A Guide to Online Freebie Trading - Method 1 and a Half

Welcome back to my series on freebie trading. If you have made it this far you are surely very interested in the business and possibly already trading in Method 1. If you have not had an opportunity to view my other issues, you can find them in my content titled "The Truth About Freebie Sites", A Guide to Online Freebie Training - Method 1" and "A Guide to Online Freebie Trading - Technical Setup". In this issue we will cover what has become known as Method 1 and a half or trading referral for referral or trading green for green.

In this method, you will trade with other experienced and new traders on the FLR forum. The only difference is that no money exchanges hands between traders. As you know in Method 1 you go green on a site for an experienced trader and they in turn pay you an amount of money for this service. In trading green for green (G4G) you will go green on another traders site, just as in Method 1, the only difference being that instead of paying you, they will go green on one of your IFW's. This way, you get a referral and are able to either cash out on the site (if you only need one referral) or add a referral to your credit (if you need more than one referral). This method is a very good stepping stone for new traders because it allows you to gain experience setting up trades in the Trade Manager.

To start trading G4G you will want to have at least two or three trades completed so that you know how to complete the offers and also have enough offers left to complete. A lot of the sites feature the same offers and you will find it difficult very quickly to find new ones to complete. This is why traders move on to Method 2, paying for referrals (we will cover this in the next series). In order to complete a G4G trade you can approach it in several ways. You can go to the Trading Referral for Referral thread on the home page of FLR and look for other traders who are looking to do G4G trades or you can start your own thread in this section. Either way you will see that it is fairly easy to find a trader to do G4G with. There are a few things you will want to know when trading in this way. One is you only want to trade G4G with a trader who has an iTrader rating between 3 to 8 and 100%, this ensures that they understand the process and will still be able to go green easily on your site. Next you should insist, and this is common practice, that the trader with the lower iTrader rating greens first, even if that trader is you. Also be sure to include in your terms that if either trader goes red, meaning they do not fulfill their obligations by cancelling an offer early or anything else that you they must pay you back 100% of the value of your referral. For example, if your site pays $40 per referral and your trade partner goes red after you have gone green on their site then you will not get paid from the IFW, but they will get paid from theirs because you are green. So they should be responsible to pay you back the value that your site is worth. A common scam is that a trader will say they cannot green because there are not offers for them to complete, and while this may be true, they would have know that before they started. The trader will then offer to pay you 50% of the value of your site. This is a scam because they get the full amount and you only get half. Also only do trades on sites that pay out the same, that way the trade is fair. Any trader who is honest and not trying to scam you will gladly agree to these terms.

Once you have picked a trader and chosen the sites you would like to work on, you must then set up the trade in the Trade Manager. To do this you can click on the TRADE MANAGER tab near the top of any page, then click on Create Trade (also near the top) and enter the information. In this case you will put the trader's username (ex. trader1) in the Trade With area, next enter the information in the They Are Getting area (ex. green on xyz.com), then enter the information for I Am Getting (ex. green on abc.com) and finally enter the Additional Terms (this will be all the finer details such as lower rating goes first and repayment is expected if the trader goes red). Click Submit Trade and the trade is created. Once they have created the trade on their end you can go back to the Confirm Trade menu and confirm the trade exactly as it was done in Method 1. It is a good idea to not give out your referral ID until the other trader has confirmed the trade in the Trade Manager, this ensures that they are serious about trading and will add the trade to your database. If these steps are not followed then your iTrader rating will not go up even though you have completed trades and you will find it extremely difficult to move into Method 2. Once both parties have completed the IFW requirements you can go back and complete the trade and leave feedback just as in Method 1.

Now you have successfully completed your first G4G trade and are more prepared to move on. Look for my next issue on Method 2.