BizXchange: Wanted / Offered trade of services. Opinions, experiences and info?

I've looked at the BizXchange service in pretty good detail. I recommend bartering for services on a daily basis.

The catch I see with BizXchange is two-fold: 1) you have to have something to barter. 2) you lose an economy percentage to BizX for the transaction.

What I do is a "high barter" item. 99% of companies can utilize my services and gain benefit. So for me, bartering is almost like printing "free money" and I get a great economy of scale.

BizX doesn't hold much value for my business because of the fact that I can already barter with 99% of businesses if I choose to.

However if you only have something that 10% of businesses barter for.... for instance you do custom kitchen installations and can only barter with restaurant owners- you can actually take the barter system in BizX and get "barter credits" from the restaurant owner which can then be used like cash with other barter users of BizX. That means you could do a custom kitchen install for a restaurant, and then use the credits to purchase printing items from a printer i n the BizX network.

I would generally believe that most businesses would be better off bartering directly and not using the BizX process. Even if I found a company on BizX, I would simply directly deal with them and save myself the % loss.

Dittoes to Barry, and:

The strongest application for barter in the BizX model is the trade of unused (or otherwise unusable) inventory. This is especially potent for goods with 'spoilage risk' (including show tickets or coupon books). Moving that inventory for barter credit is far smarter than letting it become a loss.

As in any market, a middleman is the entity who profits from inefficiencies in that market: arbitrage of the same stock between two exchanges (NYSE, PHLX) used to be possible before the digital age. With the advent of instantaneous information retrieval market inefficiencies are mostly gone: unless an industry holds monopoly or regulatory control on the information, and buyers and sellers aren't talking directly. (Classified ads, middleman. Craigslist, death knell to that.)

For most personal service corporations, the only barter-able "item" is time and skill. Applying game theory, it comes down to whether there is more inefficiency in hunting down the bartering partner or paying for someone else to make the connection. I think BizX is useful for things one couldn't efficiently capitalize or monetize, and for saving the time in hunting down a trade partner for goods.

Brian, I think your last sentence sums up the value of BizX nicely: It's a service that is useful to the degree that it saves you time in hunting down trade partner for what you've got. And the reality is, most of us personal business owners on Biznik don't have much to trade other than our time (we are overwhelmingly service providers in this community). BizX seems designed for businesses with excess product, not for individuals with excess time.

I am a member of www.itex.com, another national barter site. It serves both businesses with products and businesses with time....and it is national. It costs to join, but we have received a great deal of material services for our intangible service of coaching. I recommend it, and if you want more info, please call or write me.

What a great discussion! I think I can provide some additional insight… I have been a member of BizXchange for over 4 years and have used trading of all types extensively within my business for many years.

The first point I would like to clarify is that nearly any business can be a member of BizXchange, regardless if they are primarily product or service based. In fact, service based companies are sometimes even a better match for trade because all you are trading is your time. There is often no cash outlay to give your time where a product-based company has some sort of cost of goods in cash in order to provide for the transaction.

I have had many experiences with direct trading and will tell you for me, BizX makes trading much more flexible for me. Direct trading has three inherent challenges, 1. Two companies have to have exactly what each other needs at the same time at the exact same value. That match is sometimes difficult to find and can hinder the trading possibilities of a company. 2. There is typically no consistency in the way in which the two companies track and account for the transactions (could be problematic if you or they were audited). 3. There is always the financial risk that you will not get to “redeem” your trade if a company were to go out of business.

The trade model that BizX provides me allows my trading dollars to be much more liquid. I am not stuck with having to find a perfect match with only one business. You get the benefit of the new customer and the benefit of being able to spend the trade dollars anywhere in the network. Plus they track everything on monthly statements and provide me a 1099 at the end of the year for my IRS reporting. Also, the BizX dollars never expire so I use them whenever I want. I personally think these benefits are well worth the cost of the transaction fees that BizX charges.

I have also been a member of ITEX. I nolonger use ITEX and find that the membership of BizXchange to be much more valuable, not in terms of number of members, but in quality of members and the products and services they provide. After all, the trade dollar is only as valuable as what you can buy with it and I have had a lot of challenges finding quality places to spend my ITEX dollars.

I feel I can recommend BizXchange as an additional sales channel to those businesses that have any sort of capacity to spare.