Get what you need by bartering your skills

Did you ever wish you could trade your bookkeeping skills for a free housekeeper? Or maybe provide your online marketing expertise for a new haircut and style? How about using your landscaping skills as a swap for a new website? Now you can.

 

BarterQuest.com, an amazing new (and FREE) website empowers people to make these trades and more – a perfect savior during times of economic downturn where many are resorting to personally hawking their talents and services as an alternative to desperately seeking employment from within the corporate world.

 

Before man created money, the barter system was all we had to exchange products and services, and now it’s back in a big way with BarterQuest.com. With this new “trading social network” website you put up a profile stating what services and/or goods you have available to offer, and what goods and/or services you’re interested in trading for. I had a quick chat with Stephen Stewart of BarterQuest to find out more.

 

Stewart: The website has experienced increasing utilization and has clearly been nurtured by the recessionary environment. We now have 1,000 visitors a day and triple digit growth in registered users and posted items. Insofar as BarterQuest supports trading in goods, services and real estate (temporary and permanent use), with features that allow users to find trading alternatives not only by type of item, but geographically, the trading opportunities can be potentially unlimited; anyone who has anything that may be of value to anyone else can be a user of BarterQuest.      

 

Parents with children who constantly require the new to replace the old, collectors who are accustomed to trading, and students who are always short of cash are all natural users of a barter site. But at a time of financial crisis there is an incentive and a greater willingness on the part of consumers (as well as businesses) to try to obtain what they need by spending less. Moreover, insofar as the hallmark of this financial crisis is an unprecedented credit crunch, in many cases cash has become unavailable or an extremely expensive way to acquire things. Barter conserves cash.

Stewart: Whether you have a professional service that you can provide or services you are otherwise willing to provide (such as handyman, painter, or dog walker), or an extra room in your house, or goods that are no longer that important to you (items that are of marginal value to you but which might be more highly valued by others), you have something that can be traded for what you want or need. If you make the effort to post the items you have and indicate the things you want on BarterQuest, you might just receive “an offer you can’t refuse.” It’s a way to keep going when cash is relatively unavailable. Among other things, for example, medical services have been offered on our site.  

Stewart: Services listed on BarterQuest include career adviser, life coach, resume writer, accountant and tax preparer, dentist, doctor, practitioner of alternative medicine, lawyer, paralegal, financial planner, web designer and chef.

 

While the site has been in operation for only a short time, there have already been interesting trades. By providing the technology to find multi-party trades, our site has facilitated a three way trade where one user provided Web design services to another, that user provided interior design services to a third, and that user sent a Netbook Pro to the first.

 

Another trade involved a limited edition, signed volume of a sci-fi classic for a designer handbag. Yet another was a trade of a diamond necklace for an iPod. The necklace was traded by a mother who was short on cash but anxious to give her son, who was ill, something he really wanted. Items currently posted for barter range from typical goods including CDs, DVDs and books to the more unusual, such as paintings and designer coats, and the services of accountants, chefs, jewelers, and bartenders.

                   

Check out BarterQuest.com today - maybe I'll even trade you for a Career Advising Session or a Resume Review!