Is Barter for You?

Many people barter through their business already, but these are usually one off transactions.  Most of the time people who barter in their lives already are ideal people for an organized barter system.  They already know how it works!  Not only that but they will already fit the type of person that barter works for.

Firstly, in order to barter you have to have something to trade.  I know that sounds obvious but I will explain.  If you own a business, say a hair salon, and are fully booked day in and day out with cash paying clients then barter doesn’t make sense.  Cash will always take precedent in the market and you don’t want to be turning down cash clients to take a barter client.  However, if you are a salon owner and you have open times, then that is something you can barter.  In any service related profession if you have an hour that goes un-billed, once it is gone you cannot get it back.  But you could fill it with a barter client instead, then you are gaining not only trade dollars that you can use to save money on expenses, but also a new client for word of mouth advertising.

This idea also works for people with inventory they sell.  If you own a store and you cannot keep stock on the shelves, then just stick with what you are doing cause it is working!  But if you have some stock that is stale and just didn’t move the way you thought it would, then barter could be the way.  In the case of stock that isn’t moving, it is like you have a lazy employee.  You have invested in that stock, promoted it, tried to motivated it (by advertising and discounting) but nothing is working, it is just sitting there…. driving you crazy.  Well with barter you can quickly move that inventory for the original full retail value and put that money back to work for you.  (In other words fire the lazy guy and hire someone who only works on commission).

Lastly, if it is broke…even Barter can’t fix it.  By this I mean that barter is not a fix to a broken business model.  If you can’t sell your product in the cash world, then I most likely can’t sell it on barter either.  Barter can be a great benefit to a business, as long as there is a demand for that business.