How U-Exchange Improves Online Bartering

U-Exchange is a moderated web based service that assists people in finding a wider audience for products and services they would like to offer in trade or barter online. The U-Exchange interface acts as a buffer between interested parties in a trade to protect privacy and to allow for efficient discovery and communication to be made between compatible trading partners. As an ad supported bartering site, they are able to offer searching and moderating services completely free of charge to anyone who signs up.

Online bartering and trading has been available in several forms. Sites like U-Exchange and Craigslist act as loose interfaces making it easier for potential bartering partners to find each other and trade directly online. Another similar form of online barter is geared toward merchants, where the online bartering site charges fees but offers more robust services, such as advertising.

Certain sites, especially media exchange sites, offer an indirect model that gives a trader credits for items and services they provide, which can then be redeemed for other services on offer within the bartering network. This allows for a wider margin of trades to be made since the offered and desired items of each individual within a set of trading partners do not have to match. This form is also useful if an individual wishing to make a trade as an item but does not need anything specific, rather they wish to save their receipt of a bartered item for a later time.

Craigslist has a section for bartering, and acts as a worldwide newspaper classified listing with robust search ability. They are the most widely known online exchange site that offers bartering to individuals. This gives them the advantage of the best audience, although they are not specifically geared toward barter. U-Exchange has a more robust interface customized to online bartering. The ability to turn a listing off or on based on the availability is a nice feature that saves traders communication time. The map search function is also a feature that sets U-Exchange apart.

PaperBack Swap is a good example of the indirect model of exchange. They offer the ability to store credits based on books a trader has provided to the online barter community and also the ability to post books desired and be notified when they become available. The interface and policies for this online bartering site are simple and I would recommend their use for textbooks and novels; however they are limited only to books and U-Exchange offers much greater bartering variety.

Care To Trade is another free online bartering service, but they do not have the geographic interface options that U-Exchange offers. While adequate for smaller items that can be shipped, the ability to easily narrow a search to a geographic locations makes delivery and shipping arrangements less complicated.