Get Your Trade On At Love 2 Trade

Online marketplaces are not new to the web, but specialty marketplaces focusing in on the long tail are cropping up all over. Last week I profiled Bubblevine and recently I came across Love2Trade, a free trading community that allows you to buy, sell and trade items, simply by trading the items you want for the items you don’t want.

Love2Trade’s differentiation from other similar sites is that there is no transaction fee on trades made between users. Typical free trade or barter sites tend to be more of a classified ad listing service (such as Craigslist or backpage). In addition to posted listings the company has a partnership with Oodle to provide visitors access to listings from several other sources (such as eBay, Facebook Classifieds, backpage and others).

Another nifty feature to the site is that they also provide item ratings/feedback and user communication via “Trade Zones” and “Zone Talk”. Houston based Ash Metry, founder of Love2Trade told me that, “any trader can also start a “Trade Zone” of a smaller community and invite friends and other traders that they might have something in common with. They can also engage in forum style discussions via Zone Talk.”

“I started with this idea after realizing that most people, including myself, purchase stuff that ends up sitting in their garage,” stated Metry. “The idea of Love2Trade is to make use of those purchases by trading them for things that you actually need instead of spending additional money on more stuff. We also wanted to build our business concept around the idea of providing a free service and donating part of our revenue to charities, non-profit organizations and causes that we believe meet new and emerging needs in communities, nations, and the world. We believe that by supporting these organizations and causes we will be able to help others in need.”

If you play around with the site, you can use the coupon code ‘grace’ which would give up to $5.00 off any featured ad.

What do you think?

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