if your friend said he knows a way to get free money.. ask him for it, after all it cost him nothin
but seriously, bitcoins are not FREE, it is purely a better payment system then credit cards, bank wire transfers, paypal, banknotes combined.
to learn about it:
https://bitcoin.org/en/and
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7269.0but if you want to skip th long intro and technobable and you want something to play with. first of all go to
https://blockchain.info/wallet and 'start a wallet'. this is where you can store some little amounts just to play with. its recommended that if you start to get alot. to look into getting a proper bitcoin wallet.
you will b given a long gobbledegook address which is what you can hand out to people to pay you. think of it as your email address you use for paypal.. (it always starts with a 1 or 3 (dont confuse it with the login id- keep that bit secret)
next step:
so now you have an address, google "bitcoin faucets" they will give you small amounts (less then 1c) just to give you something to use and learn how to send and receive it.
now that you have stuck your toe in the water the next step is to learn the exciting things about bitcoin by going to googling whatever comes to mind
bitcoin jobs, bitcoin trading,
just be careful as some websites are scams. its normally best to google a site followed by the word scam to see if you get any responses of people warning about it.
feel free to ask more questions as you progress