Free iPods have come a long way from humble beginnings just over a year ago. Banking the hottest MP3 player around, websites began offering iPods for free as promotional items.

The most famous of these models offers a free iPod to anybody who complete some type of affiliate offer (signing up for a trial of something in most cases) and then referring 5 friends to do the same. Thousands upon thousands of iPods have been shipped by use of this method. But is there anything wrong with this system? How could it be improved?

Getting referrals becomes a rather tedious position. Imagine going to all of your friends and bugging them to enter their credit card infromation on random sites so you can get your free iPod (which they warn you a hundred times is a scam). This is no easy task.

iPodRaffles.com sets out to change the way free iPods are done. As seen in the title of the website, they actually run a number of raffles to give away these free items. Here's how it works. You (the user) completes an affiliate offer - but these offers are much different the traditional ones because instead of signing up for trial offers and the like, users simply fill out registrations or surveys. This is done to comply with federal standards on sweepstakes in the United States.

Once an offer is completed, the user is entered into a raffle. The odds of winning vary upon raffle, but are generally decent considering the amount of effort put into it.

What's the best part? No referrals! Telling your friends helps make the raffles occur faster, but none are required at all.

Our take: Worth a shot.