Michael: Oh yes, barter is incredible. People just have no idea how much business is done through bartering or trading.

Michelle: I didn’t do that, and to be honest, I still really don’t.

Michael: Well, I can direct you to some places where you can really educate yourself. It was hard for me to pick up the concept when I first got into it, but I’m a member of several barter organizations. The bigger barter organizations, there’s two of them, one is called BXI. If you go search the internet, or www.google.com, or one of the search engines, and search “BXI Trade”, you’ll end up in a website. There are many, many trade exchanges. For instance, there’s a BXI trading organization probably in every state in the country, and each one of them have their own website. And they’re like brokers. What these trade organizations do, they are a group of businesses that are all members, and they trade with each other. It’s different, because what you used to is the U.S. dollar as our trade currency. You can take a dollar and spend it almost anywhere in the world, right?

Michelle: Right.

Michael: It is probably the most recognized and most solid currency in the world. But a dollar is nothing but a piece of paper that you give to somebody, in trade for a product, a good, or a service, correct?

Michelle: Right.

Michael: A barter organization is only group members trading with each other. You have a little checkbook but you can write checks to other people in the trade group.

Michelle: Oh.

Michael: All the people in the group are involved for a common reason: They want to get more business. They’re looking for things to buy, but they can only buy within the group. You’re an expert copywriter, right?

Michelle: Right.

Michael: If you put yourself out there on the website, or as a member of that specific trade organization, as “Expert copywriter;” we’ll write copy for your business to double and triple your sales. Your phone will ring off the hook, I’ll promise you that.

Michelle: Right.

Michael: But the hard thing with being in a trade group is spending the money. You’re limited. With a dollar, you can spend it anywhere in the world. With a trade organization, you can only spend it within the group, and it does take some work to spend that currency within the group. You’ve got to find something that you want - that you could use for you personally or that you could use for your business. I would encourage you to do this; it’s a way for you to generate an incredible amount of business in trade dollars.

Also, with trade organizations, you can charge a lot more than you would cash. So, if you normally charge a client $500 for a good sales letter, with a trade organization, you can charge $1000. The currency isn’t as valuable, because you can only spend it within the group, so you can charge more. Each time you write a sales letter or some ads for a company, and you get another thousand dollars in your trade group bank account. You can spend them on anything with anyone in the group. What can you spend it on? You can spend it on printing. You can get a massage. There are probably restaurants within the group. You can take those trade dollars and go out to eat. You spend it on things you would ordinarily spend your cash money on.

So you would look in your real checkbook and say, “Okay, what am I writing checks for? Am I writing checks for web hosting?” You can absolutely get web hosting in trade. “Am I writing checks for fax broadcasting? E-mail promotion? Internet service? Do I need a lawyer? Do I need someone to draft me a living will?” All of these things are available in trade. So you’ve got that money there, in your trade account, to spend on those services. There is probably something that you need, that you may not have the cash to do, but you can do it on trade.

Michelle: So, do you assign a dollar value to it then?

Michael: It’s a dollar for dollar. And the tax laws look at it as the same. Now you have to watch out for this. You could probably generate a ton of business. So let’s say you earn $10,000 in trade dollars; it’s just like you earning $10,000 in cash, you’ve got to claim that as income. If that $10,000 is profit at the end of the year, you’re going to have to pay taxes on it. So you don’t want to get into the trap where you’re generating all this trade currency and you don’t spend it, or expense it out, before the end of the year. You’re going to be stuck with taxes, and you’ll have to pay those taxes in hard cash. Does that make sense?

Michelle: Yes, it does. What sort of requirements do they have to become a member of this organization?

Michael: You can negotiate with them. BXI has offices all over the country, probably at least one in each state. Each broker has a certain area, so there’s a broker for southern California or there’s a broker here for San Diego. The brokers make money by you becoming a member and paying an upfront fee, a cash fee to become a member - anywhere from two hundred dollars to three hundred and fifty dollars for the year to become a member and establish an account. Sometimes this can be negotiated a percentage of all the money that comes through your account. So if you sold ten thousand dollars worth of your copywriting services, you’re going to pay five percent on what you sell - in cash. If you sold ten thousand dollars worth in trade, you’ll pay five hundred dollars cash to the trade broker.

That’s how they make their money. They’re like a bank. When you open up a bank account and you deposit your money with the bank and the bank pays you a certain amount of interest. The bank is actually taking your money and investing it and making six percent and only paying you three. It’s the same thing, the broker takes a piece of the action on all your business - it’s usually anywhere between seven and ten percent. What most people don’t know is that you can go to a broker and negotiate the fees. Let’s say you’re a copywriter, you could potentially generate that broker a lot of business, so you go to the broker and say, “look, I’m a hot copywriter and I’m sure I can pull a lot of business through my trade account. I want to be a member of your organization but I don’t want to pay any fees coming in cash - want my trade fees to be paid in trade.” If you negotiate it right and stand your ground, you can get in for absolutely free. They’ll set you up an account and every month you will not have to pay cash fees. You can only pay your fees in trade dollars, so you’re not spending any cash.

Michelle: Oh wow.

Michael: Now you said you were looking for a car. Well you can put yourself out there, become a member BXI. If you negotiate it right with the broker, you can become a member for nothing. You can put your services out there or you can call on other members in the Trade Organization and say “hey, I’m a new member, I’m a copywriter, what do you need done?” They’re going to be more than willing to work with you because many of these people are sitting on their trade dollars, doing nothing with them, because they have been too lazy or don’t know what to spend them on.

Michelle: Right.

