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Best Results From Bartering Computer Services?
silicon not in the v writes "Last night I was over at some friends' house. They had cable modem with no firewall and tons of spyware, etc. on their system. They complained about all the popups and how bad it was that they were afraid to let their kids on the computer, so I set them up with ZoneAlarm, Ad Aware, and Firefox to get it cleaned up. In return, the husband, who is a chiropractor, gave my wife and I a free adjustment. What other interesting services or benefits have people been able to get by bartering IT/programming services?"
I do some work for an ISP, and I get a couple of servers hosted for free, including bandwidth.
I also have a nice thing going where I host his users (on my servers), and he sends people needing web design to me.
It works out nicely.
I get my taxes done for free after setting up a Samba domain for a local accountant here in my area. Pretty nice if you ask me.
When I was a student, I set up an old 8086 "XT" class machine with DOS and 8-in-1 office software for a small restaurant. Basically just duplicated their ledger in the spreadsheet. I ate breakfast there all summer for free.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
My favorite thus far was an offer from a couple in Ireland who offered a night's lodging and a hearty Irish breakfast should we ever visit their fair country--in exchange for the bonus level pack.
Even though we probably won't hav ethe opportunity to take them up on the offer anytime soon, it was made in earnest, and I was happy to send them a copy of the level pack in return. Even though I can't buy beer 'n' pizza with it, this "barter" has proven far more memorable than the typical few bucks plonked in the PayPal account...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I had plastic surgery to my face (the removal of six ugly moles) in return for doing some SEO (nothing unethical, just getting the right search terms in the right places) to the surgeons homepage that brought it into the first place on most search engines when one searched for "breast enlargement" (in the local language).
I think that beats your bone bending...
I did some REAL minor graphic work (changing 3 buttons for their website) for a firm a few months back... one of the provisions of my day job's contract is that I'm forbidden from doing any outside work, so I asked my boss if I could do a little one-off on the side as long as no money changed hands, and he agreed... so I got the side folks to give me a new bowling ball instead of cash - everyone happy all around!
By the way, the new ball added almost 30 pins to my average right out of the gate. If you can lay your hands on an original Spirit, they're awesome!
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
At the right price you can get them to pay you AND recomend you to friends who in turn do the same. Hasn't failed for me yet though I'm sometimes needed at 3 places in one day and with school and a couple of part time jobs that can be quite a trick to pull off.
-Tim Louden
A month or so before I moved into my first apartment she was moving out of her one-bedroom to live with her new fiance, and so in return for my work she called me up and gave me all the furniture from her old apartment provided I move it out.
I ended up getting a futon, couch, kitchen table and chairs, two clothes chests, a couple end tables, and a slew of kitchen stuff (plates, glasses, pots etc), all in excellent condition. She essentially totally furnished my new place and it cost me nothing.
I consider this to be the best example of good karma at work I've experienced to date.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Back in the 80s I did custom programming for small businesses. The vast majority were just basic pay for services but sometimes there were alternate agreement. For example, that's how I got my private pilot's license.
:)
Another client distributed natural foods and always sent me off with a few bags of goodies - they always had a stack of stuff that was fine except for damaged labels and such.
I ended up with some suits/ties/etc. from a men's clothier.
Dealing with IRS accounting for all that is a pain, though.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
As long as you are not exchanging money for sex, you are not in danger of breaking any laws. In fact, that's how "Escorts" still survive, you pay them for their time, anything you decide to do with that time is not included in the price. Or you're just "tipping" them. ;-)
Of course if prostitution was legalized, there would be a lot less crime in this country, and the spread of diseases would be WAY down (ala the red light district in Amsterdam). I've known people who have traded various smokeable items for computer work in the past, that and car service are the two most memorable exchanges. Generally if somone is willing to trade sex for computer service, you're either already dating them, or the sex isn't worth the price paid
I get the same thing.
My friends will always complain and moan and complain and moan about their computers being hosed and their connections being slow. One even complained constantly that he couldn't get his new wireless AP to service the whole house, or how he was going to have to run a separate hardline down to the basement so that he could hook up his new Xbox.
Now these are people I've known all my life. One time I discussed, with a third-party friend, the possibility of offering my services for a fee. We both agreed,"Look, if you try to charge them for it not only will they decline, but they'll redouble their computer complaints, everyone will have to listen to it, and you'll be lucky if they offer you a beer next time you're over to watch the football game."
So I cleaned their computers and set up their wireless AP with full WEP and MAC filtering for free. Sure I got a few beers and a chicken dinner out of it but it's still a bit of a kick in the pants. I save them $200 and I get the luxury of watching the football game with them? How about they pay me $200 and get the luxury of watching the football game with me?
Ahhhhhh... to have a house, a big screen TV, and a well-stocked refrigerator. Then people would be jumping to fix _MY_ problems.
Yeah right...
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
My only barter experience was in the early-mid nineties when people were just starting to talk abouut cyber-cafe's. A friend called me late one night saying the proprieter of the local coffee house was haveing a problem with his computer getting connected to AOL. I came by and fixed the problem and he said I could have anything on the menu.
