http://www.barterexchangetrainers.com/our-programs/the-complete-employee-package/

First, as you can see, the web site itself has had a major look and feel update, with easier navigation and a more clear purpose. If you have purchased programs in the past, you will still be able to access the information directly from the urls you received in previous emails.

Second, we have added a couple of important documents to the Forms, Documents, and Agreements section of the All Access program, namely a Sample Job Description, a Sample Recruiting Process, a Sample Strategic Plan, and a Sample Training Manual. You can find these updates here: http://www.barterexchangetrainers.com/our-programs/6mostoprosperity/forms-documents-and-agreements/

We hope the process of building your exchange is going smoothly and prosperously. Remember, if you need any specific questions answered or have needs not being fulfilled by one of our programs, don’t hesitate to reach us at any time.

Happy trading!

There are new community currencies being created daily. Some groups are choosing paper money as their medium of exchange. Others are having silver coins minted that are then used inside the community for purposes of exchange. In a more innovative move, some are turning to time banks, which value one hour of whatever work you perform as the medium of exchange. All of them have problems, all have drawbacks, and all of them miss the mark in some way.

Starting with paper community currencies…most of the community currencies I have read about are being created as a complimentary currency to the national currency. Most of them are limited to communities, which isn’t terrible in itself, but they also are requiring an exchange of national dollars to acquire the community dollars.

Coined currencies have the same problem. You have to give up your national dollars in exchange for a coined currency. The proponents of this system want a return to the gold standard, assuming, falsely, that the value of gold has always been solid, is very solid, and will always be solid. Ditto for silver. The problem I see is this…in the middle of a famine, who will care about gold and silver? If the survivalists are right and the apocalypse is around the corner, then food and water will hold their value and increase much more than gold and silver.

There is another problem with coined currencies: they are based on scarcity. There is never enough coinage to go around, so economics becomes an endless chasing of precious metals. The same could apply with any commodity that a community used as its currency.

It also seems there isn’t a great concensus on how to get community dollars out in to a community without resorting to a straight currency conversion for the national currency. Let me ask you this…if you owned a business, would you pay cash to buy a community dollar, even if it was slightly discounted (as many of them are)? I wouldn’t.

Then there is the barter system. In its classic sense it is a quid pro quo system. I give you my eggs, you give me your milk. This part of barter has been done to death in the last couple of years.

Move on to barter exchanges. They are closer to the real solution, in my opinion. Barter exchanges don’t require you to turn in your cash dollars for barter dollars. Instead, they become issuers of credit and managers of a currency. You own a business, you belong to a barter exchange, chances are you have a credit line that you can use for your business. Once the line is used, you can start marketing yourself to other participating businesses and off it goes. In theory, it remains a zero balance economy, with exactly the same amout of credit issued as outstanding barter dollars to be used. Barter exchanges do run for a cash profit, and thus a small downside is that you pay a cash transaction fee for every transaction you participate in, generally. That drains your national dollars a bit, as does the drain on your inventory, but considerably less than working inside community dollars.

Now, to incorporate value in to the conversation….the American dollar is backed by the U.S. Treasury, which declares that all loans made to the government will be repaid from tax dollars, and the Federal Reserve, which regulates the amount of currency in circulation. In other words, the American dollar is backed solely by the social agreement that we have in the world that the government has authority to tax our work, and pay its debts. And we all agree that it is the medium of exchange of preference.

Community currencies are backed by the same principle, the social agreement, as are barter dollars. The call for a return to an objective standard of currency is based on scarsity, because there is never enough of any one commodity to go around. Our current system of fiat currency backed by a social agreement is more efficient, and more effective at promoting growth than any other system available to us.

When I started working for the United Business Exchange in 2000, I often wondered about the magnitude of trades I would see…would I see huge transactions? Would I see entire buildings traded? Would I see manufacturers trading huge amounts of freshly created goods? Would my clients barter for things like vacations to Europe?

Within a couple of months I realized that, yes, I would see all of this, and more. In honor of those old days when I was learning how to start my own barter exchange, I offer this list of the coolest trades I have seen. I have heard of many other bigger and perhaps cooler barters than these, but these are those that I have seen with my own eyes and participated in actively.

1. RV for Furniture – One of my clients called one day and wondered if I could do anything with an old RV that was sitting in his driveway. After taking a look at it, taking some pictures, and doing my broker magic, I was able to get him the equivalent of $8000 of goods and services that he wanted, including a trip to Disneyland and some furniture he had wanted for years.

2. First Class Tickets to Europe - My wife and I planned a trip to Italy at the end of summer in 2006. My partner owned a publishing company, and as a gift to me, did a direct trade with a first-class-only airline. Needless to say, my wife and I were very comfortable on our cross Atlantic flights.

3. Pool Tables for Warehousing - I mention this one because I was intimately involved in the deal. A client, who sold pool tables and gaming equipment, needed someone to handle logistics and shipping, incoming and outgoing, on a regular basis. From my network of contacts I was able to get him a fulfillment company who handled all of his incoming freight from China, repackaged equipment and sent it, all on trade. We made a number of our clients happy who wanted pool tables at the same time.

4. A 1/3 Acre Lot on a Golf Course – One of my real estate clients traded, free and clear, a 1/3 acre building lot on a golf course in Northern Utah. As I recall it was a $40,000 transaction.

