Free Skin Care
About
A good friend once said to me that in the skin care and diet industry is where you’ll find the most products that does not deliver on their guarantees. She does rather make a good point. With so many skin care and diet products out all promising the same great benefits, its really hard to tell which really does work and which doesn’t. Also, their might not be a clear answer since not every one’s bodies and skin are the same. Skin care products that may work well for someone might not work at all for others.
While we usually tend to buy health care products from brands we have heard of before, either by friends or in the media, a lot of their fame might be from good marketing rather then from the quality of their products. A real eye opening piece for me was a story on Dateline on NBC. Dateline examined the process and how easy it was to make a skin care product with miraculous claims and use infomercials to help market it. They called their made up product, Moisturol , a skin moisturizer in a pill.
The twist is, they knew the product wouldn’t work since they filled the pill with Nestle’s Quik. Yes, the chocolate milk powder. However, Dateline’s goal was to see how they could put together a very convincing infomercial with testimonies from supposedly satisfied customers and even a recommendation from a dermatologist for their product which wouldn’t work at all.
The people in the video giving the testimonies are pretty much paid actors. They do actually try the product, however given their position they of course only say good things about it. Even if they actually had something slightly negative to say about the product, you can be sure that the editors or producers of the infomercial would edit it out. The doctor recommending the product was not surprisingly paid to sponsor the product too. The doctor agreed for a $5,000 fee to endorse the pill without even seeing clinical studies or even testing out the pill before she spoke. So in the end, the point is that you can’t really believe what the marketers tell you.
With skin care and diet products their seems to be a new fad out or supposedly miraculous new product every now and then. You often hear of a new product that you make you look “ten years younger” on magazines or television. Afterwards the news and publicity just dries out. Most of the time, the reason is people actually went out and used their hard earned money to purchase this so called “amazing new product” and it didn’t work for them. Not too long afterwards though, you can be sure there will be another “revolutionary” new product out with a lot of media attention. Its the same with diets. You have all these publicity about the Atkin’s diet, the low carb diet, the cookie diet and what not and then you hear nothing about them. It just seems to be one fad replacing another.
This doesn’t mean that you should avoid buying skin care products. That would be crazy. Skin care is very important for women. As a mother of a teenage boy who is having problems with acne, I try to instill into him the importance of skin care. Unfortunately it seems to have little to no avail. For a lot of men, it seems they have much more “important” things to worry about. Such as who is going to win the Super Bowl or NBA Finals. I tried purchasing many different acne solutions for my son including both over the counter medication and prescription medicine. The effects are somewhat mixed. Some medication doesn’t seem to work at all and others seem to clear up some of his acne but they just ended coming back latter. Although, his lack of dedication to applying the medication daily as required probably played a part in the mixed results.
Obviously skin care doesn’t come cheap and requires a lot of trial and error. I personally spent a lot of money on products that seemd to have no effect at all. However, one thing I discovered is that a lot companies selling skin care, diet, and other health care related products online are actually giving out free trials. This isn’t just a small packet for a one time use but rather it is an entire anti-acne kit or enough moisturizing cream to last for a month or two. All you have to do is pay a small shipping fee and they would send you the free trial. The retail costs of actually purchasing these free trials can range from anywhere from $50 to over $100.
Now why would these companies be willing to give out their products for free? I figured that that a lot them either don’t have enough money to spend on making infomercials and having them air on television or buying full page ads in beauty magazines to attract customers to their products. Instead they rely on letting potential customers try out their product free in order to see how well they work (or in some cases maybe not) for them. Or maybe some companies may have the money , but a lot of cusomers are finally catching on and aren’t trusting the over the top claims made by the advertisers anymore. Therefore, these companies have to try something new.
Also, a lot of these companies have to rely on the Internet as a main source of distribution. They may not have enough bargaining power or enough production capacity to enter many boutiques and other retail stores. With so many health and skin care products available on the Internet, it makes it hard to differentiate their products from competitors. Therefore, in order to attract customers, they are willing to give out free trials.
Either way, us consumers end up better off. We are able to try out many different skin care and other health products for free. We only have to pay a very small shipping fee, usually it is less then ten dollars. If the product seems to work for us then we might buy another month for two after we used up the product or the trial period expires. If it doesn’t work then obviously we wouldn’t continue purchasing it.
I set up FreeSkinCare.net (with a lot of help from my son, I’m really quite computer illiterate in many areas) to provide information on skin care and also links and information to companies giving out free trials to skin care, diet, and other health and beauty related products. I hope you enjoy the site and find the information useful.
