Getting started

1. Create your account

Help Barter is free to join. You get 200 Time Coins the moment your account is made — enough to ask somebody for your first 15 minutes of help, which costs 200.

1. Open the sign-up page

   Press Join at the top of any page. Type your name, your email address and a password.

2. Confirm your email

   We email you a link. Open it to confirm the address is yours — this also keeps the site free of throwaway accounts.

3. You land on your profile

   New accounts open on Account details (your profile form), because three fields there unlock the rest of the site.

2. Unlock the site: three fields

Until these three are filled in, every page except your profile is shown with a padlock:

• Country and region — boards sort the people nearest you first, and your region sets your time zone.
• One language — a swap between two people with no language in common is not a swap.

Save the form and every padlock disappears. Your city, mobile number and the rest are optional.

3. Finish your profile

Your profile is what people read before they agree to help you or ask you for help. To appear on the Exchange Place boards it needs a bio, at least one skill, your country and a language.

1. Add a photo and a short bio

   Say what you do and what you are happy to help with. Two or three sentences is plenty.

2. List your skills

   Up to 30 skills, one per line — "Logo design", "Excel formulas", "Spoken Hindi practice". These are what people search for.

3. Add your languages

   Up to five, with one marked as your main language. Regional versions (English UK, US, India…) are listed separately.

4. Check your time zone

   It fills itself in from your region. Change it if you keep your day somewhere else — deadlines and reminders use it.

5. Add your social and review links (optional)

   Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google reviews and dozens more, each with your follower or review count if you want it shown. You can hide any of them from your public profile.

6. Pick a username

   On Account security. People can then invite you to groups or mention you in messages as @yourname.

4. Choose where you appear

Help Settings has one switch per Exchange Place board. Turn on the ones you want to be found on:

• Ask for Help — you are listed as somebody people can ask for help.
• Offer Help — you are listed as somebody who would like help, so others can offer it.
• Mutual Swap — you are open to a straight trade: you help them, they help you.
• Elite Works and Business Cross-Promotion — whether your Elite listings and cross-promotion cards show.

The same page has Direct chat (whether people can message you from your profile), an optional auto-expire for requests nobody answers, and confirm first if you want to approve each piece of work before it starts.

5. Write your automated messages

When somebody asks you for help, or you ask them, an opening message goes into the conversation for you. Write one under Automated Messages for each kind of trade — Ask for Help and Offer Help, Mutual Swap, Elite Works and Cross-Promotion — so every conversation starts with what you can do and when you are around.

Prefer to write each request by hand? Leave Let me choose each time on in Help Settings and you will be offered a box to type in whenever you ask.

6. Your first trade

1. Find someone

   Open Ask for Help to find people offering help, or Offer Help to find people who need it.

2. Press the button on their card

   A conversation opens with a request card in it. Everything — starting work, marking it done, confirming — happens on that card.

3. Do (or receive) 15 minutes of help

   When the work is confirmed, 200 Time Coins move from the person helped to the helper. Nobody pays money.

Each board has its own guide: Ask for Help, Offer Help and Mutual Swap.

7. Free, Premium and Elite

Everything above works on the free plan. Free accounts can start up to 25 conversations and complete up to 10 helps a month. Premium lifts those limits, puts your profile first on every board, adds a monthly Store Coin allowance and lets you shop in the store. Elite adds Elite Works listings. Compare them on Membership.