Bartering & Swapping Websites are Best Places to Sell Stuff Online

Bartering & Swapping Websites  are  Best Places to Sell Stuff Online

Bartering for goods and services is a centuries-old art. Recently, the idea of trading with your neighbors and within your community has received a big boost and taken on a modern spin. Combining our often-materialistic, ownership-based society with the Internet’s ability to bring buyers, sellers, and traders together, online bartering  has sparked a wealth of new sites and communities.

With average U.S. household incomes falling 4.8% between 2000 and 2009, people are now starting to look for new methods to get the goods and services that they want and need in an affordable way. Today, you can find many niche and large-scale sharing sites, and it’s difficult to find the right one to meet your needs.

To help, we’ve rounded up 36 popular sites designed to help you share, swap, and rent clothes, music, or even exotic vacations without spending too much of your hard-earned cash. In some cases, you may not need to spend anything at all!

• Home & Office Space
• Clothing
• Family
• Transportation
• Entertainment
• Professional Skills
• Little Bit of Everything
• Business

Home and Office Space

1. Home Exchange

With over 40,000 listings i itn 142 countries, HomeExchange lists free places to stay almost everywhere in the world. Members pay just $9.95 per month to trade their homes and apartments with each other. After the monthly fee, your vacation lodging expenses won’t cost any more staying at home would. You’ll get to stay in a new place, while someone else comes to stay in your home, both free of charge.

2. CouchSurfing

If you don’t want to pay a membership fee but you’re looking for a free place to stay when you’re on the road anywhere in the world, CouchSurfing may be your new best friend. CouchSurfing is a non-profit organization, so they don’t charge you for using the site. They don’t allow hosts to charge travelers either. With almost 3 million members in 246 countries, chances are there is a free couch out there waiting. CouchSurfing also has an extensive safety section on the site, including references, vouching, and verification from other couchsurfers and hosts alike.

3. Airbnb

People in nearly 14,000 cities spread over 182 countries are waiting to rent you a room, apartment, or home wherever you’d like. Since 2008, Airbnb has made it easy for you to find a place to stay wherever you may be headed. Just enter the dates you need, see what’s available, and book your stay. The site even has its own payment system, protecting all parties from fraud and illegal activities. While you may at first only be interested in traveling, you can eventually sign up to be a host for other members. There are no fees to join, and Airbnb keeps a small portion of the host’s price of each stay to operate the business.

4. GoSwap.org

GoSwap is a permanent house swapping site, meaning you list your house, look for a house you want, and then just swap away! Say you want to trade your beachfront home for a log cabin in the woods; maybe someone else on the site wants to swap their woodsy retreat for life at the beach. No more waiting to sell your place before buying your dream home, as you just have to find someone who wants what you have. Listing your home on the site costs anywhere between $9 and $270, but signing up and shopping around is free.

5. LiquidSpace

Are you self-employed and tired of only having your pets to talk to at home? Visiting a new city and need to find a space to hold a meeting with potential clients? If so, LiquidSpace can help. Using their iPhone or iPad app, members scan through available work or meeting space, book the space for specific times, and get directions and access to other services that the space provides. The company is debuting in the San Francisco Bay Area soon, and they hope to expand nationwide quickly.

Clothing

6. SwapStyle

If you are a clothing hound, always chasing the latest in fashion, SwapStyle should be one of your main bookmarks. Started in 2004 by fashion designer Emily Chesher, this worldwide community swaps clothes, shoes, accessories, cosmetics, and even gadgets, all without a membership fee.

7. thredUP

Kids sure do grow out of their clothes rather quickly, and that’s where ThredUP comes in. They set up a cool shop for parents to swap clothing and toys with other parents whose kids are different ages. You can pick up a box full of clothes or toys for just $5 plus shipping, or post your own child’s used clothing for other users to pick from. Membership is free for everyone.

Family

8. Zwaggle.com

If you need more than clothes, like baby bedding, baby furniture, or even sporting goods, you’ll be glad to find Zwaggle. It’s a network of parents who have joined together to share the expense of getting “new to your family” stuff in exchange for used or no-longer-needed items. You receive Zwaggle points for giving away your things, and you can use those points to get the things you want. Membership is free, and the community is powered by a points system rather than cash. The only money you have to spend is on shipping.

