• L-PACO [99]
    ideas

    Ideas for Redistribution of Alpaca Profits

    Alpaca Marketplace was never meant to be a for-profit project.

    The aim with Alpaca is and has always been to create a marketplace driven entirely through communal efforts.

    Now that the marketplace is fully functional and seeing more and more transactions each day, it is time that we begin to consider how marketplace- and mediation fees can be redistributed to benefit the community.

    A few ideas, which have already been discussed with the team:

    • Percentage profit-share given on month- or week basis to people who create publicity and bring in new buyers for Alpaca vendors.
    • Subsidies given to trusted vendors for selling Alpaca-exclusive or Alpaca-branded products.

    We have also considered the idea of referral or affiliate programs. However, such systems are inherently unsafe due to reduced anonymity for the referred user.

    We invite you to think of and suggest your own ideas. How can we pay back the community in a way that benefits us all?

  • HonestCocaine [35]

    Please no affiliate program that spams and clutters the site like Agora. Perhaps if only qualified members can be granted referral links and if they are caught abusing/spamming it beyond reason they lose their whole program.

    If there was a % of the money that went towards both charitable contributions like TAILS / TOR and also site advertising, I think that would be great.
    -HC

  • Rigr [99]

    HonestCocaine [35]: I totally agree. I think spam is in nobody's interest.

    I've considered the possibility of an affiliate program on the listing level. Vendors could enable it and decide on commissions, minimum reputation, etc. It could even be linked to promotional codes allowing the affiliate to offer some discount as incentive. All commission would be given on a per-order basis, so buyer anonymity is secured.

    As for charity, I think it could definitely work but I imagine it would require some voting mechanism to ensure that funds are appropriated such that it pleases the majority of the community.

    Rigr

  • HonestCocaine [35]

    I think donation idea that works in the grand scheme, but there are some universal truths as well. I doubt a single person on a DNM would vote against something like TOR/Tails (so long as they don't get owned by the NSA). They would have to vote against the platform they are using to vote in that particular case.

    It would be an interesting dynamic if vendors could piece out referrals such that if someone generates a sale for me they get 1% of that individual sale. Not sure if that would also lead to mega spam.

    Another thing, perhaps I'm thinking way too advanced here, but if there were bounties for various projects to be done, like smart contracts, and this helped to fund that.

  • Rigr [99]

    What kinds of projects do you have in mind?

    Rigr

  • HonestCocaine [35]

    Hopefully someone smarter than me can chime in, but here are two examples:

    A coding layout for a good referral program or any beneficial site addition. When I mean layout, I mean similar to the $20,000 prize that was offered to the DarkWallet team when they created DarkMarket. They had a theoretical system in place but needed the hard coding done by another team since they were busy.

    A coding layout or actual product external to this site. And if there was a voting scheme for what people deemed beneficial that would work as well, similar to the donation program. Donating to hard working individuals.

  • Werhe1945 [5]

    I'm not sure exactly how this would work in practice, but here goes:

    What if fees were put aside for every vendor, and then when they've accumulated enough it's spent ordering one of their products by some trusted 'official tester' person? It could benefit both the vendor and the communtity.