We are always interested in bartering especially with local businesses. I understand how many prefer cash, but for us, bartering can be better than cash. 

We recently did work for a restaurant and received a ton of $ 50 gift cards in exchange for our service.  We could never use them all ourselves, but we leverage them with new clients. "Here's $ 50, go have lunch or dinner on us!" It makes us look great, give our client the opportunity to win a new customer and we tell our guest to let them know we sent them, giving our prospective customer the opportunity to hear "how great we are" from an existing customer.

Now this doesn't work for every industry, but for us it has provided incredible results!