9. BabysitterExchange

While some people may balk at an online community for finding babysitters, I know several parents who say it’s actually very difficult to find a sitter they can trust. BabysitterExchange started in 2000 as a babysitting co-op, and it has since expanded to the point that members use it to reserve time when they just have some errands run, need help tutoring their kids, or want a temporary house-sitter.

Transportation

10. Zipcar

If you live in a major metropolitan area, chances are that you probably take public transportation to most of your destinations. You ditched your car long ago – eliminating parking, gas, and car insurance from your budget. But what if you need to get out of town for an hour-long meeting or pick up 25 bags of dirt from the landscaping store? Do you rent a car for the whole day even though you only need it for a few hours? Not if you have Zipcar nearby.

Zipcar has been renting cars by the hour or day for years now, and they keep adding to their list of participating cities. You can pay different membership and rental rates, depending on how frequently you think you’ll need a Zipcar. Though the process varies, you basically sign up in your city, pay the application fee of $25 and any annual fees (ranging from $0 to $60, depending on the plan), and voila – you can now borrow a Zipcar for an hourly rate or daily charge. The rental includes gasoline, auto insurance, and 180 free miles, which is usually plenty.

11. Capital Bikeshare

For $75 per year, Capital Bike Share gives members access to inexpensive bike rentals around the Washington, D.C. area. Bike stations filled with 1,100 bikes are located all over the district and nearby towns, and a single membership key grants you access to use and return any of them wherever you are. The first 30 minutes are free, and each additional half hour costs a few bucks. Members can also use the SpotCycle app for the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android device to locate the closest available bike. You can also try a limited plan, like a 30-day pass for $25.

Entertainment

12. Bookins

A place to exchange your books with other members, Bookins says that they have “more available books than the largest Barnes & Noble.” Best of all, there are no membership charges or fees to speak of. Bookins arranges all the trades for its users, so members never have to contact each other at all to set up swaps. Sending items is free of charge, while receiving an item costs $4.49.

13. PaperBack Swap

PaperBack Swap is exactly what it sounds like: a place to swap paperback books. Currently, more than half a billion books are available for trade on the site. Just list the books you don’t want anymore and other members will find them. When someone requests one of your books, you just mail it out and then choose any available book that you want to receive. Swapping is easy, and membership is free.

14. Swap.com

An online swap meet of sorts, at Swap.com there is no bidding or money exchanged. Rather, you offer to trade the stuff you no longer want. You’ll then have the ability to choose from books, movies, CDs, and other items. The site doesn’t seem to have monthly charges, but you’ll be responsible for shipping costs associated with items you sell. Swap has its own free iPhone app for simple listing and searching.

Professional Skills

15. SharedEarth

I wish I came up with this fantastic idea. SharedEarth is a free site that connects landowners with gardeners and farmers in need of space to grow crops (i.e. starting a home vegetable garden). You can find free access to land in exchange for sharing a little bit of produce with the landowner. In a time of a strong and growing local food movement and concerns about food safety, SharedEarth might just be the most important sharing site of all!

A Little of Everything

16. Freecycle

With 8.5 million members and 5,000 groups, Freecycle is like the mother of all garage sales, with one exception: Everything is free! The site started as a grassroots organization, encouraging members to reuse products rather than send them out to the landfills. For example, I have used Freecycle many times to find new owners for pieces of my cassette and record collection, piles of magazines and books, and assorted unneeded tools.

17. NeighborGoods

An online community in which you can either share free stuff or rent items for a fee, NeighborhoodGoods bills itself as a “social inventory,” enabling members to save money and resources by borrowing what they need to use. While joining is free of charge, you can create private sharing groups for your business or neighborhood for a small fee: $36 for six months.

Business

18. BizXchange

BizXchange is for business-to-business barter, where members use “BizX dollars” to help each other save cash on expenses and find new ways to grow their businesses. BizX dollars are earned by (and can be spent on) selling products, services, or unused inventory to other members. Membership costs include a one-time initiation fee of $795, a $15 cash/$15 BizX monthly fee, and a 6% fee on each transaction with other members.

Final Word

Phew! Well there you have it: 34 sites you can use to share, swap, barter, borrow, and lend your products, services, or unwanted household items.

Have you ever used one of the sites on this list to barter or trade? What was the overall experience like? Do you have another favorite site to add to the list?