Grain - The Affiliate Marketing Network For Web3 Brands

PROPOSAL NAME:

Grain - The Affiliate Marketing Network For Web3 Brands

TEAM DESCRIPTION:

Led by Grains (X profile) Kevin Brown (LinkedIn Profile), founder of Affiliate Window (Awin.com) and FanCircles, Kevin brings extensive knowledge and experience in building successful companies. Highlights of his career include:

  • Founded Affiliate Window (Awin.com), Europe’s biggest affiliate network, and exited with over $160 million turnover to German-based media company Axel Springer.
  • Developed the initial software platform that started Affiliate Window.
  • Managed the world’s biggest tribute band, The Australian Pink Floyd, from small shows to arenas and stadiums around the US, Europe, and Asia.
  • Founded FanCircles to form direct-to-fan relationships between artists and fans.
  • Kevin’s first NFT was a HAPE, before becoming a proud member of BAYC with a MAYC bought just after the ApeCoin drop. Kevin is also a Mocaverse NFT holder.

Technical lead and Kevin’s CTO, Kostas Melas, joined Affiliate Window as the lead developer and continues to work with Kevin on all business projects, including being the CTO of FanCircles. Kostas works alongside his dedicated team. As the platform grows, the team will recommend community members to fill additional roles that may arise, including performance marketing experts, influencers, and more. This ensures that the platform benefits from the wealth of experience and expertise within the ApeCoin/BAYC and Moca ecosystems.

PROPOSAL DESCRIPTION:

This proposal aims to onboard new incremental users to the MocaID Realm Network while benefitting the whole Animoca Brands, Made By Apes, and Yuga & ApeCoin ecosystem via performance marketing that drives new users to all parties without financial risk using a pay-per-acquisition marketing model that in web2 drives around 15% of all retail sales online worldwide. It also benefits both BAYC & MAYC MBA licensees and MocaVerse holders who will qualify for a Merchant account with zero signup and management fees. Non-holder Merchant account costs will be ~$2000 per month.
GRAIN Affiliate Network (grain.xyz) can be used by the entire web3 ecosystem.
Other web3 outside of MBA and MocaVerse holders such as PudgyPenguins and Azuki can use the platform to sell their product, but with a Merchant account cost of $2,000 per month or by buy a BAYC, become MBA certified and claiming a Merchant account at no costs.

  • Merchants pay a fee to affiliates who generate a sale or a lead.
  • Affiliates choose which Merchant they wish to promote via the directory of Merchant programs.

Merchants decide on their commission rates and various other parameters for affiliates to work with, making GRAIN a hub for performance CPA marketing and bringing in both the web2 and web3 worlds together to market web3 brands. This is how Amazon got so big!

The platform will also have the ability for affiliates to create and connect their accounts to a future ApeID platform and MocaID’s platform, onboarding more normies to these ID systems. It also onboards new users to ApeCoin & Moca Token as every active affiliate will be given bonus rewards which can be collected in $APE or $Moca token. In Mocaverses’ case, this could be potentially paid in Realm Points.

Globally, affiliate marketing is responsible for about 15% of all online media revenue. In addition, 65% of worldwide retailers generate up to 20% of their total revenue through affiliate commissions​ - AuthorityHacker.com

GRAIN is aimed at onboarding the wider affiliate community and is not restricted to only web3 natives. There are hundreds of thousands of affiliates to tap into who know how affiliate marketing works. This network allows all Affiliates from websites, ad networks, cashback sites, rewards portals to Google Ads affiliates and social media marketing affiliates to market web3 brands to both web2 and web3 audiences. Tapping into these enormous networks will bring high quality affiliates while exposing them to the ApeCoin ecosystem and generating customers for all web3 brands that participate.

Kevin’s history of building one of the big three affiliate networks, Affiliate Window from scratch into a $170 million company shows his success and connections without the affiliate marketing industry to onboard top affiliates in the space.

