In my opinion, NO! I am not a fan of trading or bartering of business services…generally speaking. I do believe it may make sense for certain types of solopreneurs who have similar pricing and service delivery. For example, an aesthetician trades a facial for a massage from a massage therapist. That makes some sense.
But for most service businesses, I believe that trading services is just a bad idea 99% of the time. One party always seems to feel that they got the short end of the bargain. I hear horror stories frequently from business owners who should know better. I won’t tell you the most recent one to protect my client’s identity, but this business is many thousands of dollars into a deal that may take many months (if ever) to make the trade come out fairly.
I’ll give you another example though: Many years ago, a former client of mine who is a contractor agreed to paint the whole house for the owner of a small marketing company who would provide $XX,000 of unidentified “marketing services” that would maybe include a website and/or some print marketing or “whatever marketing” the owner of the painting company might need or want at some future date not named. Do you see the problem here? My client had to pay out of pocket for the job materials and for his employees’ labor to do his part of the trade months, if not years in advance of his getting his value out of the deal. My recollection is that months later he hadn’t yet determined what he might want done in the way of marketing as he was “too busy to think about marketing” just yet. Somebody just got a free paint job most likely.
Of course, there are rare instances where a service business with employees trades a service to their advantage, but I only hear about one of those once in a blue moon. I hear about the barters that don’t go well a lot more often.
My advice: Just pay for the services you want and allow your client to pay you what your service is worth in money you can put in the bank!