Let’s Make a Deal! Bartering on the Web
Jun 30th, 2009 | By Dee | Category: Networkingby TDavid of http://www.tdscripts.com/
Ever see a post like the following: “If have a script you could use and you do design work. Can we make a deal?”
Here’s a concept that is almost as old as time and works as well on the Internet as offline. Let’s say you run a website and would love to get a reciprocal link on a major link site. Instead of submitting the link and getting turned down or dealing with the myriad of restrictions most sites put up, maybe you can look at what “else” you can bring to the relationship to get a foot in the door.
In my case I do scripting. Some of you may know me, some of you may not, but for those that do most of the time I come into contact with people who need scripts. I’ve yet to meet a webmaster who isn’t willing to barter at least to some agree. Of course money and traffic always talk loudest, but a successful bartering relationship can lead to money and traffic.
Some pessimists will say, “Yeah, but I don’t know how to do scripting.” Scripting is just one possible skill or ability that one can barter with. There are several services to barter with which you may not even think of. Let’s go through some of them. You might be surprised that some do not really even require any knowledge or skill, but simply your “time.”
1. “Tagline” Message Board Marketing. Let’s say you are regularly involved in a newsgroup or message board community. This is VALUABLE, as I cannot just drop into this community and drop a tagline and have the same impact as you posting as you always would and leaving your tagline. Maybe all you do there is talk the weather with other folks, but you have something known as a tagline.
In that tagline most newsgroups and messageboards will allow you to leave a URL. This is powerful marketing. Leaving a URL behind for others to follow. If you are well respected and/or well liked in this forum (or known not to just contribute spam), more people will be inclined to click on this url.
This is worth something and you could approach a webmaster and say, “I’ll give you a month’s worth of florum taglines to be listed for a week on such and such page” You might be surprised with the response you’ll get. WARNING: do not spam!
There are ways to tactfully do things without spamming and the tagline approach as mentioned above is one such gentle way that is generally accepted. Posting a gigantic advertisement in the body of a message is usually prohibited. Remember, if you belong to a community and are a regular contributor this IS valuable and something you can barter with.
2. “Tagline” Email Marketing You are sending email every day, right? All over the place for a lot of things to a lot of different people. The tagline in your email can also be used as a marketing tool. It isn’t spam to REPLY to mail you’ve received and as you interact with people on a daily basis this can also be a valuable place to barter with.
3. Email Autoresponders You have a site that takes submissions for say a link site. Why not have an autoresponder which says, “I received all your information and it will be reviewed within the next xx hours and by the way … {INSERT MARKETING MESSAGE OR URL} Setting up an autoresponder is not all that complex and some hosts or scripts will even do this for you. Your host might even offer built in auto-responder capability. You should check with them and see.
WARNING: Don’t go overboard in the autoresponder mail message … just keep it down to one or two recommendations or a message and your tagline. Shorter is better with these messages as people have a tendency to glance over them and then quickly discard them. 100 words will work much better than 1000 because of how intimidating that much text looks like inside an email.
4. Design. Are you good with graphics? Can you make banners or buttons or maybe even great looking full pages? Try making a “free” button or banner for the site you want to get listed on and send it to the webmaster with a note attached: “I’d like to get listed on your website, I made you a free graphic and if you like it and would be willing to list me I can make you some more in exchange for a good listing on your website.” Try it. You might be surprised with the results
5. Scripting / Programming. Do you know how to write code? If you do then a LOT of webmasters will be willing to barter with you on this one. Don’t know how to code but know how to install CGI scripts? Then use this skill to approach webmasters for bartering.
6. Other skills. Think about what else you might be able to bring to a relationship. Maybe you are willing to provide some service like review site listings for rules compliance. Most of the major link sites use humans, not bots, to check back through old sites to see which are still complying with their rules. Scripts cannot catch what the human eye can catch. Getting your foot “in the door” is very worthwhile and you should always at least think of bartering as a possible way to do this.
I hope this has given you a few new ideas on how to make a connection with a site you’d like to be listed on, or a web professional you’d like to trade traffic with. Sometimes a little creativity will open a door that might otherwise appear impossible to penetrate.
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There are a couple good barter / trade sites out there. I use CL and Baarter.com – http://baarter.com
Check ‘em out. WIth this economy, it’s definitely worth taking a look to see if you can swap something instead of paying for it.