Key points:

  • Merchants can sign up for free if they hold any of the following assets: BAYC, MAYC (With MBA licenses, MOCAVERSE NFTs, and potentially other partners. Without holding these assets, the cost for a merchant would be ~$2000 price point per month.
  • MBAs holders need an ApeChain MBA license NFT to qualify which will be validated on chain.
  • Affiliates do not pay to use the platform. They Earn from the platform.
  • Enables web3 brands and the wider web3 world to be onboarded to be marketed by top affiliates worldwide.
  • All users will have the ability to connect their accounts with a future ApeID system and MocaID Realm Network via a partnership with Animoca.
  • Drives transactions on ApeCoin via 10% of the network’s 30% fee going into a bonus pot allocated to pay out bonuses in ApeCoin to affiliates.
  • Grows the presence of ApeCoin throughout the whole web3 ecosystem.
  • Brands from Made By Apes (MBA) licensees, Animoca Brands, future Moca DAO projects, and Yuga Labs properties, as well as all web3 brands, can reward affiliates based on sales or leads generated.
  • Reduces risk for Merchants by allowing marketing costs to be performance-based.
  • Merchants will have access to the most engaged buyers within the ApeCoin community.
  • Payouts are in fiat, with bonus payouts in ApeCoin. The Affiliate Network will cover gas fees for bonus payouts.
  • Merchants will pay their affiliate commissions to GRAIN in USD or GBP.
  • Other web3 business who want to become Merchants can use the platform with a fee or by buying into the BAYC, MAYC, or Mocaverse NFT ecosystems.

HOW AFFILIATE MARKETING WORKS:


Despite the significant growth in traditional affiliate marketing, Web3 brands have yet to take full advantage of this trend. While traditional sectors are leveraging influencer marketing to drive traffic and revenue, the Web3 space remains largely untapped. There is a tremendous opportunity for Web3 brands to harness the power of affiliate marketing to build awareness, drive conversions, and engage with a decentralized digital audience. By integrating affiliate marketing strategies, Web3 brands can lead this innovative and rapidly growing sector, potentially positioning themselves at the forefront of this rapidly growing marketing strategy.

HOW GRAIN ONBOARDS INCREMENTAL USERS TO “ID” LOGINS

Each affiliate in the Grain Affiliate Network will be able to connect with “ID” logins. These integrations will seamlessly onboard incremental users to these systems. We will initiate conversations with merchants to add “ID” logins. This opens up new opportunities for mass onboarding with ID systems for the Merchant’s customers, as well as for affiliates and merchants.

BENEFIT TO APECOIN ECOSYSTEM:

The GRAIN Affiliate Network delivers substantial benefits:

  • Innovation and Leadership: Positions Grain as the ApeCoin powered affiliate network with branding throughout the ecosystem showing ApeCoin is a leader in innovative marketing solutions.
  • All users will have the ability to connect with a future ApeID system and MocaID (Realm Network?).
  • 5% Bonus Pot Allocation: Allocates 5% of the network’s 30% fee to a bonus pot for paying out bonuses in on-chain rewards to affiliates.
  • Increased ApeChain Volume: Drives volume to ApeChain by making bonus payouts to affiliates on-chain.
  • Performance Marketing: Reduces risk for merchants by using a cost-per-acquisition (CPA) model, encouraging content creators and affiliate website owners to drive sales.
  • Increased Utility: Increases the utility and demand for ApeCoin.
  • Proven Expertise: Leverages Kevin’s success in building one of the biggest affiliate networks worldwide, Affiliate Window, to ensure project success.
  • Affiliate Community Integration: Brings the affiliate community, including websites and content creators, into the ApeCoin ecosystem by paying out bonuses in ApeCoin with fiat options for standard payouts.
  • DAO Growth: Returns 30% of the net profits to the DAO, directly contributing to the DAO’s growth and sustainability.
  • Onboarding Non-Ape Related Brands: Expands the ApeCoin ecosystem by onboarding non-ape-related brands, creating a performance marketing hub for all web3-related brands.
  • Merchants Only Pay On Results: The GRAIN Affiliate Network enables the most cost-effective form of marketing, CPA (cost-per-acquisition) marketing. This enables result-driven marketing via affiliate websites and content creators with no risk.
  • Central Hub for Performance Marketing: Provides a central hub for performance marketing, with tens of thousands of affiliates willing to promote web3 companies, services, and products on a commission basis. This will help other ApeCoin initiatives by offering a ready-made network of marketers to support their projects.

