Barter comes back to business world like a boomerang. Once in a while you hear about barter again. Is it worth considering?

Remember that starting naturopath specialist who wanted me to design her website in exchange for her services: either massage or naturopathic consultation? At the time I was starting too, and more than massage was on my mind to pay for groceries and hydro. Transaction never happened because neither of us had much money to barter…

Funny to say so since barter is by definition an exchange without money.

Some companies will approach you with a proposition to barter their services or goods for yours. Others require membership to take part in barter.

It is hard to say if barter makes sense for you. Wouldn’t it be simpler to pay for what you need and get money for what you delivered? Financial benefit of barter is rare to be obvious. Why? Because companies offering barter for their goods and services usually set the price high.

I came across this company renting computers and laptops on a barter basis.
If you needed computer for a month, the price was almost equal to buying one from the discount store. So why bother? Well, maybe this company wants something that you produced, and your actual cost to produce it was low – like an artist’s painting… Sure, you spent time painting it and it contains your very creative idea, but you had plenty of time anyway, and you find it hard to sell your products, just for this simple reason that you are not a salesman and you can’t afford one at the moment. But you have this presentation coming up to a large corporate client, and you can’t go there without a laptop… In this situation you can set a ‘price’ for your painting at the market value, and get a laptop in barter exchange. You both benefited, because otherwise you could not get a laptop and that company couldn’t have afforded a great painting you made.

Try for instance B-Commerce. It’s a private, membership-based barter exchange facility. Who needs barter? Well, everyone needs plumber, electrician, dentist, florist or computer repair. There are many more categories of businesses that barter there. It does sound interesting and it’s worth checking.

Barter is also a good way to network. One more way to spread a word about your business – among others seeking services and goods, is to advertise on barter exchanges.

In Toronto you can barter on Craigslist, on U-Exchange, on BCommerce, and others.

Some great entrepreneurs like for instance Razor Suleman estimates that … “5% to 10% of sales by his Toronto-based promotional-products distributor, Snap Promotions, are in exchange for goods and services. Barter has generated sales Snap might have missed doing a straight cash business, and it has cut costs, too. “We’ve been taking the dollars we save,” says Suleman, “and investing them back into the business.” He said in an interview for Canadian Business online. “

Beware that some barter networks aren’t always as advertised: despite promising low fees and lots of liquidity, few of them have delivered the goods. “We started dropping them,” says Suleman, “because the time and energy to manage relationships with these non-profitable exchanges affected our bottom line.”

See this article about barter: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/entrepreneur/financing/article.jsp?content=20041027_115252_3420

Barter thrives on international markets, too. You wouldn’t believe how many barter offers is out there:
http://www.google.com/Top/Business/International_Business_and_Trade/Barter/
Maybe one of them will give your business that extra kick it needs to soar.

If you want to barter with me, my ears are wide open.

hg@minibizweb.com