So this was the other program I was testing out as I mentioned that I was going to start dabbling with more sales based affiliate programs. This one was actually different in some way compared to others for me as the company is pretty new yet at the same time I was familiar with its business model and offerings.

Way back when I was exposed to the direct sales industry I was interested in doing more research about it and bumped into this company called Cognigen. What caught my attention was that when you think direct sales you usually think of people who go to friends and family members to try and sell products or services face to face.

While that company was classified as one too with the primary service offering being long distance, to me it looked more like a web based affiliate program similar to others such as Commission Junction (I dislike that company personally but that is another post all together). They also offered people who signed up these self replicating websites which was essentially your own web site store and was pretty unique at the time (How time flies ).

As a person who was into web publishing and online marketing, I signed up to see what it was like since it was free. The funny thing was that I wasn’t really taking it seriously at all and yet I was generating sales from sources such as people looking for services that the website offered.

I did actually make some small change money out of it as well, but despite that I still didn’t take it too seriously as the support system and direction of the company didn’t excite me enough I suppose compared to the other things that were happening in my life.

Fast forward to today and as it turns out the company has had a complete makeover with various acquisitions and is now operating under the name Commission River. By the looks of it, it seems like the company is definitely trying to market itself more as an affiliate program now. There sure are a lot of programs to market too such as phone and Internet services from established providers that I’m sure a lot of people already use too.

That was actually one of the reasons I thought it would be an interesting program too as at worst if you are already using one of the services offered on the site, then you can essentially get paid every month for services that you were going to use anyways when you think about it. You could also market it offline too if that’s your type of thing.

The main reason why I am blogging about this company first, as I am testing a few right now, is that this is the first entirely sales based affiliate program out of the group that I actually received a payment from. This was the envelope that arrived in my mail:

And here is the check that was in it for the amount of $91.01:

I looked at my stats as well and it seemed like the commission was generated fairly quickly as a result of a cell phone order that was sold. When I think about it, I actually made more than the widget bucks program already if you minus the $25 bonus that I received. I actually wanted to try out more things with this program, but like in the past the support system doesn’t seem very responsive to certain questions from my experience. So, we’ll see how it turns out. You can visit the Commission River Site and sign up if you want to try it out yourself.

I am going to create a new income label for these called “affiliate sales” to provide a comparison on what ends up being better as things progress. Updated results are as follows:

Stock Investment: $800
Blog Web Publishing: $444.57
Million Dollar Term: $100
Affiliate Sales: $91.01

Total: $1435.58

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This must be prey on the Internet users week or something. While it isn’t unusual to get spam about money making opportunities, this one deserved some special attention I thought as they sure do a lot of things right to entice people to go with their pitch. It was from a company called “Contacting Them”.

While I didn’t care too much about the spam offer, it actually had some good copywriting I must say as they make it sound like they have done some research about your site by using generic information such as how long the domain has been registered for. Then they try to convince you to join them with the phrase of

With that kind of traffic, we will pay you up to $4,800/month to advertise our links on your website.

The thing is too, it will probably get a lot of people to sign up impulsively. I’m always weary whenever people focus so much on how much you can make while using the terms earn “up to” in the message. I went to the page anyways to read the fine print and sure enough it puts a lot more light into the offer

These figures of earnings are examples to help you understand the earning potential - You can make more or less. There are no guarantees of income. *You are NOT paid per click, per impressions or for the period of time our banner is exposed on your website; you are paid per sale generated. You receive a sales commission when members join our paid membership upon your referral or your sub-affiliates’. Recurring monthly commissions are subject to members’ renewals. By default, 2 levels of commissions are paid; to access levels 3 to 10, you need to meet each level qualifications. Please take time to consult the qualifications for each level inside the affiliate area that explains everything in details.

It’s kind of like telling someone that they can earn up to a million dollars a day by cutting the neighbor’s grass. From my experience, good online affiliate programs are like any type of vendors in a traditional business where they focus on the type of products/services that they will enable you to offer.

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