AFFILIATE BONUS PAYOUTS IN APECOIN:

GRAIN introduces a robust bonus payout system in ApeCoin to incentivize affiliates and foster engagement and growth on both the platform and ApeCoin. Affiliates will accumulate bonuses in ApeCoin based on their performance.

Bonus ApeCoin Accumulation and Payout:

  1. Tiered Bonus Structure: GRAIN will implement a tiered bonus structure where affiliates earn higher bonuses in ApeCoin and Moca Token (or Realm Points if this is possible to implement) based on their performance. Reaching certain milestones such as total sales generated, number of sales or leads generated will unlock higher bonus percentages.
  • Example Tiers:
    • Tier 1: $0 - $1,000 in sales → 5% bonus
    • Tier 2: $1,001 - $5,000 in sales → 10% bonus
    • Tier 3: $5,001+ in sales → 15% bonus
  1. Bonus Multiplier Events: Introduce limited-time multiplier events where affiliates can earn double or triple the usual bonus rates for promoting specific merchants or during particular promotional periods (e.g., Black Friday, Cyber Monday, holiday seasons).

  2. Referral Bonuses: Offer affiliates additional ApeCoin bonuses for referring new affiliates to the platform. This can create a network effect and encourage affiliates to bring in others.

  • Example: An affiliate gets a 10% bonus of ApeCoin on the first payout of any referred affiliate.
  1. Consistent Activity Rewards: Provide monthly or quarterly bonuses for affiliates who maintain consistent activity, such as generating sales or leads every month. This incentivizes continuous engagement.
  • Example: Affiliates who generate sales every month for a quarter receive an additional 5% ApeCoin bonus on their accumulated earnings.

GRAIN REVENUE MODEL:

The GRAIN Affiliate Network charges the industry standard of a 30% fee on top of the commission paid to affiliates. For example, if a merchant wants to pay its affiliates a 10% commission on the cart value, the Affiliate Network will facilitate the 10% commission going to the affiliate and charge the merchant an additional 30% of the 10% for this service. Thus, $10 in commission to an affiliate would generate $3 for GRAIN, making the total fee for the merchant $13. Additionally, 10% of the 30% fee will be allocated to a bonus pot that can pay out bonuses in ApeCoin to affiliates, built into the platform as an option for Merchants.

DEFINITIONS:

  • Merchant: A consumer facing brand with a website that pays a commission on sales or leads generated by affiliates.
  • Affiliate: A website, content creator, cashback site, rewards site, comparison site, social media advertiser or CPC ad specialist who hosts a tracking link to drive conversions to sales, signups, leads and more on a CPA basis. (CPC is cost per click, CPA is cost per acquisition basis meaning the generation of a sale, signup or lead)
  • Affiliate Network: The trusted third party providing the interface for merchants and affiliates and securing payments from Merchants to pay affiliate one single payment for all of the revenues they earn from all Merchants.

STEPS TO IMPLEMENT:

  1. Platform Development: Design and build the affiliate network platform (12 weeks).
  2. Beta Launch and Merchant Onboarding: Onboard merchants during the beta phase and gather feedback to refine the platform (starting immediately after the 12-week development phase).
  3. Full Launch: Roll out the affiliate network to the entire ApeCoin ecosystem, allowing any merchant to join with the minimum requirement of holding a BAYC or MocaVerse NFT, with comprehensive marketing and onboarding strategies.
  4. Continuous Improvement: Regular updates based on user feedback and market trends, expanding features and capabilities.

REPORTING EXPECTATIONS:

The revenue split that will be returned to the DAO will be reported yearly upon the finalization of the company accounts.

