Well,  there’s a new place in the online neighborhood with an interesting concept to help you get rid of all those unwanted items. 

Surf on over to Listia.com and auction off your garage goodies for FREE.   Now all you online sellers don’t need to get excited and rush over there!  This place isn’t the type of ‘auction site’ you’re looking for…or is it?  It might be perfect for those who sell as a hobby to get rid of stuff they have laying around the house. 

The concept is simple.  You list something, others bid on it.  But there’s a catch!  No money changes hands.  Everything is bought and sold with ‘credits’.  Kind of like the old barter system.

From Listia’s About Page:

What It Is

Listia is an auction site where you bid on other people’s stuff with virtual credits instead of real money. We make it easy for users to get rid of stuff they don’t need anymore and find stuff they want for free. Every user gets $50 in free credits (500 credits) after signing up and listing an item. You can even buy more if needed (10 credits for $1), but they cannot be redeemed for cash. You bid credits for things you want. So each thing goes to the person who wants it most!

How It Works

1.  A user lists something they don’t want anymore. (like an old TV)

2.  Other users bid on the TV using credits they received for signing up, referring friends, or selling their own stuff.

3.  When the auction ends, the user who bid the highest amount of credits wins! Credits are automatically transferred.

4.  The buyer and seller arrange to exchange the TV and the cycle continues…

Now so far, I’ve only seen one catch.  You don’t really get 500 credits when you first sign up.  You get 100 credits.  You have to list something for sale, to get the rest of your credits.   But I understand this.  If they didn’t do it this way, people would sign up just to get the credits to bid on something and then walk away never contributing back to the site.

Overall, I like what I see so far so head on over to Listia.com and turn your trash into treasure!

On July 1, Moonfruit was a below-the-radar Web-site building company with 400 followers on Twitter. Just a few days later, the London-based company had acquired 47,000 followers on the micro-blogging site, traffic to its home page had increased by 1,300% and the word “moonfruit” was popping up all over the Internet.

The 52-employee firm says its new-found recognition was the result of a Twitter contest that went viral, and it’s a marketing tactic increasingly being used by small businesses. [ read more... ]