Shameless

Not all that glitters is golden and not all that gives wins is sweepstakes.

There's a number of "participate in our _____ and get a free ____" (fill in the blanks yourself, I'm sure you've seen them all) but for the most part I have to say they are almost always outright scams or awful deals I simply don't bother with the things.

There are, however, what I'll call "daily usage" participation programs that, to me at least, seem worth while. I'm gonna touch on a few of them (very few) and if you're interested you should do me the favor of joining via the referral option if there is one. As is always the case every little bit helps.

First off let's talk about my current favorite - Club Bing (link)
Club Bing is Microsoft's best invention yet. Ideally it's used to help them promote use of their search engine Bing (I personally hate the search and see it as no better than their previous system but to each his/her own). What it REALLY is though is games - plain and simple. They have word searches, letter scrambles, crosswords and they constantly have new games coming and going. Every time you play a game you earn "tickets" with a max of 1,000 tickets a day.

Tickets can be turned in for prizes - of which there is a great abundance and various levels. It reminds me of playing skiiball at the old arcades... save up your tickets or spend them right away, whatever you'd like. They update the prizes constantly (ranging from silly things like lip balm to kind of great prizes like air miles, the GPS system or portable hard drives now available. It's entirely free to play, I've never had any spam from them, you can play as little or as much as you'd like, they even have double ticket days where you are rewarded with twice what you'd normally get, raising the daily limit to 2,000 tickets. (there's a double ticket day coming up in just 4 days!) Free games, free prizes (yes even the shipping is free)

I've hauled in loads from this and it just keeps coming. Easily the best out there.

Next up SwagBucks:
(link)
Alright, I'll admit, the link for this one is a referral link. Yup, if you sign up with my referral link (which I'd totally appreciate) I'll get some bonus points which would help me out. If not, whatever, still worth looking into.
SwagBucks is interesting, I'm new to using it but have had it confirmed to be fully legit. Basically your goal here is to collect SwagBucks to turn in for any number of rewards. The easiest way to do so (in my opinion) is to set their search engine (which is powered by Google and Ask anyway just do like me and don't click the sponsored results.) as your default. I only search maybe 15-20 times a day and I've been averaging 3 bucks a day. Not bad. You can pull in more for doing some keep up work, some site interaction, facebook and twitter posts etc etc... yes you even pull in points for referrals (hint, hint)
SwagBucks are then collected and you can choose when you'd like to turn them in and what prize you'd like to get in return. They also have LOADS of different stuff from baseball cards to giftcards to full out gaming systems... just all sorts of stuff. Currently I'm just sticking with the 45 Swagbucks for $5 Amazon.com gift cards. I think it's among the best conversion rates available for anything I'd care to win from them. All I do is search with their search engine and I get Amazon.com spending money. Easy, quick, free. Win.

Lastly there's Lockerz
(link)
Lockerz is another collect to turn in style site... currently it looks to be in the beginning stages still and there's really very few ways to pull in points ("PTZ" as they call them. creative eh?) They have a referral system that gives increased rewards once you've had 20 people join under you, and they also have a daily question you can answer for 2 PTZ per day, you can also earn PTZ by shopping through them, but I don't recommend it.
They have a laundry list of rewards but currently there don't seem to be any that are actually AVAILABLE (to a less than 20 invite member at least) except some blah wallpapers. Still, with them being a newer site, it may pay to get on the boat now. Free to join... oh but you haveto be invited by an existing member. If you'd like to join just let me know.