oscomerce - affiliate products

use oscommerce to sell multiple affiliate program's products

[usavetele]

Hello,

I have a website selling widgets from two or three different affiliate programs. I don't have any of my own products, it's all affiliate based.

I want to add more affiliates/vendors, more products, more categories and a sort-by-price feature. So I got to thinking, perhaps I should redo my whole site using the oscommerce shopping cart. But since I know next to nothing about oscommerce, or shopping carts in general, I have the following questions:

1. Does it make sense to use a shopping cart when the product links on my site are affiliate links containing my affiliate ID #?

2. Can a shopping cart program such as oscommerce transfer sales in the shopping cart on my site to the affiliates' websites, who will then fill the order, collect the money, ship it and pay me?

I probably have more questions, but don't know enough right now to know what to ask.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Laura

[eljefe3]

Hi Laura,

I'd say to stay away from the shopping cart until you have your own products. Once you have your own products, you'll then need to get a merchant account, set up drop shipping or start shipping yourself. It really is much different than being an affiliate and putting up links.

[lorax]

I agree. You should focus on content and building traffic for the products you're interested in becoming an affiliate for.

[usavetele]

Thanks guys. Very interesting since a very sucessful competitor in my industry does the very thing I'm wanting to do. He collects teh money from his customers and at the same time an email if sent to his vendors and they fill the order, then he pays them vis paypal.

I'd really like to do the same, but looks like this would require a lot of work. The reason I want to set up a shopping cart on my site for the affiliates products is because I think it loks werid to have the links on my site, the potential customer clicks on my link and is then taken to the affiliates site. I just wonder how weird that must seem to a customer to go to a completely different site to place their order. Especially a big one like Amazon.

Any thoughts? Or just the way it works?

Thanks, Laura