COST BREAKDOWN:

Item Cost ($)
Platform Development 350,000
QA Testing & Tech Support 65,000
Technical Infrastructure 35,000
Marketing/Advertising/Conferences 100,000
Sys Admin 40,000
Contingency 50,000
Legal 75,000
Management/Staff 120,000
Accountancy Costs 30,000
Total $865,000

Launch partner marketing and on-boarding: 250,000 APE (Under NDA’s at the moment)
We want to make a big splash and onboard some of the communities biggest players. This allows for marketing, advertising and partnerships to be forged that will not only attract more merchants, but also big affiliates. Expect some big announcements on launch.

OVERALL COST:

The total budget for GRAIN - The Web3 Affiliate Network is $865,000 plus 250,000 in ApeCoin, covering platform development, full launch, and continuous improvement. Building this is a big project that requires technical expertise, staff and extensive legal infrastructure.

Total amount requested from the ApeCoin Ecosystem Fund = $1,065,000, (This includes the 250,000 APE Launch Partner Marketing And Onboarding at ApeCoin Price of $0.80)

The system needs 99.8% uptime, requiring backup servers to ensure that affiliate links remain operational. A UK company will be set up for this project. The costs cover all setup expenses and aim to bring the project to profitability within 12 months.

Given Kevin’s prior success with Affiliate Window, this is set to succeed both for the ApeCoin ecosystem, web3 brands and for the DAO. Kevin is highly confident in the projects success and has the track record to show this. After the initial investment for the setup and build the network will move into profit which will in turn benefit the DAO in a sustainable way.

POTENTIAL PROFITS:

Based on Kevin’s experiences and understanding of the affiliate marketing space, it’s estimated that the first year (post full launch) gross profits will be around $200,000, second year’s profits will be in the region of $750,000, third year $1.5 million, and fourth year $3 million. The network effects of affiliate marketing mean growth is exponential. There are hundreds of brands within web3 and thousands within web2 that want to reach the web3 world. From day one, there will be thousands of registered affiliates.

The profits have been calculated based on a few assumptions:
With 50 Merchants paying 10% to their Affiliates and an basket value of $100, each Merchant would need to generate approximately 1,333 sales to reach $200,000 in revenue for GRAIN. This would generate $11,108.33 in revenue per Merchant per month. However there are multiple scenarios of this such as higher commission for lead based Merchants who would pay $10-$100 lead fees and Merchants paying 25% to their Affiliates. I envisage more than 50 Merchants registering within 12 months.

30% of gross profits after tax will be returned to the DAO, so 100% of the grant will be paid back from profits. At this point, Merchants holding the specified assets—Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), and Mocaverse NFTs—will continue to have zero-fee access to the affiliate network as a Merchant, for as long as they hold these assets.

This looks great.

I always wondered why none of the pre-existing blockchain affiliate networks take a page from traditional, tried and proven, affiliate network models.

I have some questions.

  1. Will this be developed on ApeChain? If not, why not?
  2. What will make this different from other blockchain affiliate networks such as Attrace, ShareMint, RefToken and 2Key Network (one of the best) etc?
  3. How will the on-boarding work?
  4. Why is the affiliate payout in $USD and not $APE (to the on-boarded $APE wallet)?
  5. Why is the affiliate commissions payout in $USE and not $APE?
  6. What’s the growth path, and how will that be achieved? Marketing? Referrals?
  7. How will you track “marketing costs based on performance”?
  8. As the volume of bonus payouts in $APE is going to be a whole lot less than affiliate payouts which are in $USD, can you share some sample metrics showing the diffs between the two in terms of ApeChain volume? I believe this would be helpful because a lot of people aren’t familiar with how these types of metrics work.
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Thanks for the geat questions @SmartAPE.

The aim here is to onboard affiliates who know the affiliate business of being affiliates. Building this on chain is not only unnecessary but also allows affiliates, and even potential future competitors to see the conversion rates and sales/lead conversion routes affiliate take. It also means that affiliates can see other affiliate’s revenue and “copy” their strategy. Affiliates have their own strategies and it’s imperative that these are kept private and off chain to be successful. Affiliate’s won’t accept this level of visibility and it will be a barrier that the big affiliates won’t accept.

