How about a free massage? Some help in the garden? An experienced troubleshooter when your computer melts down?

It won't cost you a dime, but there is a price: You have to make yourself useful to someone else.

That's the simple premise behind a new Seattle-based time-exchange group called TimeBucks.org. People swap services, giving and receiving time — not money — in exchange.

This spring, Holly Gault of Renton needed help building raised gardening beds in her yard. Another TimeBucks member, Ned Voelker of Lynnwood, read her posting on the Web site and agreed to help.

Voelker, a grocery-store checker, and Gault, a graphic artist, spent several hours early one morning working side-by-side to make the beds. Gault paid him with time-bucks she earned from giving haircuts to two other TimeBucks members.

So far, 274 people in the Seattle area have signed up, trading everything from carpentry to tarot-card readings. An hour of service is worth 15 time-bucks.

How to join • TimeBucks is a free, online time-exchange group based in Seattle. You can learn more tomorrow at the monthly TimeBucks community meeting — 7 p.m. at Uptown Espresso & Bakery, 2504 Fourth Ave., in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, or go to www.timebucks.org.

Others earn time-bucks by volunteering with area community and nonprofit agencies. The Bellevue Police Department, the Community School of West Seattle and the King County Dispute Resolution Center are among groups that have benefited.

Nationwide, 38 communities have established TimeBucks groups with more than 1,000 members in all, though Seattle's is by far the largest.

TimeBucks is the dream of Seattle entrepreneur Steve Van Dyke, a self-described "economic revolutionary" using the Web to jump-start an idea he has nurtured for more than a decade.

"It's like rewarding people for good deeds," said Van Dyke, a former computer consultant who quit his job to work full time on launching TimeBucks. "It's a transaction based on trust."

TimeBucks is part old-fashioned barn-raising and part neighborly community-building. It's you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours. And it's screw-the-system.

The idea isn't new. There are swap meets and baby-sitting co-ops, co-housing projects and tool exchanges.

What's different is the use of the Internet to bring strangers together and create a formal structure to govern trades.

Van Dyke was a new college graduate in 1992, working at a credit-card processing company near Portland, when he started thinking about money and community values.

What if there was a way to create an alternative currency system with people trading time instead of dollars? And what if neighbors got connected and communities got stronger as a result?

Van Dyke, 35, believes money is "the basis for a lot of the social problems and inequality we have."

Credit-card holders have an average outstanding balance of $3,815 — the amount card holders say they won't pay off in a given month, according to the Gallup Organization. Federal Reserve statistics show consumer debt, excluding mortgages, more than doubled in the past decade to record levels.

There's always more debt in circulation than money to cover it, said Van Dyke, who has never had a credit card of his own. People end up working harder and harder to catch up.

With TimeBucks, everybody's time is worth the same — an hour of baby-sitting has the same value as an hour of computer-aided drafting. That promotes a more equitable distribution of wealth, he said.

And there's no incentive to hoard TimeBucks. No "He who dies with the most TimeBucks wins."

After working off and on in database administration and development for five years, mostly with AT&T Wireless, Van Dyke "burned out" and quit his job in 1998, moving to Vashon Island.

There, he helped launch a similar time-exchange group called Vashon Time. Members paid $15 a year for a published directory of services. Volunteers conducted background checks on members by calling two references.

Vashon Time flourished, but it was time-consuming. Van Dyke began work on TimeBucks, seeing the Internet as the rocket fuel that would launch a time-exchange revolution.

He put ads in newspapers, gave talks to community groups and sent mailings. But just a handful signed up.

By December 2003, Van Dyke had all but abandoned his plans. More out of habit than hope, he put a notice about TimeBucks on an Internet bulletin board called Craigslist.org.

Since then, through word of mouth, people have been signing up almost daily from all over the U.S. and Canada.

TimeBucks services More than 230 categories of services are offered in Seattle. Among the most popular: Computer assistance (12 people say they will provide this service) Massage/back rubs (12) Pet-sitting (11) Baby-sitting (9) Proofreading (8) Painting (7) Services that are most in demand: Massage/back rubs (11 people say they want this service) Creative arts, including crocheting and candle-making (8) Gardening/yard help (8) Housecleaning (5) Auto maintenance (3)

Van Dyke, still working without pay on his new endeavor, hopes it will evolve into a nonprofit organization or a for-profit company, perhaps offering basic services for free but enhanced features for a fee.

For now, the rules of this new community are evolving.

From the small bedroom/office of his rental house on Capitol Hill, Van Dyke nurses his 5-year-old computer and makes constant tweaks and improvements to his Web site based on members' suggestions.

Can you go into TimeBucks debt? Can you get a loan? What happens if one member tries to contact another for a trade and gets no reply? These are among questions that have come up as members started trading services.

Van Dyke now finds himself in the role of sentry, central banker and mayor of this fledgling community.

Members log their transactions on the Web site, which keeps track of the time-bucks in each member's account. They create profiles of themselves and contact each other with services to trade.

Ultimately, Van Dyke said it will be up to the members to maintain and police the TimeBucks community.

Instead of labor-intensive reference checks, for example, Van Dyke uses a "kudos and strikes" system in which members rate each other anonymously. He hopes that helps people overcome fears about initiating trades with strangers.

The federal government also has some rules. The IRS has said time exchanges can be tax-exempt for several reasons: they're informal and noncommercial in nature; they aren't legally enforceable but backed only by a moral obligation; their purpose is charitable.

TimeBucks is a volunteer network, Van Dyke said, not a commercial barter exchange. "It's just a way of keeping track of positive energy," he said.

It's also a way to get help with a move or a home-cooked meal.

"Suddenly, it's like having a whole pocketful of disposable income," said Diane De Rooy of Seattle. As a part-time fund-raiser for the Seattle Opera, De Rooy, 52, said she lives on a tight budget. "I can never have anything I don't absolutely need, like a massage."

De Rooy got help from members with a move and had lumber delivered for bookshelves.

She plans to volunteer for a nonprofit agency — "something I'd do anyway" — to earn more time-bucks. "You get back what you put in."

Others say TimeBucks satisfies a deeper desire for connecting with others, or even that it makes a statement against corporate America.

"This money isn't being hoarded or collected somewhere on an off-shore island," said Chris Tarnawski, 30, of Ballard. "You can't really go greedy with this."

Most money-based transactions are impersonal, said Bill Tuttle, 53, of Ballard. "You don't know the person at McDonald's getting your Big Mac or the guy changing your oil," said Tuttle, who is semi-retired. "This is people-to-people."

Indeed, time exchanges require a certain intimacy and trust, Van Dyke said, as well as a commitment of time.

"It's the cascading effect of good deeds, sort of what goes around comes around," Van Dyke said — and sweat equity in a system designed to pay off in ways that money can't measure.

Jolayne Houtz: 206-464-3122 or jhoutz@seattletimes.com.