I'm trying to declutter and stumbled upon a shelf full of books I never refer to and really have no use for. Now usually when I want to get rid of books, I turn to Amazon.com or Half.com to try and sell them to make a little money. The problem is when you go to Amazon and see 300 other people trying to sell the same used book for a penny. Clearly not a worthwhile option.I recently signed up for Swaptree after reading about it at The Simple Dollar (a fabulous personal finance blog, I might add). Basically, you list your paperbook books (they also work with DVDs, CDs and video games). You have to list at least nine items in order to start generating trades. The site will match you up when a book you want becomes available. They even have an option where you can upload your Amazon wish list, which is what I did.
So I list nine books and I wait. Literally, the next day I received an e-mail asking if I wanted to swap one of the books I listed for a book I wanted. Giddyup! Best of all, you can print the shipping label from your computer and have your credit card charged for the cost. No more inconvenient trips to the post office! I've since received another e-mail for a swap, so I have two books ready to be shipped and I'll be receiving two books that I'm interested in reading (Angela's Ashes and The Kite Runner). I'm pretty excited to see if this process works. What a great way to recycle for the frugal reader.
Next on my list to try is PaperBackSwap.com. Any others that you've tried and liked?
I am trading with htto://www.barterquest.com and I love it. You can swap almost everything on their site, goods, services and real estate!
ReplyDeleteThanks from the Swaptree team for covering our service. We're excited to hear that you've signed up! We know you'll love how easy, fun, and cheap using Swaptree is, as opposed to buying all your media new from the store. Glad to have you on board, and if there's anything we can do for you, don't hesitate to contact our support team at support@swaptree.com.
ReplyDeleteBest Wishes,
Jack O'Hurley
Swaptree.com
Follow us on Twitter:
@Swaptree
Ally - Thank you for the article and glad you like what we are doing over here at Swaptree. As a small company we depend on passionate bloggers like yourself to help us get the word out, so again thank you.
ReplyDeleteMark Hexamer
Co-Founder Swaptree.com
http://www.swaptree.com
Follow us on twitter @ http://www.twitter.com/swaptree
Thanks for the well wishes! My experience with Swaptree has been fabulous so far.
ReplyDeleteI'll definitely add www.barterquest.com to my list of sites to try.
I was an excited swaptree user when I first joined the site, but after just 2 months of trading, there were 5 trades that I never received. I sent my (high quality) items promptly once the trade was completed, but never received anything in return. Before agreeing to a trade, I always made sure that the users had high ratings, but this was not enough to ensure that I wouldn't get ripped off. The issues were reported to swaptree support, but the extent of the consolation I received from them was a note that they would "pursue every avenue available" to them to contact the offending user to send my books. That was months ago, and I haven't heard a word since. Needless to say, my account has been deleted and I will not be using swatree again, as there is no guarantee that you will receive anything in return for your items.
ReplyDeleteThat is really interesting. Thanks for sharing your Swaptree experience. It's always helpful to hear the good with the bad.
ReplyDelete