I think you're dead on about eBay and Amazon being the main sources of income, but we should give them a chance to address this. You have to figure they thought

I think you're dead on about eBay and Amazon being the main sources of income, but we should give them a chance to address this. You have to figure they thought of this on day 1. Specifically, I think this is not moot: "arguable if this generates any value" Making the association that buying from Amazon == donating to charity is worth money to them. Also, at least with eBay, the big money in affiliate revenue is signing up new users. You get paid about ~1.5% of the transaction price vs. $25 every time a new user places a bid (they don't even have to win). So at worst these companies are paying the big bonus once, and they're still making a profit on every sale. tl;dr: there is a value add here, unlike than cookie dropping.