5. A New Set of Dentures – A client who had suffered about his teeth for years went in to one of the dentists I traded with and got a whole new smile. His life changed entirely after getting those new teeth…

If you have ever thought about starting your own barter exchange, now is the time. Not only will you make a good living, but you’ll be living a life of service. Bartering opens the realm of possibility wide and lets ordinary people do extraordinary things. If you are wondering how to start a barter exchange, click the link at the top and find out.

In the last ten years I have participated in the start up of three different exchanges, one of which started from absolute zero. The first time I started a barter exchange, the exchange had somewhere around 25 members and no one was running it full time. I received very little training. The owners of the company didn’t think I needed it. I learned how to start a barter exchange by being thrown in the fire, so to speak. I learned pretty quickly what to do, and what not to do.

The second time I started a barter exchange I had already learned some of the basics and had some confidence, but I started with a regional company and they gave me a list of 200 members. After two weeks of intense calling, I dug up 40 that were willing to do some business with me if I could get something they wanted. It felt like starting over from nothing.

The third time, I started with absolutely nothing. This is where you, if you are considering starting an exchange, are most likely to start. This time, starting at zero, I had 40 members within the first couple of weeks. Sadly, I didn’t have the opportunity to see that exchange grow to maturity.

The point is this: if you want to learn how to start a barter exchange, just start one. Find some barter software like Barter 21 and set up shop. The barter industry is unregulated. It’s not difficult to get your foot in the door.  The cost of entry is less than $500. If you have a penchant for sales and marketing and enjoy long term business relationships, starting a barter exchange is something you might really enjoy.

If you want some free information about how to start your own barter exchange, click the link at the top and get our free program.

Now is the perfect time to start and run your own barter exchange… let me explain why.

1. Lines of Credit – What does this have to do with a barter exchange? To the bold barter exchange owner, his business of barter can assist businesses and individuals in ways banks and the community can’t, namely in giving interest free lines of credit. When is the last time you borrowed money from a bank that was willing to give you a permanent 0% interest rate on a credit line? Businesses still need financing for expansion, just like in boom times, but right now banks aren’t lending much and if they were, you’d still need amazing credit, an 800 FICO score, and referrals from the governor and your local senator to get a loan. In a barter exchange, you get to decide who does and does not qualify for a loan, and you get to see the improvement in business and celebrate along side a new loyal customer.
2. Take advantage of the down market – Sites like Craigslist and U-Exchange have seen a huge upswing in the number of postings in their barter sections. If you are the one to start a barter trade exchange, you are going to be entering a very undeveloped market. Doing direct trades on sites like Craigslist and U-Exchange are difficult. Using a barter exchange is easy. All businesses want to conquer new markets. With your help as their barter broker, you’ll guide them to make new sales and make purchases that will help them succeed.
3. Take advantage of the current interest in barter – Like I said before, cash is tight. Thousands of businesses are turning to any other system besides cash to be able to continue to do business. Your barter exchange, if you start one, can be a vehicle to attract the businesses that are looking for somewhere to barter, and there are thousands of them.
4. Take advantage of an under developed industry – Currently there are less than 500 barter exchanges in operation in the United States. Those exchanges are only doing business with less than 1% of the businesses in the US, combined. Clearly this is a growth industry. Your local area may have an exchange in it already, but they are probably only doing business with a couple of hundred businesses in the area, at most, so there is always room for more barter exchanges.

If you want more information about how you can start your own barter exchange, click the link at the top and get our free program.

My first introduction to the barter industry was as a sales person for a local exchange, United Business Exchange. I was trained as a sales person while I was working in another branch of the company doing networking groups for business owners, but fell in love with the idea of trade exchanges and the power that they have in lives and in business, and was thus promoted to managing that exchange within a matter of months. Besides hiring and training some trade directors, my first task was to arrange the Christmas trade show.

You have to understand, the exchange had never done more than $30k in a month. Ever. With about 150 members. I set what I thought was a high goal, $100k for the show. We rented a local facility on trade, invited a couple dozen vendors to come sell their products, and called every member of the exchange twice and personally invited them to come to the show.

The outcome? Over three days we did $125k. That translated to about 12,000 in cash fees generated for the exchange.

If you are thinking about starting a barter exchange, you need to consider that Christmas is one of the most compelling times for your members to barter. Barter exchanges expand Christmas buying and really make magic happen. And plenty of the revenues of your barter exchange happen in the fourth quarter, year after year.

The nugget at the end of the article I read was this:

Hutchinson calls for countries to raise interest rates to counter the tide toward further investment in commodity assets. But he fails to ask a simple question: What if the owners of the commodity assets also think the same – why do they want the fiat currencies in exchange for their commodity assets?

If the situation were to develop to that point, we would have witnessed the end of the fiat-currency era and a move toward a new international monetary system based on barter trade.

What Hutchinson failed to notice is that barter has been a long time piece of the monetary system. Consider that when companies want things from each other, but their governments are at odds, they barter.

What it means for the barter industry is another large scale feet-in group entering the barter arena. What are all of those commodity owners going to do with the commodities if the price they want fails to appear? Barter.

Have fun barter industry! More players are coming your way.