E-commerce questions...

[Bennyboy]

How does the affiliate thing work?

Say I have a business, and buy things from another business. I will be passing out tons of brochures. My vendors brochures more than likely. i was thinking about putting some kind of discount code on them to track sales through my efforts.

My customers can be directed from my website to my vendors website and purchase directly through them also. How do I get credit for that? Do I need one program to set up my network? Can use a mirror website so that when they click on my vendors site, that are actually clicking on a mirror site that I control? I want the vendors to be able to drop ship the products too even when ordering from my site....

And forgive me here I seem stupid with this question, but all my life I have been a "finish the job get the check" kind of guy so my experience in E Commerce is nil and I know nothing and not much about computers (What the hell is a spreadsheet?)