Is there a good community or app for bartering technical services? Like "I'll trade 10 hours of consulting for a new mountain bike" or "I'll trade a week of pairing up to help implement chef if you'll spend a week helping me build a small Rails app"?
Ask HN: Bartering for technical services?
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Re: Ask HN: Bartering for technical services?
#2If there is, I'd like to find it. A friend and coworker's garage would flood when it rains, so he hired someone to build a drainage trench to deal with it. The guy he hired started the job, found out that my friend built web sites and asked if they could trade the trench for a site. My friend got the trench, plus a new deck for the backyard in exchange for the site.
Re: Ask HN: Bartering for technical services?
#3None that I know of. But if you find one, I advise you to bear in mind that in the United States, barter transactions are generally taxable:
Re: Ask HN: Bartering for technical services?
#4I have used http://www.techscratch.com/ for some help with graphics and design stuff. Its not exactly this, its mostly for small tasks (1 - 5 hours) and you get points that you can then spend to get tasks done.
Re: Ask HN: Bartering for technical services?
#5None that I know of. But if you find one, I advise you to bear in mind that in the United States, barter transactions are generally taxable: http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html
I'm fine with that, but I like the idea of transactions which bypass the banking system. If I can avoid giving my money to financial middlemen, then why not?
Re: Ask HN: Bartering for technical services?
#6There is something around here in the Bay Area called the BACE time bank. BACE is Bay Area Community Exchange: http://timebank.sfbace.org/
The code it uses is a fork of oscommerce.
Re: Ask HN: Bartering for technical services?
#7None that I know of. But if you find one, I advise you to bear in mind that in the United States, barter transactions are generally taxable: http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html
I'm fine with that, but I like the idea of transactions which bypass the banking system. If I can avoid giving my money to financial middlemen, then why not?
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Re: Ask HN: Bartering for technical services?
#8If there is, I'd like to find it. A friend and coworker's garage would flood when it rains, so he hired someone to build a drainage trench to deal with it. The guy he hired started the job, found out that my friend built web sites and asked if they could trade the trench for a site. My friend got the trench, plus a new deck for the backyard in exchange for the site.
We are wondering what the future of bartering could be like. We are building a website towards that end, though it's not finished.
Feedback would be appreciated.