Has bartering worked for you and do you barter often?

I bartered a $300 service ticket for 7 office chairs (super nice too) and delivery.

I have bartered time with my back massage specialist in return for website help.
 
I probably bartered $30-45k worth of dental work for myself, family and some employees over the last 15 years with one Dentist office.

He had server plus 3 workstations and we managed it for 15 years. He paid chase for computers, routers, hubs and I traded my $100 per hour services averaging about $500 per month. The doc provided all dentistry for me and my son, then later my girlfriend and even occasionally for some of my employees. It was a good deal.

It does not matter if your costs are lower than his cost the only thing that matters is what is my retail for the service or product I am trading against the retail value for the your service/products.

Doesn't matter if I give you 4 hrs at $400 and you give me 36 Tshirts at $10.50 each. The fact that he has to pay for his raw materials and I do not has no barring on the deal or the case.

Think of it like this. If I bought $400 worth of shirts I would pay $400 and if I did 4 hrs work for him he would pay me $400. Our costs have nothing to do with nothing.
 
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I recently bartered my services for an electrician to run wires and mount recessed lights in my garage plus conduit and multiple outlets around my workbench. It works out great for me.
 
Dah? I totally forgot, I bartered several thousands in plumbing my new retirement house project; all new electrical all bartered; drywall, mud, interior knockdown and paint bartered; install of the hvac bartered; lagoon work bartered.....design work to customize my old 1700 sqft house ot a new executive retirement house. I probably bartered $12-18k but saved $30k if I had to pay retail because they are giving me contractor prices to boot.

Guess I am not doing that bad this year after all...its just not in cash.

I knew 2012 was going to be so very bad that I took most of my time this year to completely tear out, knock down walls, remodel including installing 2 new bathrooms, Jacuzzi tub, double shower with slate walls, Geothermal heat pump, Spray foam insulation (attempting to make it LEED certified). We are just finishing now and hope to move in march 1.

Timing is good as there are signs that the economy is just about ready to start coming back. So hopefully 2013 is much better than 2012 was.
 
Funny, I am going to pick up my shirts and jacket from the embroider tomorrow! I went in to talk with her about shirts, she had known I did web services, and so SHE actually brought up the topic of bartering. I would have if she didn't, but always good when they do first.

Anyhow, I tossed together a basic website package deal and sent it her way for the shirts and jacket. Very nice stuff too!

The way I see it tho, I am more in over all end ticket. However, cost up front she is more out of pocket. It costs me very little to get a year of webhosting and domain, however, she had to buy my shirts and jacket. However, I will spend more time working on her site than she will my jacket and shirts.

I think if you are willing to deal locally and with smaller companies, bartering will come up a lot. Just remember to not under value yourself. I did this because I was so excited to get my shirts and I'm so used to giving services away for free to friends and family. But I'm coming around...

Good luck, hope you get some nice shirts! Don't forget a jacket/hat/etc if you're in cold weather or you want some style points.
 
hightechrex said:
As we speak, I'm in the process of bartering promotional t-shirts for my business. I want to have 24 made. I'm gonna try and see If I can convert it into a maintenance contract. He has a real big office and has quite a few slow computers in there. He also needs a wireless extender setup or maybe a few access points.
Click to expand...

What do your shirts say on them?
 
Personally I like to keep things simple and avoid all trading of services. Yes it can work out to the benefit of both parties, but it could also leave one of the parties feeling like they didn't quite get what they traded for.

It's easier for me to keep things simple, black and white, no grey area.

I work, you pay me. If I want your services I'll give you your money back in payment.

I also find that the one initiating the bartering agreement is usually the one who has the most interest and/or the most to gain from it.
 
thecomputerguy said:
Personally I like to keep things simple and avoid all trading of services. Yes it can work out to the benefit of both parties, but it could also leave one of the parties feeling like they didn't quite get what they traded for.

It's easier for me to keep things simple, black and white, no grey area.

I work, you pay me. If I want your services I'll give you your money back in payment.

I also find that the one initiating the bartering agreement is usually the one who has the most interest and/or the most to gain from it.
Click to expand...

