Top 10 Websites for Frugal, Free Entertainment

The internet brings the world to our fingertips and makes enjoying life while saving money easier than ever. It provides instant access to a slew of free entertainment options that cost … nothing. OK, nothing except for the high-speed internet service needed to truly maximize your enjoyment potential.

Below you will find some of my personal favorites for frugal, free entertainment and fun:

Free Music

Pandora – Intelligent internet radio that only plays songs that you like. Simply create your own station and select an artist and Pandora will begin playing songs by that artist. It will then gradually songs by other similar artists. You can give each song a “thumbs up” (like it) or a “thumbs down” (don’t like it) and it will keep playing the ones you like and it will never again play the songs that you don’t like. There’s now a 40 hour monthly limit for the free music. You can pay a small fee for unlimited access, but why do that where there are other free music options that you can enjoy.

Last.fm – While similar to Pandora in terms of tracking what you like, this site is truly global and available in 12 languages. It also adds a social networking and peer-to-peer community component as it’s all powered by the community of listeners.

Grooveshark – Another free internet radio service with no limits on the number of hours you can listen to for free. This is great if you only want to listen to a certain artist or album. Based on what you search for it will return all the songs available by that artist and then you simply hit play. You can create playlists and favorite certain songs.

Free Television

Hulu – Just an amazing free entertainment destination. You can watch last nights shows from many popular channels, you can get caught up on an entire season in one sitting, and even watch great movies. All for free, all from your computer.

Free Books

Scribd – A reading social community where you can see what others are reading, and download from a ton of selections –free books, magazines, newspapers, how-to guides and more.  You can also upload your own ebooks, and documents for instant publishing.

Check out 17 Best Websites to Download Free eBooks for more great sites for free reading.

Free Photography

Snapfish – Lets you share pictures with friends and family members for free. When you register you receive 20 free photo prints, and if you want more they are very affordable. You can also create lots of great homemade gifts with your pictures. While not free, the sentimental value far outweighs the costs when you give gifts from the heart.

Free E-cards

Someecards – While I do love receiving cards in the mail, with the rising postage costs and the ridiculous price of greeting cards, ecards are a super way to save money. Someecards is not your run-of-the-mill ecard site. These are hilarious and yes, sometimes off-color. But, if you want a good laugh and are looking for something a bit off-beat when balloons and puppy dogs just won’t do … then this ecard site is for you.

Wrongcards – The name says it all — funny, free ecards that are wrong for every occasion. Again, if you don’t have a sense of humor … don’t bother.

Free Games

Yahoo Games – A favorite for online versions of popular board games like Monopoly, Scrabble and Chess, to brain games,  video games and more. Lots of free games and free trial versions of games to play without needing to purchase.

When All Else Fails

Bored.com – The place to go when you are bored silly — games, videos, humor, quizzes and blogs. It’s a mecca of silly stuff to pass the day away.