If you have a trade rating (TR) of 4 or higher and you think you’re ready to move on to Method 2 of freebie trading and recruit your own referrals, buckle your seat belts. It’s going to be a long and entertaining ride. But, if you’re new to freebie trading or think you can still benefit from Method 1, I suggest reading my Beginner’s Guide to Anything4Free: Method 1 post to familiarize yourself with the process. For a more detailed overview on Method 1 and Method 2, read my Project Payday review.

First, you’ll need to master the art of patience before freebie trading can become a rewarding hobby. There are so many factors of freebie trading that is beyond your control when diving into Method 2. Referrals will go on hold, offers will take centuries to credit and questions will pile up in your in-box, among the few. It will become your duty to help your referrals go off that hold, explain how to submit missing credit requests to speed up the process of offer crediting and answer all questions in your in-box, one by one.

You’ll also need to be flexible. Some days will be hectic, and you’ll have to bustle about answering questions, initiating trades and responding to trade thread inquiries. Other days you’ll find yourself refreshing the Anything4Free forums tab a hundred times, just to see if you have any new messages.

Photo by Zack Mccarthy (flickr)

With Method 2, the core of your freebie trading efforts will evolve around your trading thread. However, your trading thread shouldn’t be the only thing you should focus on. See my guide on recruiting referrals to freebie trading websites for additional things you can do to attract referrals. Though, since one of our main objectives in Method 2 is to make an effective trading thread, we’ll focus on that in this post.

Before Making a Trading Thread on Anything4Free

Before you create a trading thread, you’ll need to list your trades in the trade manager so that potential referrals can initiate trades with you. You do this by going to the Trade Manager and then the “Add Trade Offer” link in the manager menu. Until you are able to collect more trades, the trades that you add will be the first 4 trades you completed with me or previous trade mentors.

1. Choose the types of trades you want to display in your trade list. You can choose from the following:

   • Referral for Referral – Referral for Referral trades are used if you want to increase the variety of trades you have in your trade list and raise your TR. Basically, you complete a trade for someone else, get paid after the offers credit, have that person complete a trade for you and pay them for the completed trade. You earn money from the trader you’re working with and the freebie website the referral completed offers on. You also pay the trader for completing offers as your referral.
   • Referral for Cash – Referral for cash is the traditional approach to freebie trading. You pay your referral a certain amount of money to complete a trade with you, and you get paid from the freebie website the referral completed offers on.
   • Referral for Other – Referral for Other is used if you want to exchange something other than cash with the other trader.

   No matter what type of trade you do, you will receive your payment from the freebie websites you completed offers for as long as your referrals complete their offers under your referral link.

2. Choose a timing for the trade. The options are the following:

   • On Green – Your referrals will complete the offers under your referral link and go “green” once they receive credit for the offers completed. You then pay the trader, submit the account for approval and get paid from the freebie website. Paying “On Green” is mostly used so that referrals receive payment quicker. However, because you submit the account for approval AFTER you pay the referral, you risk the chance of getting scammed (the referral going on hold because he/she provided false information or his/her credit card was bad when you submit the account for approval). If a referral goes on hold when you submit the account for approval, you do not get paid.
   • On Approval – The referral gets credited for all the required offers, you submit the account for approval, the account gets approved successfully (and does not go on hold), you pay the referral the amount due and then you get paid from the freebie website. By using this option, it might be slower for the referral to receive payment, but there is no risks involved. You’ll get paid no matter what. If the referral’s account does go on hold for whatever reason, you can help the referral get off hold and, if this doesn’t work (the referral provided false information purposely, for example), you don’t lose any money because you never paid the referral yet in the first place.
   • Same Time – This option is mainly used for “Referral for Referral” trades. Basically, you both complete the required offers and you both pay each other after each trader goes “green.”
3. Choose the order of the trade. If you’re paying referrals after they complete offers for you on the freebie website, I suggest the “Partner goes first” option, since your referral will have to complete the required offers and get credited first before the trade is complete. The “same time” option is generally used with “Referral for Referral” trades.
4. Fill in the freebie website information. Enter in the website name your referrals will be completing offers on, your referral link for that freebie website and a link to the offer list on the freebie website so that referrals can see the offers before committing to a trade.
5. Decide how much money you’ll pay each referral for completing offers on the freebie website. When choosing pricing, look around the trading forums and see how much money other traders pay for the specific trade in order to determine the average. You can pay higher or lower than average, depending on your needs. Higher payments generally attract more referrals, though you’ll earn less when subtracting that amount from the money the freebie website will give you.
6. Choose a color for your trade. Many traders like to color code or group their trades into a specific color group. You can also pin certain trades so that they show up first in the trade list.