The affiliate market is huge and worth hundreds of millions of dollars a month. This is an affiliate network that specialises in reaching professional and successful affiliates who are routed in the affiliate world. It’s not aimed at the niche markets you mentioned. It’s aligned with the big 4 affiliate networks, Awin, TradeDoubler, CJ and Rakuten. This is where the value lies.

On boarding is a simple onsite registration for any Merchant. This includes their business name, address, tax status, website/s, commission structure, affiliate approval process and affiliate sale/lead validation.
For affiliates, it’s very similar. Affiliate’s will be recruited through outreach (I know where affiliates hangout) and through referrals from a link to “Join Our Affiliate Program” placed on Merchant’s pages.

If you’re referring to the Merchant paying the affiliate network then paying GRAIN in $APE will make it impossible to match the sales commission to the product/service value. e.g. retailers take payment in fiat so the value of the sale and therefore commission need to be the same. Even if the Merchant takes payment in crypto they usually convert this to fiat on the sale of an item so the cart value is almost always in fiat.

Affiliates use web2 advertising methods to reach customers, all of which require them to pay in fiat for their services. Paying affiliates in crypto will not grow the network. It will restrict it to crypto natives. For mass market adoption fiat payouts are the only way to go. There are many types of affiliates from websites, ad networks, cashback sites, rewards portals to Google Ads affiliates and social media marketing affiliates. GRAIN will be in a position to onboard all of these with fiat payouts and few of them with crypto payouts.

I’ve answered this question in some of the above answers but to elaborate, both the merchant’s website and GRAIN recruits affiliates into the network. I have the relationships with networks of affiliates that will generate revenue for Merchants. I would prefer to keep these relationships private at this stage, but they will provide extensive reach for Merchants. There’s also the viral effect that comes into play with affiliate marketing. Affiliates look at what other affiliates are doing.

I’m unsure of the question here so I’ll answer two sides of this.
Marketing costs are based on performance because Merchants only pay commission to affiliates on their performance, which in this case is when a sale or lead is achieved.

If you mean, how do we technically track the conversion to sale/lead, this is using a blend of different tracking methods which include cookies, but are not limited to cookies. The exact mechanic behind this is knowledge I’m not willing to share publicly as it’s the key reason Awin was and continues to be so successful.

You’re correct in saying the $APE bonus payouts are less in terms of dollar equivalent. They are meant to be a bonus for affiliates and to drive adoption to the ApeCoin ecosystem. Even though the amount of $APE in a transaction for a bonus payout will be less, it’s still a transaction on ApeChain. Over time I envisage a percentage of affiliates opting for payout’s in $APE, but again forcing this will not benefit the network at this stage but will be considered in future planning.
In terms of volume, this is impossible to calculate without guessing, but as it’s as a bonus (and I know affiliates), I’m confident the vast majority of affiliates will collect it.

To give an idea of how much the bonus can be for an affiliates let’s use an example of a Merchant selling an item at $100 at a 10% commission. GRAIN would pay $10 in fiat to the affiliate and a likely bonus of 50 cents equivalent in $APE. This amount will vary with various bonus reward increases (e.g., Black Friday, Cyber Monday, holiday seasons). I think the important factor here is that each affiliate can then be onboarded to $APE of which the lifetime value can’t be factored in.
The bonus structure will evolve over time, so this is an outline of my current thinking. Ultimately any bonus has to be an incentive.

I’d also add that this bonus system will be built out to allow for variants on this. It could also work with your ApeID and Mocaverse’s MocaID realm network, to reward points. There are many possibilities with this of which I’m 100% confident will come from the evolution of the space.

I hope this answers all of your questions, but please feel free to get back to me with anything I may have missed.

4 Likes

I’ve had the opportunity to speak to Kevin at length on the benefits of affiliate marketing. As a builder in the space, bringing this framework to Web3 builders is a huge positive for the space and will help many of us scale our businesses given the high ROI performance-based marketing like this brings.

In re: the financials, I would love to see a more detailed breakdown of the revenue forecast. What has to be true in terms of numbers of units sold, price points, etc to hit those revenue targets? Also, what is the likelihood of being able to onboard enough affiliates and brands in that timeframe to hit those numbers?

