eGoods - Cashback Business with Cryptocurrency
eGoods is a cashback site powered by its own cryptocurrency INTRA. I would like to inform you about the company itself, the target industry, problems that people out of crypto sphere faces related to cryptocurrencies and the solution to these problems provided as a profitable business.
Cashback would be defined as a form of incentive offered to buyers of certain products whereby they receive a cash refund after making their purchase. This is a large global business which is growing parallel to the e-commerce. According to a survey [1] done between 2014 and 2017 the ecommerce will continue to grow approximately 20% each year than the previous year up to 2021 with a decreasing trend.
Global ecommerce industry volume was $2.304 billion in 2017. While there have been no formal studies into the size of the cashback industry globally, it is estimated that it exceeds $84 billion conservatively.
Two cashback company examples from United States would be Ebates and Swagbucks. Ebates was originally established by two attorneys in 1998. In 2014 Ebates was acquired by Rakuten for $1 Billion when Ebates had over 2.5 million active users with over $167 Million in annual net revenue. Swagbucks is another cashback program that was launched in 2008. In 10 years Swagbucks has paid out over $274 Million in cashback rebates. It is important here to mention that neither of these companies offers cashback as high as or near 10%. Besides, Ebates pays out only 4 times a year.
All of the existing cashback programs run on fiat currencies. There is no program which runs on cryptocurrency at the moment. This is where the problem arises.
Problem
Cryptocurrency has a massive potential for both businesses and individuals. However, adoption of cryptocurrencies by masses is still to occur. Similarly, insignificantly small number of businesses accept cryptocurrency as a payment method.
According to a study made by Finder.com, only 8% of the Americans owned cryptocurrency although most of them have heard about it. Most of the Americans are interested in owning cryptocurrencies but, there are some key problems which prevents 60% of them from making a move to own any:
35% of the people think cryptocurrency is a big risk
Nearly 27% of the people thinks it is too complicated to understand
Approximately 19% of them thinks it is a scam
11% believes it is too difficult to use
6% thinks the fees involved are too high
Another big problem is that most of the cryptocurrencies offer no real-life use. The price of most have established via speculation and hype.
Solution
The solution provided by eGoods is a cashback site which will pay in cryptocurrency. It will solve most of the problems faced with no-coiners without taking risks and going through processes such as complicated cryptocurrency account verification, acquiring cryptocurrency, transferring between accounts and waiting for transactions to be completed.
eGoods is a platform which provide cashback in its native cryptocurrency while you were doing online shopping via your favourite retailers. Some of these retailers are: Amazon, Walmart, Alibaba, Macy’s, Best Buy, and many more. The process is very simple as the customer visits eGoods website, find a retailer, follow the link to the official retailer’s site and shop as usual.
Once the shopping has completed, return to eGoods website to fill out a 4-question form.
They will get their INTRA coins in 30 days. People do not need to sign up to anywhere or give their personal data.
There will be an e-shop where people can use their INTRA to purchase goods. Alternatively people might shop with an average discount rate of 20% at the affiliated stores or people might exchange their INTRA on an exchange to fiat or other cryptocurrencies.
Having a real-life use case is the most important part of the IntraCoin which no platform run on cryptocurrency provide. This aspect would grow the demand to the coin which would grow its value at the same time.
Business Model
eGoods have several potential revenue streams:
Affiliate commissions if fiat money (average being 5%)
eGoods store
Advertising space
Sale of data/metrics
Equity accumulated by INTRA coin (20% of INTRA will ve reserved as funds and 50% of them reserved for a possible security breach)
The net income for the first year is calculated as $330.000.
Token Metrics
Name: IntraCoin
Symbol: INTRA
Type: ERC20
Initial Supply: 34,000,000
Hard Cap: 10,000 ETH (Capped to prevent over-investment)
Soft Cap: 650 ETH (Amount to ensure success of company)
Roadmap
eGoods have a short roadmap since it is already a running business:
Team
One of the most interesting part of the project is that the whole business is composed of one person at the moment. Chris Hamrick, founder of eGoods, is a guy who knows technology and the business itself which are crucial for a business in crypto space to survive and be successful in the long term.
Chris hacked the AOL software and debugged it at the age of 12 and allowed it to run 50% more efficient. AOL banned him for life but offered a job when he turned 18. Since then, he has built apps for Microsoft and spent hundreds of hours studying Solidity (Ethereum code) and its implementations.
After double majoring in Finance & Economics, he started his first business in sales door to door. He has been in many sales positions and excelled on each. Led and employed teams, consulted for international companies and government municipalities. He has experience in research, acquisition, negotiating, contract development, and sales, of residential real estate. Held Vice President position at The Sourcing Connection where he managed domestic and abroad operations and managed investments over $5 million.
Conclusion
eGoods have targeted a fast-growing industry with 24% growth last year and estimated volume is $84 billion globally. One of the key strengths of the platform is that there is no competitor exist which pays cashback in cryptocurrency. This would pave the way to success.
Another strength of the platform is that it is a working business at the moment which makes it superior to other ICO projects where funds are needed to develop platform based on blockchain.
The available token will be quite low which brings a high risk to reward ratio. But considering the potential success of the business, the demand to coin thus the value will increase.
Being the only member of the team, which comprises the project might seem to be a negative aspect for some people at first. But being a seasoned business man and the coder, eliminates that perception. The main purpose of the crowdsale is to lease facilities and hire people to run the business.
In my opinion, the best part of the project is that it will enable mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. The success of this project will incentivise the bigger e-retailers to accept cryptocurrency also. I really love this aspect of the project.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/379046/worldwide-retail-e-commerce-sales/
BTT: @meejay