oilman - 12:01 am on Aug 12, 2002 (gmt 0)

hey dogboy - good to see ya back stirrin up the hornet's nest ;)

stlouislouis - you're starting to get the picture. Right now dogboy and others are riding the evolutionary wave of affiliate marketing. In fact, it's probably almost wrong to call it affiliate marketing anymore simply because of the connotation.

I'll share how my biz runs (not quite the same as some of dogboy's but it should help you)

1) I build a site about the product (5-10 pages) that includes product info, how to use product, prices etc. It looks like a stand alone site for that product.

2) When customers go to the order page they remain on my site, oilmansite.com, and fill in the order form on a secure server.

3) Once the customer submits the order the data is sent directly into my merchant's system - I could capture the data first but for this particular site I don't care.

4) After the customer has submitted the order they get a confirmation page that states at the bottom somewhere "Your credit card will be billed by somemerchant.com"

5) Now the data is in my merchant's system and out of my hands completely. The merchant handles customer service, order fulfillment, order tracking etc etc. I handle a check from the every two weeks.

It's a beautiful business model if it's done right. Basically what dogboy is saying is don't just build a site that says 'click here to order' and you can see a big ugly CJ or BeFree url. I'm not saying that won't work but I see the future of what I call "affiliate linking" dwindling fast.