It’s no secret: the entire universe is in love with Dropbox.

I, myself, can’t stop raving about the online syncing tool. Since downloading the app late last year, it quickly became my most frequently used app.

Dropbox lets me:

• Sync files across multiple computers and mobile devices
• Back up important files
• Share documents with others easily without resorting to email

Earlier today, Lifehacker wrote a post about SugarSync, another Dropbox competitor who is now offering all free accounts 5 GB of free storage space. Meanwhile, Dropbox offers only 2 GB of free storage. A comment by a reader stated that he had earned nearly 19 GB of free storage through Dropbox’s referral program! I was astonished. And quite sad. I had managed to eke out 11.25 GB of free storage thus far.

So, on to the important part of this post: how can you earn more free storage? Here are my tips:

Referrals

Whenever someone signs up with Dropbox through a link you sent them, Dropbox will credit both you and the new user 250 MB of free storage. Fair enough. But that would mean 4 referrals for every 1 GB. Quite a task.

Have a .EDU address? Get 500 MB per referral!

In hopes of annihilating its competition, Dropbox recently announced that anybody with a .EDU email address, namely college students, can earn double the referral credit, or 500 MB. Life’s pretty sweet sometimes when you’re a college student.

Now, you would need only 2 referrals for every 1 GB of free storage.

Put your referral links EVERYWHERE

If you have a blog, write some blog posts about Dropbox and include your referral link there. That’s what I did. How else could I have gotten so much free storage?

Next up, tell people about Dropbox. I make it a habit to call out someone whenever they take out they horrid flashdrive to open up their Word document. Let this unsuspecting soul know about all the wonderful features that you can get with Dropbox. They’ll appreciate it.

Tweet it, Facebook it, Email it

Oh, wait. I forgot about this one. You should also post your Dropbox referral link to your social networking sites. Tweet it out to your legions of followers on Twitter. Post it to your Facebook. Email your massive contacts list. Then, read about Firesheep and repeat.

While you’re at it with the email tactics, include a short sentence or two in your email signature about why anyone should use Dropbox and include a referral link for people to sign up.

Speaking of social media, Dropbox today published a “Free” page, where you can earn up to 768 MB of free storage by connecting your Twitter and Facebook accounts to Dropbox. For instance, if you follow Dropbox on Twitter, you earn 128 MB instantly. Or, tell your friends why you love Dropbox so much and you’ll be awarded instantly with 128 MB. Don’t you just love free stuff?

Tell you classmates, families, friends, and co-workers

If you work in an environment where people are constantly emailing documents and files to one another, remove the hassle of swimming through your overflowing inbox and tell them to sign up for Dropbox. With Dropbox, you can set up sharing folders where people who you invite to collaborate with can have access to the folder to do whatever they like; edit files, upload files, delete files. This will not only alleviate the pain of finding that poorly headlined email containing the attachments your boss sent you an hour ago.

If you know someone who uses flash drives still, tell them to switch to Dropbox. Now, they won’t have to remember to carry their flash drive with them wherever they go(and risk losing it) since you can access your files on the Dropbox website from any computer with Internet.

How much free storage space can you get from Dropbox?

Since Dropbox was officially released, the answer has slowly inched higher as competitors began to show up to the market. With the likes of Sugarsync and even Microsoft’s monstrous 25 GB Skydrive, Dropbox began to increase the maximum limit of free storage space you can earn.

Currently, the number stands at 10.25 GB. Through referrals, you can earn 8 GB, and if you complete the getting started guide, you earn an additional 250 MB.

However, if one of your referrals buys a Pro account, you can earn a maximum of 16 GB via referrals. Here’s a screenshot if you don’t believe me:

Stop posting referral links. I will delete them.

Whoot! Earned another 8GB because of Dropbox’s Space Race competition!

Dropbox’s newest feature, Camera Upload, allows you to store your photos from your camera on Dropbox. For every 500MB of photos you upload (via import from your smartphone/camera), Dropbox will reward you with 500MB of free space, up to 3GB.

Currently sitting at 30GB of space.