional-caliber yet, sadly.) What I love about the boxes is the variety of items in it. That last box had chocolate, biscuit, insoles, nail polish and mascara. I consumed each of them with such glee!

Influenster RoseVoxbox

Not only do you receive these things, but are enticed to receive more with rewards for doing certain tasks and actions. I loved the eye makeup, so I made sure to win those rewards, and ended up with more Rimmel!

Like I've mentioned, I haven't been using these sites in a while, and since I last used it, Influenster had a site overhaul. I'm still trying to understand it, and had just spent a good hour answering "Snaps" questions. Hopefully those answers bring some more VoxBoxes!!!

Another change to Influenster is their new InfluensterApp, available in both Apple and Android. I downloaded it and perused it for a bit. One major difference from the full web site is the upc product scan capability. I scanned a few makeup items, and 98% of the items I scanned appeared on the screen, showing me reviews, and prices, and where-to-finds info. I can totally see this coming in handy. Like when I'm at a friend's, and seeing an item and wanting to buy it so I'll use it to locate the stores and prices. Also, if I'm in the store and wanting to know how well it works, I can simply scan it and read the reviews. It's so useful! I don't know why they didn't think of this earlier!