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Perfect Barter

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IntroductionIn an ideal bartering economy the items you own but don't need can be easily exchanged for the items you do need, without spending money. The problem with bartering is that&nbsp;it's actually rare for two people to meet who each have exactly what the other wants to trade for. Fortunately, the computer age allows a new approach to bartering that&nbsp;can&nbsp;continuously provide the exact trades you want.&nbsp;By allowing more than two people at a time to participate in the same trade, the true potential of bartering is revealed. Consider this example:You have a mountain bike that you want to trade for a table saw. Unfortunately, none of the people who are interested in&nbsp;	your&nbsp;mountain bike have a table saw, or anything else you really&nbsp;want to trade for. Though Mr. Johnson has a table saw he's willing to&nbsp;trade, he doesn't want your mountain bike. He's willing to trade for house cleaning services, but you'd rather not. Marley is willing to trade her house cleaning services but not for a table saw; she's looking for a snowboard. And though Jasper has a&nbsp; snowboard that Marley likes, he doesn't want to trade for house cleaning. He'll trade for your mountain bike, but then you already have a snowboard.&nbsp;Even though there's an interest in bartering,&nbsp;no bartering at all takes place&nbsp;because there are no&nbsp;desirable opportunities&nbsp;for any two&nbsp;people to trade directly with each other. However, if everyone in this example enters their desired&nbsp;trade on this web&nbsp;site, a hidden&nbsp;opportunity comes to light. At the direction of the website Jasper gives his snowboard to Marley, Marley cleans for&nbsp;Mr. Johnson, Mr.&nbsp;Johnson gives you his table saw and you give your mountain bike to Jasper. Suddenly, in the same market where there were&nbsp;apparently no&nbsp;opportunities to trade, everyone is enabled to&nbsp;trade what they have for exactly what they want.&nbsp;Like a closed loop of toppling dominos, each piece of the trade enables the next.&nbsp;This is an example of a "perfect barter". Notice that it includes both goods and services. Potential perfect barters already abundantly exist in our economy and this website is designed to reveal them. To&nbsp;understand how abundant they are consider this example:You have an item to trade at a market where there are 10 other vendors, each with one item to trade. If you're only interested in a&nbsp;direct&nbsp;exchange with one other vendor, you have 10 potential trades available. However, if you allow your trade to include any&nbsp;permutation of these other 10 vendors, you suddenly have 9,864,100 potential ways to form a trade.&nbsp;Allowing this much flexibility to how the&nbsp;trade can be formed vastly increases the likelihood of finding a perfect trade for yourself and for all the other vendors&nbsp;included in&nbsp;the trade. As the number of vendors increases, so does the certainty and frequency of finding perfect barters.Ultimately, as soon as a vendor indicates that they want your item, you can obtain any item of similar value from any vendor. And that vendor will gladly give you that item, because that enables them to obtain the item they want, and so on, until the last person in the trade receives the item they want from the first person, thus closing the loop and triggering another self-powered perfect barter.&nbsp;It's the same process that occurs in a money based market, where you sell an item and use that money to buy another item, except that no money changes hands, just the items do. Perfect barter opportunities already exist, they just need to be pointed out. It doesn't matter if money is in short supply or not; as long as the items are available, perfect barters will be available too.You can limit your market to just a trusted group of friends, or engage the whole internet. You can trade small items like toys and tools, or large items like cars and houses. The choice is yours. The results are the same.No matter how many people are involved in a perfect barter, the process is&nbsp;simple for each&nbsp;person since they need&nbsp;only be&nbsp;concerned with whom they're giving to and whom they're receiving from.&nbsp;They do not need to comprehend the entirety of the trade. The details are handled by this website, so the user's experience remains simple and effective.PerfectBarter.com&nbsp;&nbsp;provides bartering opportunities where there are&nbsp;otherwise none available.&nbsp;It&nbsp;provides many more opportunities&nbsp;than are otherwise available.&nbsp;It&nbsp;provides opportunities much faster than is otherwise available&nbsp;and&nbsp;it&nbsp;provides only desirable opportunities&nbsp;because you are only matched with trades that you explicitly indicate that you want.&nbsp;&nbsp;Of course, PerfectBarter.com requires your participation. The more people that participate, the more ideally this website works.PerfectBarter.com&nbsp;becomes a welcome sight when&nbsp;it's realized that it can turn a stagnant economy into one where convenient, desirable bartering opportunities are continuously provided.&nbsp; Getting StartedPlease use Google Chrome for the best display format.This is a new website that initially requires some patience from the users while the database accumulates enough listings to be able to start putting trades together. &nbsp;It's important that you go ahead and post&nbsp;the goods and services that you have to trade even if haven't yet found any other listings to trade them for. Check back regularly to see it if there are any new listings from other users that you are interested in.&nbsp;Once there are enough users finding items they want to trade for, the website will start combining these individual listings into successful multi-person trades. From that point on, the superior effectiveness of&nbsp; this system of bartering will become increasingly obvious. &nbsp;Click the "Create New Account" button on the main menu to the left side of the screen. Enter a unique "User ID" and "Password". Also enter your email address. If you're concerned about using your existing email address, simply create a new email address at Gmail or some other provider to use just for this website. Your email address is used to keep you notified about the status of your trades and to enable you to communicate with other users of the website.Before posting your listing,&nbsp;you may want to first click "Categories" to browse the "Goods" and "Services" posted by other users. Having an idea of what's available for trade may help you decide what&nbsp;to offer in return. If you find something that you like, note the "Trade ID" shown at the top of the listing which uniquely identifies it. Also note the "Estimated Value" towards the bottom of the listing as this will give you an idea of what the&nbsp;trade is worth so that you can offer something of comparable value. When you view the listings in a particular category, note the search box at the top of each column. These allow you to filter the listings. For example, if you only want to&nbsp;trade locally, enter your zip code in the search box at the top of the "Zip" column and click "Search". The results will be filtered to only show listings in your zip code.