Hi, an earlier point:

You want me to get all the world's online shops with affiliate programs to change their sites to read a cookie I set?
Something like that. If you look at how these guys work, they give each affiliate (advert holder) a unique URL to locate the vendor and product. The vendor also has to make amendments to allow tracking of transactions.

The fact is that ClickBank have been using a business model similar to my original proposition for about nine years, and have some 100,000 affiliates working with them. Maybe I'm missing something in the logistics at the moment, but the basic theory obviously works for them.
Not really, they all seem to offer something along the lines of:

1. A total e-commerce solution. Customer deals with Service Provider.
2. Payments processing. Customer deals with vendor and SP for payment.
3. Affiliate programmes. Customer deals with either vendor or SP or both.

The affiliates just select individual products from their catalogue to promote. They are typically bloggers out to make a few bucks.

Please remember that ClickBank are a trading unit of a much larger corporation. They started off with technical staff and venture capital.

This is definitely a valid point as far as competition is concerned, but there's usually a niche or alternative way of offering the same concept to make it attractive.
It is not so much the competition I was concerned about as getting a start in the first place. The big boys have been around since before internet fraud really caught on, so they are well known and on whitelists. You are not.

As an analogy I would say it is a bit like asking a first time jobber for experience............ without it they won't get a job, and without a job they won't get experience?

Your idea of niche markets seems sound, as they tend to be specialists and enthusiasts, and the items they deal in tend to be of a higher value which makes up for lower volumes. Also, dealing with vendor sites rather than individual products may be more attractive to smaller websites as there are more sales opportunities.

Obvious things to steer clear of are: pharmaceuticals, adult content, get rich quick, loans & finance, and gaming.................you know you will get ripped off.