Make Money by Trading Stuff for Other Stuff

Howtomakeadollar is a frequent practitioner of an idea known as "Trade Up," or sometimes called "Bigger and Better." The premise of this idea is that you start with something relatively small and common, like a tater tot, and you go around and trade it to someone for something else. Then you trade that item for something else, and so on. Eventually you work your way up to something decent that you actually need, like beef jerky. I pretty much always stop when I've successfully traded up to beef jerky. But it needs to be BEEF jerky, not any of that turkey jerky. That stuff is ok, but if you're going to get jerky, you want it to be beef. Thats just my opinion. 


Well, you don't have to stop at beef jerky. You can keep going. In fact, one time when Howtomakeadollar did this, we started out with a bic pen and within about an hour we had traded up to a treadmill and two one-day golf cart rentals. We only had the golf carts for the day, but we got to keep the treadmill. No kidding. We probably made six or seven trades total in that hour. But that was a long time ago in the middle of Maine , and I don't really like Maine anymore. If you're going to go to New England (not recommended) you may as well go to New Hampshire. Its way better in New Hampshire, and there are fewer lobsters.

I don't know what Howtomakeadollar did with the treadmill. We probably left it in the back of one of the golf carts by accident.

NOTE TO OTHER MEMBERS OF HOWTOMAKEADOLLAR: Which one of you guys was supposed to get the treadmill? Think of all the ways we could have used that!


But we didn't need to stop there either. In fact, there is a guy in Canada who started with nothing but a paperclip, and over a series of trades, wound up with a house. It was in Canada , which is worse than Maine , and all his neighbors are probably really into curling, but it was a free house. Thats pretty amazing. Another guy started with an old cell phone and traded up to a Porsche. I guess some people just don't like beef jerky.

In any case, Trading Up is a very good way to get something for nothing, and if you are willing to work for it and put a lot of effort into it, you can get some pretty valuable things this way.