This is were it got good. I asked him what he would recommend, not becaus I didn't understand what a latte was but because the proprieter always knows what he does best. He suggested I try a Turbo Cola. I said, "huh?"
Here's ther recipie:
3-4 ice cubes of frozen, high quality coffee.
2 shots of espresso
Fill the rest with Coke.
This turned out to be my all time favorite coffee drink. The creamy head is equal or superior to Guiness, the flavor is perfect and I've never gotten a better rev.
The monetary value of this barter is nothing to get excited about, but the store went out of business a short time after this event and I know I'm one of only a select few that got a crack at one of these drinks. I make if for myself fairly often and know that this recipe is worth far more than the drink itself. If you've never tried a coffee-cola give this recipe a try. Every person who tries one of these and loves it just increases the value of that one, simple job I did.
TW
I look at as a simple cost-benefits equation. Does the cost of my time fixing my friends' computer problem equate to a net personal benefit to me (in terms of good will, feel-goodness, etc)? Would adding money change the picture?
There are some people I'll help out with computer issues without charging them; these are the friends that know what I do for a living, yet rarely ask me for a favor. The friends that just assume I'll fix things for free and ask for stuff all the time get the standard thirty-bucks-an-hour line.
Personally, I think I'm better off with friends that actually like me enough to not try taking advantage of me.
I'm also nominally more willing to help those learning Linux, partially because I know the system better, and also because it's one of the ways I can give back to the community.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
This is a third-party story, but still relevant.
My Dad commutes to work every day on the train. He's gotten to be pretty friendly with the conductors/engineers over the past couple of years. One of them mentioned his troubles setting up a wireless network in his home, and my Dad offered his services to work the kinks out for him. It was a frustrating day's work getting everything tweaked just so, but it turned out to be worth it - he hasn't had to pay for a train ticket in about 3 years now. As an added bonus, whenever there's a concert or a Red Sox game, the conductors leave one car empty for my Dad and the other 'regulars' so they don't have to ride home with a train full of drunken yahoos.
Geeks must like trucks. I saw a bumper sticker with that and the "replace you with a very small shell script" joke on the back window of a souped-up F-150. I've seen similar geekiness on other trucks.
It was very confusing to me - seeing a giant-ass jacked up rumbling truck with an NRA sticker and a peeing calvin on one side and "shell script" and "read your e-mail" stickers on the other.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
In college, I was approached by one of my girlfriend's dormmates, a good-looking blonde poli-sci major who'd procrastinated on some statistical thing she needed to do on the campus computer system. She was in danger of failing a class if she didn't get it done over the weekend, and she literally didn't even know how to log into the system.
So, after much hinting and many awkward silences, she blurted out that she'd do anything I wanted if I bailed her out. Surely at that moment I achieved a permanent place in the Geek Hall of Fame, perhaps in the Absurd Fantasies wing.
But it gets better. You see, I was very happy with my girlfriend at the time (whom I later married), and I didn't want to mess that up by sleeping with someone she saw every day and whom I didn't trust to keep quiet. So I turned her down.
For the sex, anyway. I had her take me out to dinner instead. The stats thing she needed took me 20 minutes to run.
I was walking on air for some time after that, just based on the principle of the thing.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Trucks now a days are very high tech. They almost all have GPS responders that reveal where they are, what speed they are doing etc. And truckers are lonely, so they often have internet connections for use while they are parked for the night.
I have found many truckers to be computer geeks at heart.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
When I was going to college, I was working weekends in NY and going to school in Baltimore, and, well, I had a little accident on the New Jersey Turnpike where I sort of hit a Highway Patrol car in the snow at very low speed. He wrote me up a ticket for "careless driving," which would have sent my insurance through the roof.
I was embarrassed about it, but I mentioned it to my although-I-didn't-know-it-wife-to-be, and felt that I had to plead guilty to the charge. She mentioned that her uncle was a lawyer in New Jersey, and that he was having trouble configuring his new Unix box (a Fortune computer, this was 1983.) A deal was quickly struck.
I went up there for the weekend, and got his machine configured, and he told me about this spectacular precedent called the Wenzel case in New Jersey -- where no matter what the evidence is, if the cop didn't actually see you being careless he couldn't charge you with that. He refused to represent me, but he counseled me with exactly what I had to say. Basically, although I was acting in my own defense, I couldn't testify for myself -- I would merely cite the case.
Well, traffic court in New Jersey was a long slow process, and I was the last one there when the cop finally deigned to appear. He gave his report, and I offered no explanation, but cited Wenzel, and the judge said "Get out of here." And so I did.
That barter probably saved me many thousands of dollars over the next few years.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Actually there are plent of country boy geeks. When I went to Rose-Hulman a bunch of us geeks would head out to go shooting. We looked like typical rednecks. That is where we coined the phrase "high-tech redneck".
