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This article was published on January 27, 2012

With over 1.5 million products listed, Swap launches iOS app


With over 1.5 million products listed, Swap launches iOS app

Selling things on Craigslist is super simple, and depending on where you live, it’s pretty easy to find a buyer for pretty much anything you want to sell.

Once in a while though, when you list an item on the site you’ll get an email from someone offering to trade you for what you’ve listed. It’s an annoyance, and I’ve seen a lot of people explicitly say “no trades” in their listings. One site called Swap is all about trading, and the site is seeing serious success with the model.

The site is completely free for everyone to use, and it encourages you to share all of things that you don’t want anymore in hopes that someone else will. You know what they say, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. The site sports 1.5 million listings, so if you’re looking for things to trade for, there’s a good chance that you’ll find something that interests you.

The company has launched its iOS app that will make it easier for you to browse for things and add items in your closet you’d like to part with.

Get to swapping

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Swap app makes it easier to rummage through your garage and closets for stuff that you’d like to put on the site for trade. Without worrying about how much to charge for an item, this makes the process way more fun. With its huge marketplace, Swap has users from all over the globe and there are no restraints as to what you can post, be it handmade goods or used video games.

When you download the iOS app, you’ll want to register if you’re not a Swap user already. After that, you can either start browsing for things you’d like to trade for, or add your items one by one.

You can add items that you either have or want, and other members of the community can dig through all of your listings to find a potential swap. It’s pretty impressive that a site I’ve never personally used before has such engaged users. Just by clicking around through items and looking at the owner’s profiles, you can see the history of everything they’ve listed, swapped, and still want.

Much like eBay, the swappers get peer reviews so that you know how trustworthy someone is before you message them about a potential swap. The messaging system is lightweight and doesn’t require you to follow the person or become friends. Swap is truly an open marketplace for trading things that people don’t want anymore.

The app also lets you scan barcodes and you’ll be shown how many items match them on the site. So if you’re at the store and see something you want, you can just scan it and it might already be available for trade on Swap.

Rather than go through the headache of putting a price tag on everything you have sitting around, why not throw them up on Swap and see what kind of feedback you get? By listing all of the things that you want, you have a better chance of actually getting them, since the person who visits your profile will have a better idea of what you’re into.

Swap for iOS

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