How to set up your own local SwapShop

You may want to set up a local scheme to help people exchange everday things. In Lancaster UK I set up the Lancaster SwapShop, which is done via a weekly e-mail rather than through a website. It was quite easy to start up and not much trouble to maintain. Within the first week people were getting rid of - and finding - things as diverse as excess onion sets, a stereo, musical instruments, chairs and a filing cabinet. If you'd like to do something similar, here's the steps that I took:
We now have one in Machynlleth too. (mid Wales).

1) I gathered some e-mail addresses of people who I thought might be interested, from my own lists and some friends' contact lists.
2) Sent out the introductory e-mail (see below).
3) Sent out the first edition of the SwapShop!
4) Put up a poster in the wholefood shop and a community centre.
I suggest you keep it small and fairly discrete at first, and don't advertse too widely. Its better to spread through word of mouth.

We currently have about 200 people on the SwapShop list, and I get on average about a dozen adverts a week. Cutting and pasting them in, plus dealing with other messages, took about half an hour a week at first, but now we are used to it, it takes about 15 mins..

We have also staged "live events" , we hire a hall and bring things to swap.. everything is free! It was wierd at first, main problem was that you came home with as much as you took.