Michael: You see? BXI is a national organization. You’re not limited to spending those trade dollars just in your local area. You can spend it anywhere in the country. BXI has a website where you can see every single business in the United States who is a member of BXI. You can find something to spend your trade dollars on and you can sell your services to any member in the country as well.

Michelle: Oh wow.

Michael: It’s very simple to do. BXI used to use what is called a trade draft. Let’s say you’re going to write a sales letter for me and I’m going to pay you a thousand dollars. I’m going to send you what looks like a check, I’m going to make it out to Michelle Nightingale, I’m going to fill it out for one thousand dollars for copywriting services and I’m going to fax it to you. You’ll have the fax and then you enter my account number, your account number and the dollar amount into a phone system and it instantly goes into your account, just like a credit card.

Michelle: Okay.

Michael: Boom, so you’ve got the money. You need a car? You can buy a car on trade. I just got two e-mails yesterday from my local BXI office of two cars being sold in trade. One was for three thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars in cash may be a lot - but three thousand dollars in trade can be one or two projects for you.

Michelle: That’s true.

Michael: Some of the members will want half cash half trade. Since it’s ten time easier to earn trade dollars than it is cash dollars, you’ll be able to make ten times the money. Then you just have to look for what you want to buy.

Michelle: Oh, wow.

Michael: There are auto mechanics who will work on trade, if you car breaks down. I know there’s a place here in San Diego, when my parents come into town, that I go to and rent a car on trade.

Michelle: Wow.

Michael: So you can maybe lease a car on trade, maybe rent a car by the month on trade. If it costs you a thousand trade dollars a month, and it’s just one or two jobs of for your work, it’s worth it - just as long as you have a car.

Michelle: Do they limit the number of vendors in a particular industry that can join the organization?

Michael: No, they aren’t going to limit that. In your expertise, Michelle, you’re a damn good writer.

Michelle: Well, thank you.

Michael: You’ve got skills that people are dying for, if they only knew you existed and how good you really are. Now here comes the good part, I am going to teach you exactly how to buy trade dollars for twenty cents on the dollars. I’ve explained to you that a trade dollar is something you can spend within the trade organization. These trade dollars are more difficult to spend then a normal U.S. dollar it requires a little more effort to spend them. Many people are lazy and they get into the trade organization very excited, they sell tons of their products and tons of their services to other members within the organization and then they sit on all these trade dollars. Guess what, they say “I can’t spend them on anything”. The problem is they’re usually too lazy to call the broker or they don’t know what they want to spend it on or for whatever reason. Many times it is because it’s so simple to earn these trade dollars and they find it difficult to spend.

This is where you can really take advantage of a great situation. When you sign up with one of these trade organizations or when you do a search on www.bxinsider.com, www.itex.com, www.crumpbarter.com or www.google.com, you’ll find a number of barter exchanges. Now you don’t even need to sign up with the barter exchange, you can actually find businesses that seem like they may have a lot of trade dollars that they are sitting on. This may take some telemarketing work on the front end. For instance, you may want to find a company that sells legal services or dental services. Dentists get tons of trade dollars. Let’s say you call all the dentists in BXI, and I personally know a dentist here in San Diego who had over twenty thousand dollars in trade. He didn’t know what to do with it and he was blowing it on all kinds of stuff. Many times they will take cash for those trade dollars. So, first you want to identify a business that may have a lot of trade dollars and you simply call them up and say, “Are you interested in selling any of your trade dollars?” They’re either going to say “yes” or “no.” If they’re sitting on a pile of trade dollars, you’re definitely going to get their attention and they’re going to say, “Yes I am.” You would ask how many trade dollars they are interested in selling, and they say “I have twenty thousand dollars in trade”. You can offer to buy them at 20 cents on the dollar. Sometimes you can even negotiate ten cents on the dollars. For ten thousand trade dollars you can pay a thousand in US currency. You can get it at ten cents on the dollar.

Now, you don’t take possession of the trade dollars. You make an agreement with them, a simple letter of agreement, or a contract that says, “I’m willing to buy ten thousand dollars of your trade dollars.” You either pay them or give them a deposit for the trade dollars and then they become legally yours. They are your trade dollars. What you negotiate into is, you do the shopping and have him buy the items for you. You’re going to want to talk to a tax attorney about this, but what it does is it allows you to have access to trade dollars for ten cents or twenty cents on the dollar without even being a member of a trade exchange. You then you ask for this person to send you the members of his trade exchange and you look through all the members who are selling products and services. It’s as simple as that. I guarantee you it’ll work.

I get e-mails all the time of people who are willing to sell their trade dollars, especially advertising businesses like radio stations and newspapers, they’re infamous in trade. They sell advertising space for trade dollars and they are sitting on piles of it. You could go to them right now, today, and ask them if they’d be willing to sell some of their trade dollars for ten cents or twenty cents on the dollar. “Cash is king.” With a little bit of effort, you can take those trade dollars and spend them on items and services and products that you’re spending cash for right now in your business. What does this mean to you? It means that you’ve just given your dollar ten times the power and ever dollar you save is a dollar you earned. That is exactly how to do it. I’m going to be putting together a complete course on this, so look for my “What’s For Sale” page on www.hardtofindseminars.com and you’ll have a description of the course. I’ll be interviewing some of the top trade exchange brokers in the nation and we’ll really give you a good education on trading and how to make fantastic deals when dealing with trade dollars.


Thank you again for listening; this is Michael Senoff with www.hardtofindseminars.com. If you want to get in touch with any of the people in the interviews, please e-mail me at Michael@hardtofindseminars.com.