Business Cross-Promotion

What it is

Two businesses promote each other and help each other make sales. A bakery shares a florist's Valentine's offer with its followers; the florist sends wedding customers to the bakery. The promotion happens on your social media and among your contacts, the sale happens in your own shop, and any money moves between the two of you. Nothing passes through Help Barter, and it costs nothing to take part.

Mutual or single side

• Mutual — both businesses promote each other. You need a live Business Listing of your own to join one.
• Single side — only the listed business is promoted, and the other person is the promoter, paid by commission or a fee. Anybody with an audience can do this, with or without a business.

Putting your business on the board

1. Have a live Business Listing

   See the Business Listing guide. Your card reads its name, logo and location from it.

2. Open Cross-Promotion settings

   From the first section of the Business Cross-Promotion board, or here.

3. Set your terms

   Mutual or single side, whether you pay a commission on sales and how much, whether you pay for promotion, and the rest of the switches on the form.

4. Save — your card is on the board

   No moderation queue: everything on the card comes from your already-approved listing and your switches.

A card comes off the board automatically if its Business Listing ends or is deactivated.

Joining a partnership

1. Find a card and press its button

   If you have more than one business, you choose which one you are bringing.

2. The terms go into a conversation

   Each business's terms are posted as one message with a "Cross-promotion terms" panel, under that member's own pitch.

3. Talk it through

   Agree the details in the conversation.

4. Both press "Start partnership"

   The moment the second person presses it, the terms are frozen. Editing the card afterwards never changes a partnership already agreed.

Recording what happens

Once a partnership has started, either side can add a record from the card in the conversation or from My partnerships. Choose a topic and write a message:

• General Message
• Sales commission
• Online promotion
• Work evidence
• Payment related
• Promotion Work
• Agreement Change
• Plan Change

The other side then presses Okay to confirm it, or contests it. Nothing ever confirms itself — a partnership has no deadline, so silence means nothing has happened.

Contests and the track record

• A contest withdrawn within 72 hours is erased.
• After 72 hours it stays on both public track records, for good.
• The other side may contest back; while both stand, the partnership is paused.
• Every member's record is public at their track record page, which lists who each partnership was with and how it went — the protection in an arrangement where no money passes through us.