Trade exchange/barter organizations

[ghost89]

I belong to a trade exchange, or barter organization.  They are in nearly every state and major city.  This has proven to be a great decision for me, and I really love the benefits.

For those who don't know, a trade exchange is an organization that many businesses belong to, where you barter your services in exchange for trade credit.  Trade credit works like money.  Let's say you are a member.  Another member calls you... an accountant, let's say... and books an appointment with you.  When you are ready to take payment (usually before the service is rendered), you ask for his membership card, and fill out a form (similar to a credit card slip), then call the trade exchange for an authorization number.  When the authorization is given, the $ amount is transferred from his account to yours, and you now have trade credit.  When you are ready to spend your trade credit, you can spend it on any business that is within the trade exchange... doggie grooming, dental work, restaurants, salon services, dry cleaning, contractors, advertising, etc.

At the end of the year, you will receive a 1099 tax form with the total amount you received during the year in trade credit (dollars).  This makes tax time easy and also gives you verifiable income (a good thing to have in case you want to buy a house, get credit, or whatever). Most local trade exchanges are also part of international trade exchanges, so you can travel out of state or even out of the country and use trade credit for services and goods there.  You can fund an entire European vacation on trade credit!  

You are not charged a fee when you accept trade credit, but when you spend trade credit, you are charged a small % of the sale (amount depends on the kind of membership you agreed upon).  That money goes to the trade exchange organization, to pay employees, accountants, and to help fund the free advertising that they do for you.

Yes... FREE advertising.

What they do is about every other day or so, they mass-fax and/or email a trade bulletin.  You can make up a flyer and they will fax it to all the businesses that are on the fax list, or they will make a text message to email as part of the trade bulletin.  Depending on the size of your trade organization, you have hundreds to thousands of people seeing your ad on a regular basis!  They won't do it unless you ask them to, so you can control the amount of advertising they do for you.  If you get busy with clients, you can step off of the advertising, and if you aren't, you can step it up again.

This is the one I belong to:

http://www.crescentcitytrade.com/

What I find is that I use my trade dollars for things I ordinarily wouldn't buy (even if I had the cash), such as auto detailing, auto body work, and for goods and services that I would not ordinarily use because I tend to be very careful with my money.  I have also used it to have yard signs made, and for advertising also.  My belief is that if having trade dollars encourages me to patronize businesses I wouldn't ordinarily use, it probably encourages others to patronize businesses that they ordinarily wouldn't use (like massage therapy).  It is almost like having a giant gift certificate that you can spend at any of 1000 businesses.  

Our trade exchange has "mixers", so you can go to a party and rub elbows with other enthusiastic members, and network with people who may contact you for services later.

I now have a standing 1x per week 2 hour appointment on trade, and I have the other occasional drop-ins as well.  

How many of you belong to a trade exchange or bartering organization?  How do you like it?  I love it!

To look for an organization in your area, Google search under "trade exchange barter".... simply looking under "trade exchange" only pulls up a bunch of stock reports.  To narrow down the options, add your state or city to the search title, also.