A nosy friend of my mother's fixed me up and introduction to a young lady. At the time I lived in Atlanta and she lived in Lafayette, Louisiana. We were both in school. We emailed each other and made a phone call or two for three months before she came to Atlanta to visit her mother.
Now I do Windows, but at heart I'm a Mac guy. As soon as I introduced myself to this lady, I determined that she was a Mac user. She told me that her mother was a self-employed person who ran her business out of her home on a Macintosh, and that her mother needed a great deal of computer help, which she wasn't really able to pay for.
(Lightbulb goes off).
We met. Five months later she bailed out of grad school and moved to Atlanta. We were inseparable. And I spent a lot of time, gratis, helping her mother tackle her Mac problems and get her business and office under control. I upgraded both of them to newer Macs, largely at my own expense.
When I asked the young lady to marry me, and she said "Yes," I went to her mother.
I said, "Linda, how would you like a lifetime of free technical support?"
(Wedding bells)
In my experience it was quite the opposite. Many years ago (well, about 10) I started getting severe neck aches while studying for exams. Well we all know how useless regular doctors are for anything spinal, lots of drugs and no progress. On my mothers recommendation I went to a chiropractor for a _single_ session. It cost something like $20. Not only was she able to tell within about 10 minutes that as a child I had broken my left ankle, she also decided that was the cause of my problems (limping = misaligned pelvis = bent spine = neck strain). So she did some adjustments, and I went on my merry way 60 mins later. It was not a good short term feeling I can tell you. For the rest of that day my back felt very weird, and very stiff. But the next morning I was cured - for the rest of my college life (and beyond) I had no problems at all.
I know that if I ever get similar problems I'll be back again, but touchwood that has never happened. Count me as one very satisfied customer.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
I used to fix computers for friends for free just as a favour.. Then word travelled locally and I built a good reputation. People started offering me all sorts of things for computer help; free wine, beer, wine and beermaking accessories (all while I was underage), free weights (yeah, like I actually work out), cookies, dates with hot women (I never did and never will take a pity date), and eventually I became good enough at doing it that most of my offers were money. And so I registered a computer consulting business at age 16.
I soon had people asking if I could build computers for them.. or tell them what to buy.. or better yet, if they could just hand me the money and I'd do it all for them. I mostly do it for money these days, but I regularly get tips because customers are happy with my level of honesty. Most of my tips are cash (about 10% tip on a whole computer, which is pretty big.. especially considering most parts only have 13% markup!) but I am still tipped with a couple cases of beer now and then. I've had customers ask if they could set me up with their daughters, I can get into a number of local clubs for free with no line, a few local gyms, and I get discount pricing on pretty much everything I buy.
Computer skills can get you seriously networked with people. I think that's the most important part of all. My friends are always shocked at how many people I know. We'll be talking about, say... getting a car alarm installed on my friend's POS that's been stolen a million times. I know a guy who can hook us up on pricing. I know another guy who will install it for me for free. I know a woman at the insurance agency who will pull all the strings she can to see if the new alarm will lower the insurance rates. Knowing people in places will bail you out of a million and one situations.
Forget favours like beer. Networking with people is important, and computer skills can do that for you.
I'm now 20 and just finished my second year of university; I work fewer than 10 hours a week and make more money than the average bachelor degree graduate from my school. I usually don't brag, but I think that's a pretty good accomplishment.
The fundamental problem with this analysis is the assumption that the worth of your time is a constant. For nearly everyone, it certainly is not.
I've seen plenty of people on Slashdot evaluate their time in terms of their hourly wage. This is completely bogus. If you work a 9-5, then the value of your time between the hours of 7 and 8 PM has absolutely nothing to do with your work wage. You aren't at work between the hours of 7 to 8 PM anyway, so it makes no sense to value your time based on that standard.
For some, their off-work time is worth less than on-work. For example, people who are paid double-time to work weekends might jump at the chance to give up a few hours lounging around on Sunday in return for a few hundred bucks.
On the other hand, you have people like me, whose off-work time is so valuable that I doubt there is a quantity you could pay me (ok, within reason) to get me to come to work on Saturday. I don't think I'd do it even for $1000 a day. Okay, maybe as a one-time deal, but not consistently.
Personally, I think I'm better off with friends that actually like me enough to not try taking advantage of me.
That's why I have very few "friends." People sometimes ask me if I'm lonely. I respond that I have just as many friends as they do, it's just that I don't refer to my casual acquaintances as "friends." The three or four close friends I do have, would probably give up limbs for me, and I'd do the same.
I realized long ago that the effort of maintaining the less serious casual acquaintances just wasn't worth it. Pick your real friends and then direct all your energy toward those people. Nobody else matters.
I'm a member of the Valley Barter Group in Phoenix.
I am able to trade out computer services for barter bucks which I can use to get food catering, so I don't have to spend time shopping/cooking.
The added bonus of joining a barter group is that people are way more willing to spend barter bucks than cash, so you can get value out of people who wouldn't otherwise pay you. It is also good for increasing business when you don't have a lot of it already.
Security is inversely proportional to the commitment of one desiring to circumvent it.