To create new regions, we had to set them up for you in the exchange and then set each region to the proper permissions and configurations. There was also a fee for us to do this for you.

Now we’ve made it easier for you. You can create your own region simply by going to Control Panel > Exchange Mgmt. You’ll see a new heading under Exchange Settings called Regions. If you already have multiple regions, you will see them listed and will be able to manage the settings from there.”

More info at http://www.bcslsoft.com

“While about 23 exchanges said “YES” to attending a conference and specifically asked for Las Vegas, only 6 exchanges actually filled out the form”, admits Barry Cohen, co-founder of Barter 21. Interested exchanges are encouraged to attend the upcoming IRTA conference in October.

New exchanges added in the last little while include:

Sun Coast Barter – Bradenton FL
BarTraNet – Bethlem, New Zealand!
South Florida Barter – Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Free Barter Network – Loganville, GA
Tradelink Barter – Okeechobee, FL
Baby Boomer – Las Vegas, NV
visionTRADE – Los Angeles, CA
The Barter Nation – South Pasadena, FL
Barter Euro CLub – Athens, Greece!
e-Barter – France!
Vantage Barter – Austin, TX & Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
Liberty Trade Exchange – Greer, SC
Aloha Barter – Hawaii

A Different Way to Think About Business Categories

Barter21 has always been an industry leader in their approach to business categories. They were the first software to match Member Directory and Trading Floor categories, making it easier on both members and exchange brokers to place businesses into the Directory and items and services onto the Trading Floor. And in a new twist, rather than adding more categories that are very specific, Barter21 has substantially reduced the number of categories and made each heading much broader. This is contradictory to the industry norm for barter exchange management software. “Placing a member into a broader category rather than multiple categories that are very specific gives them the greater exposure. Rather than a specific category like ‘Italian Restaurant’ we’ve put all the restaurants together into one category. So for the exchange that does not yet have an Italian Restaurant perhaps their member will choose another place to eat in the same category. Instead of a lost sale, all the members will get greater exposure. Greater exposure leads to more sales and trade volume. More trade volume means greater profits for the barter exchange.” said Barry Cohen, COO of BCL Soft.

Catherine Cohen, CEO of BCL Soft, continued, “The combined power of a redesigned Trading Floor, a more robust Member Directory that shows not only the member information but items that member has on the Trading Floor, and a more intuitive category structure is sure to have a positive impact. The members will have greater ease of use and that will reflect well on the bottom line of barter exchanges using the Barter21 platform.”

Launched in February, 2009, Barter21 is the fastest growing barter exchange management software in the modern Barter & Trade industry. Barter21 specializes in assisting start-up exchanges as well as being able to handle the greater trade volume of established exchanges.

• Tradia CEO, Matthew Humphreys announced that the “national” Tradia convention would be held in the month of May in honor of the celebration of his homosexual love pact with Graham Norris of the Provo, Utah ITEX office. When asked for a comment, Matthew responded, “Not if you are going to be mean. I have had a crush on Graham for a long time and I won’t have this ruined for me. We’re going to celebrate at the convention together.” Matthew’s wife was later seen pacing the floor of the Tradia office, muttering to herself, “I always knew it would come to this.”
• Steve White of ITEX told me, in all seriousness, that a merger with Proctor and Gamble is in the works. Apparently P&G has been looking at the company for at least five years. The multi-billion dollar company plans to add ITEX to their hair care line, packaging it with products like Suave. When asked why, Steve responded, “Who doesn’t want a membership to a barter exchange when they buy new shampoo? I mean, five bucks should go farther than just one bottle of shampoo, you know?” ITEX franchisees will be sent care packages/baskets with a sample of P&G products in exchange for their franchises.
• The World Consortium of Barter convened last weekend in Dallas to discuss the possibility of a world-wide barter currency. According to the two exchange owners that showed up for the event, it was simple to create a communal currency. Both are affilated with doBarter.
• Barry and Catherine of Barter21 revealed to me recently that the only reason they have created their barter software is to have something to talk about on Facebook. “We had these really boring Facebook pages until we got involved in the barter industry. Now we have something to talk about. People are responding. The software followed naturally”, Catherine admitted.
• Neha Gupta, our regular contributor, admitted that she has never done a barter deal. In fact, she doesn’t know anything about the industry at all. “I get all of my ideas by reading BarterIndependent.com. I just go to the site, read his articles, and then change them around a little bit. I think bartering is kind of stupid. I mean, why wouldn’t you just charge people money?”
• BizX, one of the more interesting barter exchanges, has closed all of their social media accounts. Jason Richards, Marketing Director of BizX explained it this way: “No one watches YouTube any more. We kept making these videos and no one was looking at them. And our blog was a miserable failure. We used to Tweet, too, but I’ve never done anything as stupid as that in my life. Tweet? What kind of verb is that? Nubian?” Dozens of YouTube fans stormed the BizX office, demanding immediate posting of the next member testimonial video. Three people were hurt, mostly by the yelling, and just their feelings. No other casualties have been reported.
• Tyler Seamons, owner of BarterNewsWeekly.com, has been reported to be stalking the Hurricane, Utah office of BarterCard. Threatening letters, obnoxious voice mail, constant emailing, and a bag full of rubber bouncy balls have all aimed at Wayne, CEO of BarterCard. Apparently Tyler is still angry about a comment made on one of the early articles posted on the BNW website in which Wayne asserted the world-wide dominance of BarterCard AND forgot to use proper capitalization and punctuation.  “I’ll get the b@#$%^&! No one comments on my site in lazy English!”

