It seems to me that this has been done somehow before, though I can’t think of an example offhand. I just signed up to DibSpace, a new online marketplace that uses a non-money currency as a bartering tool and have been playing with it. The design seems rather preliminary – the sites been around for about two months or so now – and already has about 600 members offering goods for up for dibs.
It’s like bartering but better – they keep track of your non-cash money (dibits), which are equal in value to dollars, and send you a tax doc at the end of the year to keep you legal. Rather than finding someone who’s services you want to trade for, you offer your own services for dibits, and then spend those dibits on whatever you want from the other businesses offering on the site.
From the looks of it, two guys run the thing. My initial support question, about setting up multiple businesses, was answered within about 5 minutes (soon, it will be possible to set up more than one business per account – which is good, for me.). It could easily out grow its staff, so I’m personally preparing for growing pains and looking forward to being on the ground floor to help out.
This site has even got me considering offering services I might not offer usually – like setting up a wordpress website for 150 dibs or whatever – and already thinking more creatively about how to get by in tight times. Oh, and they give you 100 dibs to spend just for signing up and adding your business.
If you join, please use https://www.dibspace.com/users/new?referral=courtnee@gmail.com – I get 30 dibs if you use me as your referral.
Sweet!
I REALLY liked your post and Neevita.net » DibSpace – A new online marketplace blog! It took me a little bit to find your site…but I book marked it. Would you mind if I but a link back to my site?