Creating a Trading Thread

Once you have your trades up in the trade list, you’re ready to start working on your trading thread. However, I suggest first buying premium membership on Anything4Free, since premium membership gives you access to the Beginner’s Trading Post section of the forums. With premium membership, you also receive an expanded in-box for more saved in-box messages, 2,000 or more points to use in the Anything4Free store, a reduced response time (so that you don’t have to wait several minutes before you can respond to a private message or send private messages) and access to the pinned waiting list. Premium membership is only $30 for 6 months or $50 for a year.

To be more successful and recruit more referrals, access to the Beginner’s Trading Post is essential. You only receive access if you have a TR of 3 and below or have premium status. If you don’t have premium status, it may be hard to find referrals in the other trading sections (Referral 4 Cash Trades, Referral 4 Referral Trades and Referral 4 Other Trades). Beginner traders can’t access any of the three above trading sections because they don’t have a TR higher than 4, and many traders that hit a TR of 4 or higher aren’t interested in doing any more trades because they are already preoccupied with recruiting their own referrals. If you don’t mind waiting and have mastered the art of patience, you may not need to buy premium membership. However, I highly recommend it.

• Decide which trading sections on the forums you’ll like to put your trading threads in. The trading sections are the Beginner’s Trading Post, Referral 4 Cash Trades, Referral 4 Referral Trades and Referral 4 Other Trades. You can choose to create only one trading thread for one specific trading section, multiple trading threads for each section or one trading thread for each section. However, you can’t make more than one trading thread in one section. Once you decide on which section(s) you want to use, click the “New Topic” button on the upper right corner of the trading section. The following blank page you’ll use to fill out your trading thread.
• Make a catchy heading for your trading thread. This can be the tricky part. Your heading can make the difference between multiple referrals a day and no referrals at all. You want your heading to be unique and memorable. Try to spice it up a bit and go with a theme. For example, would you click on a heading that reads “Are you a hungry newbie? Fresh hot money served here!” or “Need referrals! I pay quick! Make money here.” The answer is obvious. The first heading isn’t only unique, it’s creative. Being creative, it attracts attention. You want your heading to turn heads and make potential referrals click to view your trading thread. Without a good heading, you have no business.
• Make the body of your trading thread. Don’t just toss on links to the trades in your trade list and hope potential referrals will be inclined to click them. Organize the structure of your trading thread. You wouldn’t first build a house without putting up a framework, would you? Not unless you want your house to topple down before you could even live in it. Well, freebie trading is pretty much the same thing. Before your trading thread can be successful, you need to first build your framework. How will your thread start? What sections should you include in your trading thread (Ex: About Me, Benefits, Advantages, Features)? How will you entice potential traders to initiate trades with you?
• Analyze the competition. What are other traders putting in their trading threads and how can yours be different? You don’t want to copy another trader’s trading thread. That’s just dull and boring. Besides, it’s plagiarism and you’ll get in a lot more trouble doing that. Instead, find out what other traders are saying and determine what they’re leaving out. To rise on top, you need to provide the best service, or appear like you are. For example, some traders don’t offer bonus packages. Should you? If an idea strikes, use it.
• Put links to each of your trades in your trading thread. Make a list of all your trades or group them together into similar categories. For example, group all of your ZipNadaZilch trades together and your ZeroPriceTags trades in a separate section. You can even color code specific groups. Start off each list item with the trade name and end each item with a link to initiate the trade. Between the name and trade initiation link, include how many credits traders will need to acquire and the link to the offers of the freebie website listed. Some traders like to browse the offers of a freebie website first to make sure that they can complete them.

After your trading thread is complete, bump it three times a day so that it can stay on top of all the other trading threads. You can only bump a trade once every 6 hours. Use the feature wisely and test certain hours per day to determine which hours give you the most response. For more information on acquiring referrals, read my guide on recruiting referrals.