&nbsp;You can broaden your results by searching by "City" or "State", or you can narrow your results by searching for a particular "Title" etc.When you're ready to add your trade to the website click "Post New Trade" from the main menu.&nbsp;The form you see is used throughout the website,&nbsp;so the explanation of the fields offered here applies wherever you see this form.&nbsp;There will&nbsp;usually be two, side by side&nbsp;copies of this form on the page, with only&nbsp;slight variations between them. The form on the left is where you enter the details about what you have to trade, while the form on the right is where you indicate what you want to trade for.&nbsp;Now for an explanation of the fields on the form.The&nbsp; "# Verified Trades" and "# Canceled Trades" fields comprise&nbsp;your&nbsp;"User Rating" as the owner of the trade. They can't be edited but serve only to indicate how dependable&nbsp;you are&nbsp;as a trading partner. The "# Verified Trades" field shows how many trades&nbsp;you successfully completed while the "# Canceled Trades" shows how many of&nbsp;your&nbsp;viable trades you canceled&nbsp;before they could be completed. Obviously, a good trading partner will have a high&nbsp;"#&nbsp;Verified&nbsp;Trades" and a low "# Canceled&nbsp;Trades". Listings that you delete before they are matched in a trade are not included in "# Canceled Trades".The "Section" and "Category" drop down lists are for indicating where to list your&nbsp;trade so other users can find it in the "Categories" routine. You must choose a "Section" first in order to populate the "Category" list.Choose a descriptive, concise "Title" then give more details in the "Description".Be sure to enter your "City", "State" and "Zip" since this will allow your listing to be included in search results filtered by "City", "State" or "Zip".Entering an "Estimated $ Value" lets other users know what value you place on your trade so that they can offer to trade something comparable and thereby&nbsp;increase the likelihood of being part of&nbsp;a successful trade. While we're on the topic of $ Value,&nbsp; it should be noted that it is allowable to have your&nbsp;trade include money to balance it with the value of what you want to trade for. For example, you might list a pair of boots plus $20. Also, your trade can be only money i.e. you could enter a trade where you're offering&nbsp;a $100 bill.Upload a picture of your trade by clicking the "Browse" button to locate the picture on your computer, and then by clicking "Upload" to copy it to this website. Clicking "Remove" deletes the picture from the website.Finally, indicate what you want to trade for by entering the "Trade ID" of that item in the "Trade ID" textbox under "Trade For This" (the form on the right side of the screen). After entering the "TRADE ID" click the "Get Details" button to display the details about the item and to see if you can be immediately matched in a trade. Click "Email Owner" to contact the owner with any questions you might have about the item, to get more pictures, to set up delivery etc. If you're not sure what you want to trade for you can initially leave this "Trade ID" blank until you do find something to trade for. &nbsp; Once all of your information is entered correctly be sure to click "Save". After exiting the "Post New Trade" routine your trade will thereafter be accessible under "My Trades"&nbsp;along with any other trades you have previously posted. When you go to the "My Trades" page any trades of yours that are currently matched in a viable trading opportunity will be listed in red, otherwise they'll be listed in white. When you click on one of your trades in the list, the details will be displayed. The details&nbsp;about your part of the trade&nbsp;are shown on the&nbsp;left side form under "My Trade", with its own unique "Trade ID". The right side form, under "Trade For This", includes&nbsp;a notice about your trade's status&nbsp;shown in red&nbsp;under that form's&nbsp;"Trade ID".&nbsp;If a trading opportunity has been found&nbsp;you'll be asked to either "Confirm" or to "Cancel" the trade. Click "Confirm" to indicate that you want to go ahead with the trade or click "Cancel" to get out of it. If you "Confirm" the trade, do not&nbsp;proceed with delivery&nbsp;until the trade is "Verified".&nbsp;The trade is "Verified"&nbsp;once everyone in your trade group "Confirms" their part of the trade. At that point&nbsp;you will be notified by the website to&nbsp;proceed with delivery.&nbsp;If anyone in your trade group "Cancels" their part of the trade, everyone in the trade group will be notified that the trade is no longer available. This does not necessarily mean that you will have to find something else to trade for, it just means&nbsp;that the way the trade was previously set up is no longer viable. &nbsp;Simply reenter the "Trade ID" of the item you want to trade for. It's highly likely that the&nbsp;website will be&nbsp;able to find another way to set up your desired trade. Of course, if you want to you can select something else to trade for.All offers from other users&nbsp;for your goods and services&nbsp;will be&nbsp;listed in "Immediate Trades". Though these are not trades that you explicitly asked for,&nbsp;they do have the attraction of being simple one on one trades that are immediately available. &nbsp;They are, however,&nbsp;of secondary importance relative to the main focus of this website which is to allow you to indicate the exact listing you want to trade for and then to set up that trade for you. So don't feel that you&nbsp;need to compromise and accept one of these&nbsp;"Immediate&nbsp;Trades". The real "magic" of this website is in enabling you to&nbsp;successfully trade for the exact&nbsp;goods and services&nbsp;that you want.&nbsp;&nbsp;