stlouislouis - 11:47 pm on Aug 11, 2002 (gmt 0)

Hi Dogboy,

I'm not sure I'm following the business model you're describing.

If I understand you correctly, let's say your site is dogboy.com. You are an affiliate for the merchant's site (if they have one) which is merchant.com.

If I'm following you correctly, when a customer comes to your site, they order at your site, from your site. The customer thinks they have ordered from dogboy.com.

Then you somehow relay the order electronically and automatically -- complete with credit card details -- to the merchant.com site who handles it just like the order came over the phone, basically -- the merchant packages the order, ships it, charges the customer's credit card using the details you provided to them, sends an invoice to the customer and handles any customer service issues, such as returns.

Merchant.com mails you a commission check much like you were an independent outside sales rep phoning in an order from the road.

Do I have it right?

If so, some questions for clarification:

1) Does the customer think they have ordered from dogboy.com or merchant.com?

2) Similarly, does the package the customer get say it's from dogboy.com or merchant.com?

3) Do you contact the customer after the sale in any way, or is the customer marketed to after the initial sale for any follow up or related items only by merchant.com?

4) You choose merchants who likely don't have an affiliate program per se; you may have approached them and worked out a one to one deal with them. Thus, you likely have few if any competing affiliates offering merchant.com's wares online (at least with high SE rankings).

5) You rely on search engine traffic rather than other marketing methods for traffic to dogboy.com. Basically, you do the SEO and site submission, then site back and see if dogboy.com produces for you.

Do I have it right?

Thank you very much for sharing; I'm new to all this...but learning!

Take care and absolute best wishes,

Louis