Hopefully you recognize that none of the above mentioned “news” is real, and that it is written for the fun of satire and not meant as anything personal or libelous or anything else that could get me sued. I’m speaking to you Matthew. Yes, you, in Oregon. To everyone that I pick on here, I hope it made you laugh. Happy April Fool’s Day.

• A consolidation of category listings to make browsing members quicker and easier.
• Updated permissions for employees.
• The launch of an internal messaging system for brokers and members.
• Integration with MailChimp email broadcasting software.
• Twitter automation.

According to the Cohens, these improvements to the software will give the Barter 21 exchange owners an edge on their competition and increase online sales.

Barter21 is a complete enterprise-class barter exchange Software as a Service (SaaS), that features on-demand bartering with an online trading floor as well as real-time directory and search information.

Software, any software, is created for you to license or subscribe to in order to use. Bill Gates doesn’t require that every letter you print and mail have “Created by Microsoft” in the header and footer of the page. Then why should the software you use to run YOUR business have another company’s name in the forefront?

If your barter exchange is a franchise, then of course, the identity is the franchise’s, not yours. You paid good money to be aligned with a certain already created brand.

But when you are running an independent barter exchange, the brand identity throughout the website should be all about your company, not the software. For example, one software encourages you to change your company name so that the name of their software is in your name.

Another barter exchange management software has about 2 inches of space at the bottom of every page of your website talking about himself, his company, and how wonderful that software is. There is even a poetic quote on your company’s website attributed to the programmer’s mother. Really? And to add insult to injury, emails from the system go out with not your company’s name but the name of the software instead.

But as much as I dislike those two, I have to say there is a worse thief of your brand’s identity out there. A lesser known software allows absolutely nothing on the landing page of it’s users. I typed in the www. of a well known barter exchange only to land on a page that was blank except for a login form in the middle of the page, a logo at the top corner, and a couple of menu items. At the top a contact button brings up some contact information about the exchange. But when you click on the home button, guess where you go? NOT to the home page of the barter exchange paying good money to use this software. No, you are directed to the home page of the software.

Not every software out their puts their brand identity before yours. Barter21 is an excellent example but there are others. The problem as I see it is that so many exchanges are using the software that make them – the exchanges, second and the software first. When I Google exchanges I find that their online description devotes much to the software they are using and nothing to the exchange itself. Most barter platforms even put their own brand in the title bar of every page on your website.

As a barter exchange you need to develop your own brand and cultivate that identity. Software is just something you use. It is a tool to run the exchange. It should never be the identity of your exchange. So if your software is hogging up the entire spotlight and taking away from the brand of your exchange, you may want to look at other options. And here’s my plug – Barter21 puts your brand at the forefront. We have just a small logo at the very bottom of the page.

While our feature set is still not 100% where we want it to be, some of the things we have already done set us far ahead of the competition. If you are a barter exchange using a hosted, networked solution such as Barter21, ask yourself these questions:

1. Do I have access to a full, complete, and ACCURATE backup of my data anytime I want?
2. What happens if my software provider has its email server blacklisted by AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. due to too many email blasts being sent?
3. Can you get in touch with one of the owners of the company after hours? on weekends? the middle of the night?
4. Does your software provider give excessive lines of credit to some exchanges just to make an extra buck?

By now you must be wondering how a Barter21 customer would answer those questions.  Go ahead. Admit it. You’re dying to know. OK, I’ll tell you:

1. Barter21 automatically generates a full backup for you once a month. You also have the opportunity to go in at any time and get an up-to-the-minute backup. These backups are kept securely on our server until you decide you want to download them. They do not go away after one month. They are not just the previous month’s data. It is a FULL and ACCURATE backup. Every bit of information relating to your barter exchange is there for you. We are not even informed that you downloaded it. It is YOUR DATA. Why in the world would we want to keep it from you?
2. When a relatively small number of people click the button in their email program that says “Mark as Spam” or something similar, the email provider can blacklist, or block, the server that is sending the email.  That means that if another exchange is sending a lot of email blasts to their members, and they are blacklisted, that essentially cuts off all email from all exchanges using that software.  Barter21 has opted to go another route. We have teamed up with a company that specializes in email marketing and keeps their servers clean and spam free. Heck, in most cases Barter21 even pays you back their monthly fee.
3. Sleep is so overrated. Call us. Email us. Ring the doorbell. We’ll answer.
4. Barter21 gives very small lines of credit. The only time it will be increased is if we know it can be paid back in a short period of time. Then it is brought back down to the original level. This keeps the value of the network, which in turn keeps the exchanges trading.

See the original article at http://bclsoft.com/blog/

• One World Exchange in Canada
• My Trade America
• Boomerang Barter
• All Trade Canada
• The Barter Concierge
• Great Trade Solutions

Barter 21 is rapidly becoming the software of choice for new exchange owners.