If you are comparing a cash deal (earned) with a trade deal, yes I prefer cash as I have no need to immediately spend the earnings. However that totally misses the point of a trade. A trade gives you the opportunity to get a new customer you would not otherwise get.

If you want to trade me $400 of my time for a baby crib then we are not going to be able to help each other out as I am not going to have any children or need for children s furniture. On the other hand if you want to trade me for tools, I always want more tools; or building materials I can use on my home remodel; or food coupons to a dinner or breakfast place that I like absolutely it is as good as cash to me.

It is true the person making the first offer seems to need it more...as when I called a dozen dentist to find someone who would accept my network management offer for taking care of my sons $500 root canal I couldn't afford at the time. However over the years it turned out that I was so pleased with the agreement that I gave the dr more service than I needed and it was a 15 year relationship. I even offered free dental to my two adult sons and some of my employees (who did not have money or insurance for dental). So it worked out in spades for me.

There are some basic rule to keep it fair: you have to need the service or will soon need the service. You need to agree on a set value for services IE your retail price (of what I might buy from you some day) to my retail price on my service. Its just me but I tend not to trade workstation/server hardware as my markup is not as high as it is on my service. But my service is every bit as valuable to the customer.

Its like the good folks who refuse to take visa.....you are just sending customers across the street. Don't let your fear of negotiation make you miss opportunities. I look at it like this....if I am sitting waiting for the phone to ring anyway I might as well earn some trade credit as to sit and watch tv. Now if every minute of my day is filled with cash opportunities then that is another matter.

Remember money has only been around about 10% of the time that humans have been on this planet. So barter was the standard.
 
Ideally if you are really interested in barter then do a search in your area and see if there are any barter organizations that you can join.

The one locally where I am at has about 100+ businesses in there and it's everything from restaurants, marketing materials, hair salons, bed and breakfast's, plumbers and all kinds of things. But, most of the local ones belong to even bigger ones such as DoBarter or TheTradeAlliance which has thousands of members.

I've offered SEO for those outside of my area only. So someone takes me up on a package and say it runs $750 well that goes into my barter account. I can use that money with any of the thousands of businesses or use it locally in my own area with 100+ businesses.

These are SEO customers I would not of gotten because I don't advertise SEO nationwide so it makes sense. Locally I might do diagnostic only on barter or a computer tune up on barter only. You can specify exactly what you want to do and won't do.

I agree with Tony on the cash part "cash is king"…but barter is outstanding if you use it correctly to your advantage.
 
One thing I noticed, and just want to toss out there, is that you have to make sure whoever you're bartering with that they know that you don't normally do this type of thing.

I've had to turn away two other people that wanted to barter for my services. Sure they could have been customers if I could have sold to them better, but they came to me with the idea that I would take what they sell (nothing remotely interesting BTW) for what I sell, trying to convert them into spending money rather than product/labor is hard....
 
Since this has revived, I'll just add that I barter my services for advertising in a local yellow pages book. Been running a $1000 ad in the book for like 5 years, had to replace a hard drive once and do a few virus removals.

Interesting to hear about barter websites though Dan... I think I'll look into that.
 
I just traded $240 worth of repairs for my landlord in exchange for $200 off next month's rent and dinner for 2 in his 5-star Italian restaurant tomorrow night... I'm calling that one a win :D
 
Nick...ya there are alot of sites in different communities and they all tie to bigger ones nationwide/worldwide.

In the past 2 weeks I have received email notifications of the following types of businesses that have joined in our area:

5 Accountants - for tax purposes
Photographer - specializes in commercial photography and will create you business handouts.
Vacation - ocean front vacation spots Myrtle Beach
Food - Donut place, custom cake place and a mexican food place
Trash - Yep a new trash company in town will do barter

It's crazy but it works.
 
DocGreen said:
I just traded $240 worth of repairs for my landlord in exchange for $200 off next month's rent and dinner for 2 in his 5-star Italian restaurant tomorrow night... I'm calling that one a win :D
Click to expand...

Now I am jealous! Your landlord owns and Italian restaurant and that is in the same building where your business is located? On top of that you can do trade outs for both rent and Italian food....sheessssh
 
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