Let's face it, we all have DVD movies on our entertainment shelf we are never going to watch again. Either they were given to us as a gift and we never would have bought them ourselves, they were great to see once or twice but now we're bored with them, our kids outgrew their old cartoon movies or quite simply, we can repeat the movie word for word and are sick of seeing it!

So what happens to those movies? They sit on the shelf gathering dust and taking up space until we decide to sell them for peanuts, give them away or just dump them. What a waste of money.

Well, that's what used to happen until the internet gave us a way to swap our old used DVD movies for new ones!

Think of a DVD sharing site as a great big bartering exchange.

You offer all the DVDs you want to make available to people for trading purposes by listing them on the swap site.

Someone browsing the site comes across your DVD listed and requests it through the system.

You send this DVD to them and when they receive it you get 1 or more credits for the trade which enable you to request DVDs yourself from other members.

You find a DVD you want, make the request and that member sends you their DVD at the cost of 1 or more trading credits from your account.

It's a very simple and very effecive system which puts you in touch with movie lovers all over the country who want to swap movies with you.

Of course, each DVD sharing site has its own way of doing things but the general principal remains the same.

Swap a DVD is a movie swapping site which was created by the same people who brought us the excellent paperbackswap book trading website.

Here you can swap DVDs including standalone movies, TV show box sets, fitness and exercise DVDs, travel guides, educational discs and more, basically anything which fits under the umbrella of a movie or something which can be watched on a TV, then you can swap it here.

At the time of writing swapadvd has close to 70,000 DVDs waiting to be swapped so you are sure to find something you want in return for swapping your used DVD movies.

Swapadvd also gives you the option to buy credits directly from them if you see a movie you want right now but don't have anything to swap or are not willing to wait for a swap transaction to complete. At the time of writing, it's $4.95 a credit (so basically $5 a movie which includes shipping) if you buy your credits through the site's kiosk option, but if you check on the site forum you can often find members selling excess credits for under $4 per credit (look under Book Bazaar on the forum).

The forum is also a great place to find 2 for 1 deals and even 3 and 4 for 1 deals, making your credits stretch even further!

Swapadvd offers new members a chance to get 1 free credit when they list their first 10 DVDs on the site. That's a free DVD movie just for listing your movies which can't be bad!

Members can also print postage directly from their computer using the Swapadvd site which means you don't even have to make a trip to the post office when sending out any of your movies which get requested. This saves time, gas and also means you get your swap credit immediately rather than waiting for the receiving member to acknowlege receipt.

I also like the general way in which this DVD trading site is set up. The site is easy to browse, very user friendly and offers a wealth of options which aid in your trading experience. For example, if the movie you want to trade for isn't available right now, you can add it to a wish list and set it so you automatically request the movie when it comes in to the site and you are first in the queue. Automating the process saves you time and also saves you from missing out on a movie you want just because you were away from your inbox for a few days, missed the email or otherwise, didn't get the message in time.

In all, I like this site and would recommend it as a great way for DVD swappers from the U.S. to get new DVDs in exchange for their old ones.

Join Swap A DVD Here

How about not buying the DVDs in the first place?! For the average price of a new DVD, or the cost of a couple of video store rentals, you can join a subscription DVD rental service and rent your movies online and have them delivered directly to your door.

Netflix - Rent movies starting at just $4.99 a month here. Also has thousands of downloadable movies and if you are an Xbox 360 user, you can stream them through your game console too. (US Only)

Blockbuster - DVD rentals with plans starting at $3.99, also with live streaming movies available through your personal computer. (US Only)