Nine ways to get something for nothing!

With a bit of effort and ingenuity, you can get everything from music to cinema tickets for free!

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's clichés. "A watched kettle never boils" - rubbish, of course it does. It just feels like it takes longer.

Another classic is the idea that "you can't get something for nothing".

Of course you can! You just have to know how, and here in fact are nine somethings you can get for absolutely nothing but your sheer ingenuity!

1) Free cinema tickets

I used to love the adverts Orange ran for their Orange Wednesdays promotion, with the really obnoxious American guy trying to shoehorn the use of mobile phones into new film ideas.

Not such a big fan of the new ones with the green witch, but the fact remains: it's a great deal - every Wednesday, you can get two tickets for the price of one if you are an Orange customer. Plus, also on Wednesdays, you can get 2-for-1 pizza at Pizza Express and free doughballs or garlic bread!

And if you follow this link, you can get an Orange sim card, gratis! You even get £5 credit free, when you top-up by £10. So keep your existing contract, but use the Orange contract to get free cinema tickets!

2) Free texts and phone calls

Competition is rife among the mobile phone networks, to the extent that they are even offering free pay as you go sim cards! I've already mentioned the Orange deal above, but they are far from alone. Here's a selection of deals you can get your mitts on!

O2

You can get up to FOUR free sim cards at the moment from O2, each offering a different package in terms of free texts or calls. Have a look!

T-Mobile

Grab a T-Mobile sim, and you can get your hands on free weekend texts or calls!

Tesco

Tesco are giving away two free pay as you go sim cards, and will TRIPLE your credit if you put on £15! Check it out.

Vodafone

Apply direct on the Vodafone website for your free sims, which offer a range of cracking benefits depending on how much you top them up by, including free calls and texts at weekends.

3) Free money from poker sites

I love poker, and if you're any good, the rewards can be great. But thanks to cashback websites, you don't even need to be able to play to make money out of them!

Let's look at Quidco. If you deposit $25 (about £15) with poker site PKR, and then use up $10 (about £6) playing online, you get £40 cashback. You can then withdraw all your cash. That's £34 of free money, in anyone's book! (Plus you'd get to play some poker.)

That's easily the best deal I could find, but across both Quidco and Greasypalm there are quite a few casino website deals where you can make at least a £5 profit, just for registering and depositing some cash!

If you like that idea, whatever you do, make sure you don't get sucked into gambling for real. There's a reason these sites offer people such juicy incentives to join: to tempt you to stay and lose your life savings! So be responsible and stay away if you think there's any chance you will be tempted to start playing with money you cannot afford to lose.

4) Free cash

Of course, the uses of cashback websites go beyond simply getting money for signing up to poker websites!

If you do a lot of shopping online, for everything from clothes to electrical goods, then you really should sign up to one of the big cashback websites, and start earning from your spending. That's shopping you were going to do anyway, so why wouldn't you want to get money back?

To find out which site is best for you, have a read of Top cashback websites!

5) Free music

Each week iTunes has a free song for you to download. It's a great way to fill your iPod, and discover new music that you wouldn't necessarily have heard of!

If you don't have an iPod, or prefer to listen to music while at a computer, then download Spotify. It's absolutely free, and you have a massive choice of songs to listen to.

6) Free films

I signed up to LOVEFiLM earlier this year, and it's amazing.

You can get a 14 day free trial if you go direct to the website, but if you know people that already have a subscription, badger them for the promotional codes they get from each rental, and you can get even longer, up to 90 days absolutely free!

7) Free food

Say what you like about the credit crunch, but restaurants are now falling over themselves to give you free stuff in order to entice you in! Here's just a small selection of the deals on offer at the moment.

For more of the best restaurant deals, make sure you read The Frugal food round up!

8) Free loyalty card goodies

I have become an obsessive collector of Tesco Clubcard points in the last few months.

Recently I signed up to the Tesco Clubcard Credit Card, which I have discussed before. Not only does it offer 12 months of 0% interest on purchases, I also get 5 Clubcard points for every £4 I spend in-store. Combined with my normal Clubcard, I'm getting masses of points for exactly the same weekly shop!

Even better, Tesco is currently doubling up Clubcard vouchers in selected departments, while you can even get FOUR TIMES their value with Tesco's partners. For example, I have £35 in Tesco Clubcard vouchers, which can be used to buy £70 worth of wine, or even converted into more than 750 airmiles - enough to cover return flights to Dublin!

It's the same with Nectar points - you can rack them up in no time, and get tons of free goodies.

9) Free .... everything!

If you are determined to get absolutely anything you can, for absolutely nothing, then have a look at the freebie section on Gumtree.com. You can get everything from haircuts to desks, sofas to picnic tables, even pets like hamsters and terrapins!

Ok, so chances are you will have to go out of your way to collect the goods, but it is free after all.

I also like Freebielist.com, which sends weekly emails of top freebies available throughout the entire world, and bobsfreestuffforum.co.uk, a forum where freebie-lovers share details of their favourite freebies! The freebies section of hotukdeals provides a similar service.

And last but not least, let's not forget Freecycle and SnaffleUp, community 'recycling' sites where you can give away and get an amazing range of free stuff from other people in your local area. 

That's my top nine tips, but I'm sure you have more of your own. Let me know your freebie tips via the comment box below!

PS If you love freebies, you'll love our weekly Frugal emails: Frugal Friday, every Friday, and The Frugal food round up, every Saturday!

More: My favourite website freebies! | Feed five for a fiver...