Commission based ecom site

[familychoice]

I'm thinking of setting up a small ecom site which will sell a few products for one of my clients. I've already built an ecom site for them which is working well, but we both fancy the idea of setting up new sites focusing on specific areas of their target market and promoting specific products from their stock.

They haven't got the budget for new websites and I haven't got any stock, so the plan is that I build the sites, use their payment provider to take the cash and forward a copy of the order onto them to fulfil. I'll then receive a commission for successful transactions. They'll also deal with returns or problems with payment, I'll literally just be providing another shop front for their products.

I won't be competition for their current customer base as I'll be targeting sections of the market that they haven't tackled.

Lovely people so no worries about working with them on this. No risk for them - they'll get some new orders in return for a small commission and apart from my time and a bit of hosting/domain registration, very little cost for me. I'll use the opportunity to test Open Cart for the first one and if it works well use it on future sites.

Everything seems fine and dandy, but are we breaching anything legally? I'll be stating clearly on the website that orders will be fulfilled by their company, but the site will be registered in my name and I won't be taking payments. A bit like notonthehighstreet.com or etsy.com but just linked to a single company. Has anyone done anything similar or spot an obvious flaw in my brilliant plan?

TIA

[Whatever]

Sounds very much like drop shipping to me, but without you taking the payment.

Is it any different from a standard affiliate site where you pass someone a lead/customer and get a commission for it? Doesn't sound like it to me.

[familychoice]

Sounds very much like drop shipping to me, but without you taking the payment.

Is it any different from a standard affiliate site where you pass someone a lead/customer and get a commission for it? Doesn't sound like it to me.

thanks for the reply.

It'd be a standard shopping cart site, but all orders would be handled by my client and this would be clearly stated on the site. I'd have to make sure I was covered just in case they took orders and went bust, but that's extremely unlikely as they've been trading for 20 years and have tons of stock.

I need to check the distance selling regs, if there's an issue with the domain owner not being the person selling the goods then I could always register it in their name and simply provide and manage the site in return for a comission.

It's a bit of an experiment really.

[sarahA]

As Paul said, sounds just like an affiliate set up really. You can set up an Amazon store on your own domain, people can put items into a cart, on your domain, but they pay Amazon.

Just make it clear on the site and in any ts and cs, to simply make your life easier if things did go wrong with the end seller. But I can't see any legal issues.

[familychoice]

As Paul said, sounds just like an affiliate set up really. You can set up an Amazon store on your own domain, people can put items into a cart, on your domain, but they pay Amazon.

Just make it clear on the site and in any ts and cs, to simply make your life easier if things did go wrong with the end seller. But I can't see any legal issues.

Thanks Sarah

I thought it should be ok. I'm not doing the full drop-shipper thing, payments go directly to the supplier who will post and package the orders with their own branded stuff. Even the invoices will have their details on it and I'll point all this out in the terms and returns policy stuff.

If it works it'll give a good boost to their sales and a bit of pocket money for me.

They're nice people so I don't have any concerns over using them for orders. In fact I even haggled the commission rate *down* because he was being too generous with it and I wanted to make sure it was set at a realistic level and didn't eat into their own profits too much.

[Dom]

As Paul said, sounds just like an affiliate set up really. You can set up an Amazon store on your own domain, people can put items into a cart, on your domain, but they pay Amazon.

I didn't know this! You've given me a Friday afternoon idea Mrs A... that doesn't happen often!

[sarahA]

As Paul said, sounds just like an affiliate set up really. You can set up an Amazon store on your own domain, people can put items into a cart, on your domain, but they pay Amazon.

I didn't know this! You've given me a Friday afternoon idea Mrs A... that doesn't happen often!

Well, you used to have the Amazon API to connect and set up an entire site however you wanted (within their terms). I have a book on how to do this (that I've never read). I don't know if they changed or dropped the API but you can set up astores, and other various types of stores etc. via the affiliate section.

I remember speaking to someone once who showed me a site that was just pure affiliate links/products but a very well built site. Made about £42k a year. Just need the time and effort, and the right products to sell

[sarahA]

PS. Glad I've given you something to do on a Friday afternoon

[Dom]

Teehee! Also, now that the internet has been turned on at my flat, I can actually do some work at home. There's no excuses now!