Before money was invented people traded or bartered for everything.  In a bad economy, you can still use the barter concept to your advantage to do more business and save money.  Many people offer their service to another party for a trade of goods or services in return.  This is the most common method people use and it's still a good idea today.  If you need something and can't afford it, offer to do a trade to get it.  The other party might say yes and if they do, you just got what you needed without spending any money AND you got a new client at the same time.  The old adage; "nothing ventured, nothing gained" is still true.  Ask people to do trades with you and see what happens.  Be careful not to trade too much because barter is reportable revenue in the eyes of the IRS and your cash flow is more important than the amount of trades you do each year so watch your total annual volume and only do 10% or less of your annual volume in barter or trade.

Many business and professional people look for a barter exchange group to trade with and there can be some advantages to this.  If you have a large amount of available inventory of products or time, consider meeting with and interviewing a barter exchange company to do trades with.  ASk them specific questions about how long they've been in business, how many participating members they have and whats available to your company if you open a barter account with them.  Make no assumptions and ask for references of happy members.  IF you do join a barter exchange system, they can bring you new clients, help you increase your advertising and branding without spending money, network you in the business community for more contacts and more cash clients and more.  Tradiin on your own can work as long as both parties agree.  with a barter exchange system, trade dollars are used to buy and sell with so every time you trade something, there's a dollar value placed on the trade and trade dollars go from the buyers account to the sellers account just like a checking account works at your bank but among the barter members only.

Barter can work for you in a bad economy to get more clients and save your cash every time you trade for something that you want or need.  If you are an individual and not a business owner, what do you have to trade?  A used car, truck, boat, motorcycle, mountain bikes, tools, collectibles, real estate, timeshares, furniture, antiques, excercize equipment and a host of skills / services that you have talent for can be offered as a trade for something you want.  Depending on what you have to trade will help determine if a barter exchange makes sence for you to join.  www.tradia.net ® is one choice for a barter exchange system to consider.

Not often but occasionally I have a wishful thought; that every single business entrepreneur / small business could all get quiet for a moment to hear a message.  As a Tradia Member or a member of any barter exchange group that understands how to make charitable contributions using non-cash or barter/trade currency.  For 2009, you can join Tradia, trade some of your unsold inventory, bank the trade credits, pay them to a charity and take a charitable contribution dollar for dollar as if it was cash.

Additionally, why not open a trade account with a reputible barter exchange.  They send you new client immediately.  They start finding you the products and services you need so you can trade for them instead of using cash.  You can then trade for more advertising to drive more cash business in your doors.  Every time you use your barter exchange dollars to buy something, your money stays in your pocket.  These are some valid reasons that many people should have a Tradia or trade exchange account.

Aside from the obvious benefits of donating our time and money to a cause we believe in, there are tax benefits as well.  What most people don't realize is how to offer a larger contribution without using money at all.

Bartering your excess time or inventory and donating some of that credit is a great way to keep more of your money instead of giving it to Uncle Sam needlessly.  I'm not saying that taxes are all bad, I'm saying we get the chance to keep more of our money depending on how many expenses we have for that tax year.  We get the opportunity to write-off losses, list expenses and contributions and it's all legal.  This applies to all small business & entrepreneurs as well as large corporations.

Many Tradia® Members have taken advantage of this concept.  Some members donate large sums of Tradia® Dollars to various 501c3 corporations and the IRS allows a dollar-for-dollar contribution if you use barter dollars from a legitimate barter / trade exchange system.  This is one of the many advantages of maintaining a barter account with a trade exchange.

A small hotel chain could barter unsold rooms accumulating Tradia® Dollars into their Tradia® account.  As a separate transaction, that same hotel chain can make a charitable contribution and list the entire amount on their tax records.  The hotel fills several empty rooms, finds new clients and uses some of the barter currency to help a charity bringing more good media exposure to the hotel chain.  Everyone wins and it is all made possible due to the trade exchange and a hotel with more empty rooms than they would wish for.  Barter allows the hotel to fill empty rooms as they see fit.

Tradia ® has updated our training system to accomodate every individual and franchise group not only for new operations but also for existing franchises.  We feel the necessity to add more training opportunities to insure that every Tradia ® representative can speak with authority and provide the highest level of customer service.

As a barter / trade exchange system with proprietary software, we have a customized system that all Tradia ® representatives must learn and know.  We are in the service industry and have to know our playbook in great detail in order to serve our growing membership.  The more we know the better prepared we are to assist our members with their needs and wants.

We now require all franchises to attend a training in Portland Oregon for the better part of 4 days.  The following 2 weeks after their trip to Portland we added a 2-week teleconference review with deeper training additions to further embed the Tradia ® System within the new Tradia ® Franchisee.

In addition for all franchisee's new and experienced, we now offer 3 different weekly teleconference trainings for the Tradia ® Website, Tradia ® New Member Sales and Trade Brokering Tips to build larger trade volume and increase revenues for each franchise.

And finally, we added a Tradia ® Franchise Support position so every franchisee has an immediate contact with the Tradia ® Corporate Offices and a go-to person to hold their hand and assist with all aspects of the Tradia ® Franchise Business.

We've had 3 meetings with investors and key marketing people in Florida over the past five months in an effort to dramatically increase the number of Tradia ® Franchise Operations in the USA and Canada.  We're almost complete in our negotiations and feel certain that Tradia ® will be the largest Barter Exchange Franchise in North America.  There's always room at the top and we expect to be there in 2 short years.

In mid-April of this year, we video taped a key portion of our Franchise / Trade Director training that will play a huge role in our Franchise & staff training efforts.  Franchisee's will use our training system to teach their growing staff members how to do the Tradia ® business.  You can be in all places at all times when you use the technology available to us today.  On-line training as well as weekly web-conference training will add to our vast training system and make it possible that every single Tradia ® representative will speak from the same platform based on a systematic and readily available training format.  If you buy a Tradia ® Franchise, you expect to get more results and our training does deliver that at every level.

We have the name, the marketing materials, the training system, a trained corporate staff, a targeted business plan with 6 levels of profitability and a dynamic business opportunity aimed at small business, all ready for this expansion.  We're ready for the wave of growth and we're excited.  Tradia ® is a cash-less alternative to banks, credit cards and debt.  People can literally trade what they have to get what they want using the Tradia ® Barter Exchange & Database.

 After a lot of preparation and testing, Tradia ® is ready to set the pace and take the lead in the Barter industry.