Bartering has been around since the beginning of time, or very close to it. In fact, bartering was used long before formal money was used to pay for work or goods.
What is it to trade? To put it simply, bartering is the exchange of goods or services without the use of formal currency. For example, you could offer to mow your friend's lawn in exchange for watching her kids for two hours. Or, you could make a more formal deal with your landlord to do repairs or maintenance for other tenants in exchange for a lower rent. It is still a good way to trade goods or services without using money.
Now, there's a new way to trade. With the rise of the Internet, there are more and more places to trade things online. Some sites are just for people in one area, while others can be seen all over the world.
In general, users can post ads on these sites about what they have to offer and what they want in return. Some sites are free, but you have to pay to use others. One example of a site for trading goods is Care to Trade, which can be found at http://Caretotrade.com. Care to Trade also lets you have items shipped from anywhere, while other sites only let you trade with people in your area. For example, NOCO Hours (http://www.nocohours.org) is all about Northern Colorado.
Go to your local newspaper or the online site(s) of your local newspaper and type "barter" to find a site near you. Most of the time, one will already be in place. If not, you could do some research and start your own.
U-Exchange.com also has tips on how to start bartering online, and it has listings not only by country but also by state in the United States.
Google Groups gives you access to specialised Usenet groups, many of which are local, where you can trade goods and services. Yahoo.com has more than 600 mailing lists that cover a wide range of places, goods, services, and ways to trade. If none of these are near you and you want to do this, you can start your own.
Internet trading has also brought back bartering in the business world. With "direct bartering," business owners swap their products or services directly with their vendors in exchange for the vendor's products or services (s).
"Exchange bartering" means that each person will use his extra time, goods, or services to get "trade dollars" instead of direct goods or services from the other person. Then, you can use these trade dollars to buy goods or services from other vendors. This works well when exchanges aren't quite equal or when they need to be measured or kept careful track of. Barter Systems, Inc., which can be found at http://www.bartersys.com, is one online barter site where trade dollars are used as a unit of exchange.
Visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter for more information on the history of trading (economics).
