Is there an affiliate network business model for this scheme?

Or can it even be done?

[jastra]

I know several brick and mortar businesses that sell products that may be suitable for an affiliate marketing program. They are all in niche markets and I believe their products have good potential.

• Some are Mom & Pops
  
• Some sell small products, some sell large ticket items
  
• The large ticket items ($6,000 - $10,000) would probably not sell without a personal visit to the seller’s location to examine the product
  
• Not all of the businesses even have a Website
  
• Not all of those with Websites have an online catalog.
  

I would like advice on how best to represent these products online-- as my own little affiliate network. I would then recruit affiliates to sell the products.

Can this be done? And is there an existing affiliate management software that can handle this?

I have some experience as an affiliate through CJ and others. I just can’t get my head around how best to do this.

[Planet13]

As a merchant, I would say it would be hard to automate this, but this is just my first impression.

However, the fact that it would be difficult to do would limit your competition.

Remember that affiliates (usually called sales reps) existed long before the internet did. So people made - and still make - money pitching other people's stuff in the offline world.

So I think you have to look at your competencies and determine why they SHOULD use your services instead of selling on ebay, or amazon, or etsy, or some of the other sites that are geared toward "internet challenged" businesses.

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Anyway, hope there is an easy solution for you and I hope that someone with more knowhow about these matters chimes in.

[jastra]

You're right about eBay, and then there's Adwords and Adsense for those a little farther up the computer literacy scale.