The referral programme can still be as generous with a percentage based system in fact it may be FAR more lucrative with the right pricing strategy.
The referral programme can be generous by using two sources only: inflation or transaction fees. Inflation is just another name for making BTS holders pay for BTS users. IMO this not a sustainable strategy.
No I mean a percentage based system could make the referral programme far more lucrative. I hate inflation too.
For example if you have 1000 potential customers. The average customer makes 10 transfers/purchases a month.
A. 500 make 10 purchases/transfers averaging $4 or less a month and even a percentage fee system is too high for them.
B. 250 make 10 purchases/transfers averaging $10 or less a month and $0.1 is too high for them but $0.01 is OK.
C. 125 make 10 purchases/transfers averaging $25 or less a month and $0.1 is too high for them but $0.025 is OK.
D. 62.5 make 10 purchases/transfer averaging $50 a month they would pay $0.1 but with a 0.1% system are only paying $0.05
E. 62.5 make 10 purchases/transfers averaging $100 a month and $0.1 is cheap to them.
A $0.1 fee would earn merchants/referrers $125 a month but a 0.1% system with a minimum of $0.01 would make them $150 a month.
That's just a random example to make the numbers work in my favour but the point is while lowering fees could earn you less from one group (D in the example) total profit is actually higher.
You also end up attracting far more users who will be using BTS and BitAssets which will positively affect the CAP.
Or an even simpler analysis. If 100 out of a thousand potential customers will pay a $0.1 fee but 500 out of a thousand will pay $0.05 fee, obviously charging $0.05 is optimal if your running costs in both examples are the same.
At the moment I'm worried we're not appealing to a very large portion of our potential market. So I think we have to attempt to do some analysis and address the issue.