Have you heard of SwapitShop? I hadn’t until yesterday.  It’s kinda like eBay, only without money. You advertize something you want to get rid of and wait for someone to bid on it with Swapit points. Once you have a winner, you send the item to SwapitShop, along with extra postage so that they, in turn, can send it off to the person with the highest bid. After the transaction is completed, points are awarded so now you can bid on stuff. If you are negligent in any way, points are deduced. And I saw quite a few sellers with negative points.

Does this sound good to you? It seems clumsy to me. The website even LOOKS clumsy. But I could be biased. As my sister knows, I hate to go to the post office to mail a package. I have never sold anything on eBay for that very reason (even though I have a nice pile of American Girl crap). But I love bidding. Especially on books. And I love receiving even more.  So for me, Swapit has a fatal flaw.  If I can’t sell, how do I buy?

Some of the items listed are ridiculous. Notice in the screenshot-someone is selling a card that looks like something my 11 year old would have made. Three years ago. Now don’t hate: I love homemade cards. But unless the card is made by an artist, I want to actually KNOW the person who made it. It’s just creepy otherwise.

In all fairness there are other ways to get points.

Coincidentally, or not-lightening fast memes fly through cyberspace these days-my local paper highlighted another similar site. Bookins has a cleaner, more grownup looking layout and with this site there’s no bidding. Here you must pay shipping $4.49 for everything you receive. Postage for items sent is free, you simply print postage labels right from the website.

When posting an item on Bookins, you must give the ISBN. They take care of creating the listing. Which is why it is much easier to find what you want on this site, as opposed to the often garbled listings in Swapit.

Sadly, there are no decorating books on either site.