In re: ApeChain, I understand affiliates would want to keep their models, etc off-chain from a proprietary information standpoint. Given the bonus payments will all be on-chain (and therefore publicly traceable) are there other aspects that could be put on-chain that wouldn’t dissuade affiliates from joining?

3 Likes

Thanks for the reply @VonFrontin
There are a number of factors which make it difficult to establish an accurate figure, but I try to air on the side of caution with estimates.

Here are a few example of how to reach the first years profits.

50 Merchants paying 25% commission with average basket values of $125:

  • 50 Merchants paying 25% commission with average basket values of $125 would mean 8,889 sales per year would need to be generated by GRAIN to reach $200,000 in revenue. Each Merchant would need to generate approximately $22,222 in revenue per year.

50 Merchants paying 15% commission with average basket values of $150:

  • 50 Merchants paying 15% commission with average basket values of $150 would mean 29,630 sales per year would need to be generated by GRAIN to reach $200,000 in revenue. Each Merchant would need to generate approximately $88,890 in revenue per year.

40 Merchants paying a lead fee of $40 for each new customer they onboard:

  • 40 Merchants paying a lead fee of $40 for each new customer they onboard would mean 417 leads per year would need to be generated by GRAIN to reach $200,000 in revenue.

60 Merchants paying 12% commission with average basket values of $200:

  • 60 Merchants paying 12% commission with average basket values of $200 would mean 27,778 sales per year would need to be generated by GRAIN to reach $200,000 in revenue. Each Merchant would need to generate approximately $92,593 in revenue per year.

30 Merchants paying a lead fee of $50 for each new customer they onboard:

  • 30 Merchants paying a lead fee of $50 for each new customer they onboard would mean 444 leads per year would need to be generated by GRAIN to reach $200,000 in revenue.

45 Merchants paying 8% commission with average basket values of $250:

  • 45 Merchants paying 8% commission with average basket values of $250 would mean 33,334 sales per year would need to be generated by GRAIN to reach $200,000 in revenue. Each Merchant would need to generate approximately $185,189 in revenue per year.

In terms of breaking down the costs anymore. I will add this to the main AIP idea.

4 Likes

It seems to be 1/1 product on blockchain tbh and yea affiliate marketing is big and backbone of traditional online retail. Would be spot on if the proposal is inclined more towards $ape and its involvement so it benefits the Ape ecosystem.

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It helps all AIPs by bringing traffic and sales. Some tools need to drive traffic and some need to utilise $Ape primarily. Hand in hand, well that’s where the magic happens.

4 Likes

All questions answered - and everything clear now.

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Thank you, Grains, for your comprehensive proposal. The idea of leveraging an affiliate marketing network to bridge web2 and web3 brands is innovative and exciting. I do have a few questions.

  • How will merchants distribute affiliate links to their supporters? Will they be able to provide specific links for targeted revenue generation, or will the ads be randomly assigned?

  • What measures will be in place to prevent fraudulent activities and ensure the security of the affiliate network?

  • What type of data will be collected from users, and what measures will be taken to protect this data? Additionally, will any collected data be sold to third parties?

Looking forward to your reply!

2 Likes

Hi @adventurousape
Thanks for the questions.

Affiliate login to their Affiliate interface on the Grain network and collect their affiliate links. There’s additional parameters available for them to include their own tracking name so, for example an affiliate link would look something like this: https://grain1.xyz?merchant=boredcoffee&affiliate=186437&ref=twitterpost1. This would send the user who clicks the link to bored.coffee and track the click from affiliate id 186437. The affiliate would know which link generated a sale using the ref tag, in this example twitterpost1. An affiliate can use any ref codes they want to track multiple campaigns.

The Merchant has to validate any affiliate sale before it is considered to be a commissionable sale. So there’s no chance of a fraudulent sale or lead unless the merchant isn’t diligent in validating against sales they have received.

