How Rewards Work on Public Market: An Explainer
At the heart of what makes Public Market different is a belief that the value in a commercial exchange should flow between the buyer and the seller, not be captured by an intermediary. Our vision is for a public, open, decentralized eCommerce infrastructure that enables this flow of value.
A key mechanism of that value sharing is rewards. When you visit our newly-launched storefront and click on any item, you see two other numbers in addition to the price, both connected to rewards.
This post gives an overview of just what those numbers mean.
What are Buyer Rewards on Public Market?
Rewards are the way buyers get to capture the increased value of shopping with Public Market. Because of our zero commission fee structure, merchants don’t lose 15%-40% like they do when listing on centralized marketplaces, such as Amazon and eBay. They can pass on part of this savings to buyers in the form of credits for rewards. For example, when purchasing a $100 item with a buyer rewards level of 15%, Public Market will deposit $15.00 worth of reward credits to your account. Every item on public.market has a pink diamond with a number indicating the fixed value of rewards credits you will earn for each purchase.
What are Holiday Bonus Rewards?
Holiday Bonus Rewards are an additional special set of rewards we’ve made available for a limited time that provide outsized incentives for our early adopter community to finish your holiday shopping lists with us and to invite your friends to Public Market.
For the 20 days between November 26th Cyber Monday and December 15th, we’re distributing $5,000 in Holiday Bonus Rewards each day — a total of $100,000 in value — to our community of shoppers.
The Holiday Bonus Rewards were very intentionally designed to incentivize growing the network: either by spending or referring friends who spend.
On any given day, your portion of the $5,000 in daily rewards is based on what portion of overall sales is represented by your purchases that day plus 30% of what your those you referred spent. Even when your shopping list is done, you keep getting the rewards based on 30% of your referees’ spend right up until they’ve spent $1,000 on the site.
Underneath the pink diamond with the Buyer Rewards number, there is an estimate of how much of that day’s Holiday Bonus Reward pool you’ll receive for purchasing the item. This isn’t a guarantee, just an estimate based on what portion of the previous day’s total sales volume purchasing the item represents. To see the full math, check out the Holiday Bonus Rewards section of our How It Works page.
Because our marketplace is so new, buyers are likely to receive MORE in Holiday Bonus Rewards than they spend in dollars.
If you were to have purchased a $60 record yesterday, for example, you would have received an email this morning showing you received $336.32 in rewards credits — a 560% ROI, plus you got your goods!
As more people join and make more purchases, the total rewards percentage will go down. At the moment, though, Holiday Bonus Rewards represent an amazing opportunity for our early adopter community to get maximum value from buying and building the network by inviting their friends and family.
What can I do with my rewards?
A few important notes about how rewards credits will actually be used.
Initially, your rewards will accumulate to your account as credits. They are fully deposited into account upon completion of your order and expiration of the returns window. In the near future, we plan to launch the Patron token, a blockchain-based rewards token. Your rewards may then be redeemed only for Patron tokens at the then-market value.
In the future, we plan to give Public Market merchants the ability to provide you with gift certificates or merchandise credit in exchange for your Patrons.
What do I have to do to get rewards?
With Public Market, earning rewards is easy!
- Go to public.market and create your account
- Make purchases to earn buyer rewards and daily Holiday Bonus Rewards. Remember — the earlier you shop, the higher the rewards percentage you are likely to receive!
- Go to the Your Account link in the upper right corner of the storefront (desktop) or the hamburger menu (mobile) to find your unique referral code. Share this with friends and family and you’ll get Holiday Bonus Rewards from their purchases as well.
