Cash Back Commissions On Ebay Purchases! (36%?)

Do you make Ebay purchases? 

The seller you purchase from is charged by Ebay fees for:

1. insertion of the item into the Ebay auction or Buy-It-Now listing
2. a final value fee based on the total amount of the final bid (or the Buy-It-Now) price, and
3. any listing upgrade fees when applicable. 

If the seller's Ebay fee is $20, you can receive a commission of either 20% ($4.00) or 36% ($7.20) for your winning bid, or if a "Buy It Now" purchase, the purchase price of the item.

How does it work for Ebay?

You just click on an icon (bookmark the Bigcrumbs site) just before you place your bid on an item, and if you win the bid, you get the cash paid directly to your PayPal account. Note that the commission percentage (for Ebay) is based on the fee(s) that the seller pays to Ebay for selling the auction (or Buy-It-Now) item, not the total amount that you pay for the item.

Why 20% or 36% -- why the difference?

You need to select one of two categories that you want to receive commissions under when you sign up under Bigcrumbs. There are advantages and disadvantages of both. Here's an explanation:

CrumbSaver: If you ONLY want to purchase on Ebay (or any of the other 390+ stores), choose the CrumbSaver category and you then get 36% of the seller's Ebay fee. You can also recommend this cash back to friends, and if they sign up and identify you as the person who referred you, you also receive 4% of the seller's Ebay fee for Ebay purchases your friend makes.

CrumbEarner: You receive 20% of the seller's Ebay fee. Just like the CrumbSaver just described above, you also receive 4% of the Ebay's seller's fees on your friends' Ebay purchases. But, if one (or more) of your friends make their own recommendations to their friends (who then sign up), you also get 4% of the Ebay's seller's fees for THEIR friend's Ebay purchases. This commission you receive can continue down the line for a total of 5 friend's links, i.e., a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend. This dramatically multiplies the amount a CrumbEarner can earn. In fact, CrumbEarners can suddenly find themselves earning additional income from the shopping of tens or hundreds or thousands of members, most of whom they probably don't even know!

So how do you choose which category to sign up for?

If you don't sign up (or want to recommend it to) any other friends, then CrumbSaver will get you 36% back, and that is what you should choose when you first sign up. However, if sometime in the future you get 4 friends to also sign up and all of you purchase about the same dollar amount on Ebay each month, you would also get (approximately) 36% back each month on Ebay purchases. The 36% calculates like this: 20% on your Ebay seller's fees + 4% from each of 4 friend's seller's fees (4 x 4% = 16%) which equals a total of 36% (20% + 16%). The real advantage is if just ONE of the 4 friends you have sign up also recommends just one other person, you add an additional 4% onto that 36% for that friend of a friend's purchase (percent of the seller's fee). AND, if that friend of your friend signs up their own friend, add another 4%.  OR, if 2 of those original 4 friends sign up one other friend each, then add an additional 2 x 4%.

Of course, this can continue for a total of 5 generations. So, if you directly recommend 4 friends, and EACH of your 4 friends recommends 4 of their own friends (and this continues for a total of 5 times), you then have 1,360 persons who's purchases are earning you a fee of 4% on EACH of 1,360 person's Ebay seller's fee. If EACH of the 1,360 persons has a monthly Ebay purchase with a seller's Ebay fee of $5.00 (about $88 in total purchases), you would earn 4% of $5 x 1,360 = $272 FOR THAT MONTH. Add a 5th friend, and you are now at 4% x $5 x 3,905 = $781. And extend this out to 10 friends with 5 generations = 111,110 referrals, so your total MONTHLY commissions would be $22,222. That's assuming each person generates $0.20 each per month (4% x $5.00 fee = $0.20). If each referral generated $2.40 in commissions in a month, you would receive $266,664.00 for the month. Of course, unrealistic, but certainly interesting, eh?

These are of course best case situations, but even if it is $10, $25, $50 or $100 extra a month for making a few (2-4) initial recommendations (and even then not doing anything else with your own recommendations), why not give it a try? Its exciting! Even my first Ebay purchase  with Bigcrumbs of $37.50 had a sellers fee of $2.62, and I got $0.94. The person who referred me got $0.10. Not a lot, but neat getting a little back on my $37.50 purchase.

Does it really work?

