Are you familiar with the television show Barter Kings? The premise is simple. Two men who are skilled in the art of barter and exchange manage to trade a small, low-value item for something amazing. For instance, they may trade a child’s tricycle for a sports car. Instead of trying to trade this item outright, they do it over the course of several trades. They work hard at it, but eventually they get the item they desire.
While you and I may not have this ability (nor want to go through the struggles) to trade like this, writers can be “barter kings” too. As web content providers, you have a valuable service. It is possible to trade your service for the things you need and want. I’ve accomplished a lot by bartering my services—consider the following and perhaps you will want to do the same.
What Do You Need?
Since you offer a service, you may find it is easier to work out a barter that involves another service. For instance—recently I needed a custom WordPress theme. While I could have went to a freelance site and hired someone to create one, or struggled through creating one myself, instead I went to an acquaintance who I know creates custom themes. He created me a theme so good it blew me out of the water. What did he charge me? Nothing. I wrote three blog posts for him. When it was all said and done, I think he worked about two hours on my theme. I worked two hours creating his posts. If we had each done our own work it would have been much more time consuming. Bartering services like this is a great way to get things done.
Bartering With Another Writer—Why?
Another trade I’ve done involved bartering with a writer. Why would I want to do that? I needed a terms and conditions page for a website I was creating. I hate writing these, I’m not good at writing them and I had put off the project for as long as I could. I worked out an agreement where another writer I trust created this page for me and I helped her by taking on some technically-inclined posts that she didn’t think she was qualified to write. This was a win-win situation.
These examples are just a couple of times that bartering has worked in my favor. While trading for services has worked best for me, there is no reason you can’t barter your services for nearly anything you need or want. Make sure you let people know you are interested in such a trade: post on classified services and update your webpage with your willingness to barter. You’ll find that there are plenty of other barter kings out there too!
Tracy S is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.
