Authorised Reseller or Affiliate?

re: what if the merchant is stealing sales

[plumsauce]

I've been following the excellent post by jonstark and the resulting discussion with great interest.

Then it occurred to me yesterday that there is a huge difference between an authorised reseller and an affiliate.

Affiliates seem to be creatures of the web but authorised resellers have long existed in traditional channels.

Jonstark seems to have gone more towards being a reseller because he is now actively participating in the final sale.

The benefit of course it that he controls the relationship with the buyer. By doing so, all sales are accounted for. The final step is to become a reseller and relegate the vendor to the role of supplier.

So, the question is how many affiliates would be willing to go the authorised reseller route for recurring revenue? And, of those, how many would be willing to handle billing the customer and cutting a check to the supplier for the wholesale cost on a monthly basis?

Please bear in mind that I am talking about remotely hosted services which have no physical shipping and that after sales support is still provided by the vendor.

Are affiliates ready for this?

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[jonstark]

I guess it goes without saying, but I think the reseller route is worth the extra trouble. I think finding the affiliate approach is great for quickly testing a lot of markets to find a hole to fill, but once you've found a good market that converts pretty well on an affiliate basis, putting together your own site with your own products seems like the much wiser approach. As an affiliate it's a one-off, but if you move into the position of being the business you get to tap into the lifetime value of the customer.

It is probably a lot of extra trouble, but it's a lot of extra value too, with the added benefit of avoiding merchant/affiliate network fraud.

[plumsauce]

Another role or approach mirroring the physical world might be that of "sales agency". Think of all those independent manufacturer reps that you can find in major centers. And look at the ads seeking indy reps in major trade journals.

With expanded participation *and* control of the client relationship a business can justify bigger rewards.

BTW, might the original problems have stemmed from server and software problems?

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