GetSwap.com Launched
Bruce H.G. Calder

On November 11, GetSwap.com was officially declared "Open For Business" by Bruce Calder, the owner/operator of Calder.Net.

The goal of GetSwap.com is to be the the pre-eminent internet service to help internet mailing list (or "e-zine") publishers to exchange advertising placements, commonly known as "swaps."

Bruce Calder has been publishing internet mailing lists since 1996, and like most e-zine publishers has been driven to increase readership in his publications. Perhaps the most cost-effective method of increasing the subscriber base of an internet mailing list is the "adverting swap." An "ad swap" is an agreement between two publishers of internet mailing lists to run an advertisement for each publisher's mailing list in each other's publication.

From the very beginning, it became apparent that such advertising swaps, as effective as they were, had some very serious drawbacks.
- It is often difficult to find other publishers willing to engage in such a swap.
- It is very difficult to arrange a swap with another mailing list if that list has many more subscribers than yours. Why should somebody with 100,000 on their mailing list swap with somebody else with only 100 on their list?
- Once a swap has been agreed to, it is an inconvenience to ensure that your ad is run in the other publication.
- It is impossible to know if the swap was fair. How many subscribers were received because of the swap compared to how many were generated for the other publisher?
- When setting up many swaps, it's hard to keep track of what ads needed to be run, and how often.

Bruce envisioned a system which gave E-Zine publishers who wanted to increase the readership of their publications a central place where they could arrange advertising swaps with other like-minded publishers. In addition, because nobody could ever be sure how many subscribers another publication really had, Bruce wanted publishers to simply be able to agree to swap a fixed number of subscribers, rather than just exchanging advertisements.

GetSwap.com is the result. Once a publisher becomes a member, he or she may register any number of mailing lists including suggested advertising copy to be used by other publishers being swapped with. The publisher may then initiate swaps with other publishers using the GetSwap negotiation tool to come to an agreement concerning how many subscribers will be swapped and the duration of the swap.

GetSwap.com then keeps track of how many subscribers each publisher has generated for the other, and keeps a record of what publishers have met their commitments and which have not. Now instead of publishers having to worry if they are getting a "fair" swap, they can easily know for sure.

Using the GetSwap.com system, publishers can also post links on their websites allowing surfers to subscribe to all of the mailing lists being swapped with. Duplicate addresses generated for a mailing list do not count towards any swap.

Until GetSwap.com attracts a healthy number of members, premium membership, which provides members with more features than the basic membership, will be free of charge.