Our Little Haven

Important Announcement

The MSN Groups service will close in February 2009. You can move your group to Multiply, MSN’s partner for online groups. Learn More

I can finally announce what's been keeping me so busy! In about a week, give or take a day or two, I'm going to be testing my online swap site. This will be completely different than e-Bay or any of the online auctions. No money will change hands between members other than a shipping fee agreed on by the swappers. The site will work on a point system. Think of a point as being equal to one dollar. So if you offer a coat valued at 20 points, when someone 'buys' the coat, you will have 20 points credited to your account to spend on the site for other merchandise. There will be a small membership fee, but I would like to give away a limited number of free memberships to get the swapping started before the site officially opens to the public. I will give the first 5 people from the group to contact me one of these limited time memberships. US residents only please.

PLEASE do not ask for a membership if you don't intend to participate!!! I paid someone to design the site for me, so I can't give away free memberships just because I like you...lol. This is a business for me, and I'm only offering these memberships to get activity started on the site. I will have to unsubscribe you if you don't participate within 30 days of registering at the site.

I also plan to have an area for selling only but that may come later than the swap boards. We're still trying to work out a way for sellers to avoid paying a membership fee, but instead pay a listing fee for their items. So if you only want to sell your stuff, hang onto it for a little while longer and I'll let you know when that part of the site will be opening.

Please e-mail your request for a memberhip to [email protected] with Swap Site in the subject line. I will reply ASAP to let you know whether or not you were one of the first 5 to respond. Please include the name of the group where you saw my post and your nic there.

You can swap everything from clothes to books & CDS to fine jewelry. There's really no limit to what you can offer, just realize people probably won't pay the higher shipping costs required for large or heavy items. So clean out those closets and garages, and let's start swapping!

How's your swap site going Elly? Were you able to get it underway? ~Baby~

It's not at the point where I'd like to be, but that is partly my own fault. The web designer had it ready for business in early September, but I decided to postpone my part in developing it further until I got back from vacation. Not having a laptop I couldn't monitor the site while I was away, so if any problems had occured I wouldn't have been able to address them right away.

So my plan was to promote it in all my groups when I got back and give out free memberships to get the ball rolling. I thought by this time I would have given out about 100 memberships. But out of the dozen + groups that I'm active in, only a couple of managers would let me post a promotional message in their group. I'm really not sure what the problem is since they're all either hobby or social groups, and the swap site in no way competes with anything they're doing, but it really threw a monkey wrench in my plans.

So it's growing slower than I would have liked, but it is growing. I've even sold a couple of memberships--and they weren't family members...lol.

Finding things to list has been the hardest part. I'm not one to keep things around that I no longer need or use. But with only a handful of members, it seems to be up to me to get the ball rolling on that. I guess I'm going to need to start combing thrift shops, consignment stores and yard sales--which is going to be time consuming and something I hadn't planned on. But I have to do what I need to do to increase the activity.

I do have a couple of happy campers though, so hopefully they'll spread the word. One woman 'bought' a 14K gold bracelet I listed last week and she's totally thrilled with the site now. I paid $170 for it, she got it with the points that came with her yearly membership of $45, and she still has plenty of points left to 'buy' more stuff. I've already told her I have a few more pieces of jewelry, so she's alerted her friends and family.

Anyway, because only a few sites have let me give out the promo code, I've decided to post it publicly. It will be good through the end of October. It's good for 30 days and comes with 50 points. The code is freeswapper.

I guess I need to give the link, too...lol

The selling area is now open. NO fee to join that area, but you have to register (where it says Join TheNetSwap). $1 per listing for anything you put up for sale.

Important Announcement The MSN Groups service will close in February 2009. You can move your group to Multiply, MSN’s partner for online groups. Learn More
Our Little Haven	[email protected]