Online shop for Drupal ebook, with affiliate program

What is it?

book.drupalfun.com is a Drupal site where the Ultimate Community Site Guide by Dorien Herremans ebook is sold. The online store sells the pdf ebook, with Paypal and creditcard checkout options. There is also an affiliate program available, which offers users a commission on the sales he or she refers.

Version and online shop

The site was built with Drupal 5, mainly because of the current development state of the Uebercart module. The ecommerce section was realised with Uebercart, and I must admit that it went very smoothly and the support was great.

Affiliate program

Setting up the affiliate program was a little less documented, and required some creative thinking. My starting base was the uc_affiliate2 module, which offers the basic affiliate functionality. Uc_affiliate2 offers users of a certain role the possibility to receive a commission for each sale they refer. In order to allow users to apply for the affiliate "role", I used the module "Apply for Role". I also wanted the system to notify me (by email) and the users (on screen) of an application, so I used the Actions module, which integrated nicely with Apply for Role. I needed a fourth module (Role Change Notify) to be able to notify the newly accepted affiliate (where he can find his links, some explanation, etc).

After some puzzeling, I think it works pretty well. You can try it out at http://book.drupalfun.com/affiliate. The program is open to all.