Hey everyone,
I have a site which i've written in php which resells products on behalf of other people. As a result they specify the details and i carry out the payment processing (via php and the processing companies API) and take a cut. The only way i have managed to do this is to assign the product owner as an affiliate and forcibly set them as the current affiliate whenever a specific product that they own is sold (you can only buy from one person at a time). This happens by placing a cookie on the users machine for the current affiliate whenever a product is selected. This enables automatic payouts for the owners of the products at a set percentage with everything else coming to me.
The problem comes when i actually want to have real affiliates! I would obviously like the ability to have other people refer users to my site and then pay them commission on anything that was sold. I can't work out a way to make it work with referrers either as they will be tied in for the life of the referrer/affiliate.
I am stumped and was hoping somone here might be able to suggest a way i could do both, either within the current confines of what i'm doing, or a company that offers something that would make this possible. It is obviously crazy to not allow for affiliates, but if i can't pay the people selling their stuff, i won't have anything to sell in the first place!!
Thanks so much for any comments or thoughts anyone might have,
Dave