Here are 3 examples of recent purchases made in May of 2009:

1. Purchased 4 tickets on Orbitz. Got back 4 x $4.50 = $18.
2. Bid on and purchased $37.50 for USA mint stamps (below face value) on Ebay: got a commission of $0.97 cents (the person who referred me to Bigcrumbs also got $0.10)
3. Bid on and purchased an IBM T40 notebook computer on Ebay: cost $162.50; seller's fee was $9.35; I got back $3.37; my referring person got back $0.37

Funds get deposited directly into your PayPal account -- you do need to have a PayPal account before you sign up for Bigcrumbs and start participating.

Here's a payment example: For rebates and/or referral commissions you generate in the month of January, you will receive your first payment on March 15th. That payment will cover all cash that you earned in January. You will then be paid in April for your earnings in the month of February, and so on. You'll receive an email from PayPal to say that money has been deposited into your PayPal account. There is no minimum amount that you can earn -- if you earn $0.01, you'll get paid $0.01. PayPal has a maximum payment amount PER DAY of $10,000.00, so if you earn more than $10,000.00 per month and that payment by Bigcrumbs is to be made on the 15th of the month, your payment will be broken up into equal $ payments and then paid. The only real "fee" is the fee that PayPal charges Bigcrumbs for payments paid into a PayPal account equal to 2% of the amount paid with a cap (maximum) of $1, but this is deducted BEFORE the cash is posted to your PayPal account, so whatever is in your PayPal account on the 15th is what you will get paid. So, if you got $100 in commissions, 2% would be $2.00, but there is a maximum of $1.00, so you would receive $100.00 - $1.00 = $99.00 after the PayPal fee is taken out.

Is this income as far as the IRS goes?

Yes. And if you receive over $600 in a year, you will receive a 1099 form identifying this income.

Does it cost someone part of their Bigcrumbs commission because you referred them or because you are 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 generations away from them?

1. To consolidate some of the questions that you might have that might be more clearly defined from an actual user (us) using the Bigcrumbs system. We also want you to become more comfortable with what you can expect to come out of your relationship with the Bigcrumbs' system, and to let us convey to you the excitement that this system has generated.
2. We want you to be part of our "friends" generation, and hopefully, to have you make recommendations to your friends (if you want) so that we (and you of course) can make money off of multiple generations of people.
3. And here is an option that Bigcrumbs doesn't offer -- it is not required, just a free option we are offering you: we will be glad to set you up with a free web page on our web site so that if you want to easily refer friends, you can just give them the web page address and it will take them directly to your custom web page -- it will even bypass our main web site, costar.net, and not branch to any part of our own web site. This free web page is only available if you choose to sign up for the CrumbEarner option. The free web page is not made available if you choose the CrumbSaver option when you first register for Bigcrumbs -- we don't receive any commissions on your registering your own friends if you are a CrumbSaver.
   
   Because you would already be our first generation referral, your friend that uses your customized web page to sign up for Bigcrumbs would be your first generation referral and our second generation referral as long as you have chosen the CrumbEarner option when you sign up. The CrumbEarner (or CrumbSaver) question is the first question that you are asked when you are taken to sign up for Bigcrumbs when you click the sign-up link at the bottom (or top) of this web page. We will do this (free) web page creation for 4 generations below you. Requesting pages from people in your 1, 2, 3, and/or 4 generations below you depends only if they request this free web page option. Remember that each of the friends that sign up through your web page link can have 4 additional generations of people below them that you can receive commissions on (if all people in these generations choose CrumbEarner option).

1. Click on the Bigcrumbs link at the bottom of this web page to sign up for bigcrumbs.com. Bigcrumbs will send us a validation that you are part of our "friends" list almost immediately.
2. You send us an email requesting a free web page. Send email to: barbara@costar.net and include in the body of the text what the web page name you want it to be called. Recommendation: just request your own name first and last name (no spaces or punctuation in text), e.g., if your name is Barbara Storr, then you can request your web page name to be: barbarastorr. Worried about privacy? The web page can be named with whatever name you want (no "bad" names, please) and we will try to accommodate you. We have the option to request a different name if either the requested name has already been assigned (a rarity) or if we deem the name to be inappropriate for our web site. For example, you could use your Bigcrumbs ID, your pet's name, or just your first name for the web page name.