Data is never sold and T&C will reflect that very clearly. For further clarification, under European GDPR rules this is forbidden. The law stipulates we can’t. CCPA rules in California reflect the same).
As far as data collected, each merchant and affiliate has to provide their name, company and address, logo, website URL, paragraph about then, the commission rates they will pay affiliates and the terms in which payments are permitted. We also have to KYC affiliates under money laundering rules before pay outs to affiliates are sent.
Security is paramount and all reasonable steps will be taken to ensure this. In fact in the EU, there are strict rules on this under the rules of GDPR we have to follow available on the ICO website. There is no reason to sign a transaction for the validation of holding $APE either, so no wallet security issues.

I hope this answers your questions.

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Hi @Grains0x ,

The community feedback period for your proposal would be ending in less than 24 hours.

  • If you’re content with the feedback received, your next steps are to finalize your proposal using the AIP Draft Template.

  • A moderator will reach out to the author to finalize the AIP Draft. Upon receipt of the final Draft, we will review and provide instructions on the next steps.

  • Are you ready to proceed to the next phase or do you wish to extend community discussion for another 7 days?

We look forward to hearing from you.

-@Facilitators

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Let’s go with a further 7 days please @12GAUGE.Admin

1 Like

Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

@Grains0x has requested to extend the community discussion period for this AIP idea. This topic will automatically close a further 7 days from now. We encourage the community to continue to engage in thoughtful discussions through constructive criticism, honest feedback, and helpful suggestions.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

-@Facilitators

Hi @Grains0x ,

The community feedback period for your proposal would be ending in less than 24 hours.

  • If you’re content with the feedback received, your next steps are to finalize your proposal using the AIP Draft Template.
  • A moderator will reach out to the author to finalize the AIP Draft. Upon receipt of the final Draft, we will review and provide instructions on the next steps.
  • Are you ready to proceed to the next phase or do you wish to extend community discussion for another 7 days?

We look forward to hearing from you.

-@Facilitators

I know this is closing soon but wanted to say thank you for the well thought out proposal and Q&A with the community.

A quick one from my end - totally understand the risk around shoehorning $APE into the ecosystem, particularly when dealing with proven affiliates who may not be exposed to crypto at all, but is there an opportunity to increase the Web3 and $APE surface area in the proposal?

Thinking through things like spinning up an ApeID or onchain account for every affiliate that participates, inviting them to the ApeCoin Discord or ApeChain TG so they learn more about the ecosystem, sharing collateral they can share about Grain and the ApeCoinDAO more generally.

Thanks for the comments @MaximusMX

It’s absolutely possible to include integration with ApeID, YugaID and even MocaID.
At the moment ApeID is part of @SmartAPE proposal https://forum.apecoin.com/t/aip-487-apecoin-community-engagement-platform/24822/39

As you said, there’s no point shoehorning $APE into this as the a sure fire way of closing off the majority of affiliates (who are already highly skilled at what they do and integrate with other fiat affiliate networks) due to two major reasons:

  1. Tax issues that are different in every jurisdiction.
  2. Affiliates often pay for their own promotion of their sites let’s say Google Adwords, so they need fiat to balance their income and outgoings, and of course this needs to be paid directly to their bank accounts, and also, for a different type of affiliate; some of the key target areas we’ll onboard for mass marketing of web3 related products to normies: cashback sites and rewards sites. These need fiat payments because they pay their rewards to the end customer in fiat. Even affiliates in the crypto sector such as Coingehto’s Candy rewards want affiliate payments in fiat.

To my knowledge there have been a number of pure web3 on-chain affiliate networks that have had little success, most probably because of lack of web3 affiliates and being on-chain with crypto payments. One is in a constant “We are changing our architecture” state and the other is offline: leadcoin.network & 2key.network

1 Like

Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

@Grains0x has requested to extend the community discussion period for this AIP idea. This topic will automatically close a further 7 days from now. We encourage the community to continue to engage in thoughtful discussions through constructive criticism, honest feedback, and helpful suggestions.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

-@Facilitators

Fair points all around - it is clear you have thought this through!

Looking forward to supporting the proposal and being helpful however I can. Would love to see this type of affiliate network as an iterative step in strengthening the ecosystem.

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Thanks @MaximusMX. Really appreciate your support.

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I feel like this is right in Grains’ wheelhouse… Interested to see where this goes :+1: :+1:

AC

3 Likes