Covert Commissions Review – Affiliate Marketing The Wrong Way?

Welcome to my Covert Commissions review!

First of all, I want to say Congratulations for taking the time to do your own research before buying into any "seemingly good" products.

I know I only have a few seconds to grab your attention. So very quickly, why listen to me?

One main reason...

I'm not like any other reviewers out there reviewing products just to promote it.

If you've been following me, you'll know that I always dig DEEP into each product to come up with a very in-depth and balanced review.

So it'll definitely be the same for this review on Covert Commissions.

In fact, please be extremely careful if you come across any reviews highly recommending Covert Commissions. The person behind it must be promoting it with a very biased review.

Without further ado, let's dive straight into our Cover Commissions review today...

As usual, this is going to be a long and in-depth review, I hope the following Quick Navigation can help you find the information you need 🙂

First of all, let me give you a little bit about the background of this product which most people don't know about...

Covert Commissions was first created by IM Wealth Builders back in 2015. The founders back then include Soren Joransen, John Merrick and Cindy Donovan.

In fact, I've actually reviewed another IM Wealthy Builders' product called Covert Store Builder. Unfortunately, it's a very poor quality product, even worse than Covert Commissions.

Shortly after the launch in 2015, Cindy left IM Wealth Builders and went to build her own company called Wildfire Concepts.

But Cindy always treats Covert Commissions as her own children so she actually bought it back in 2017 from IM Wealthy Builders when the other two founders have already left.

So currently, Cindy is the sole owner of Covert Commissions. And unlike many other scam products out there, Cindy is a real person.

When Cindy re-launched the product recently in May 2018, she added in some additional services to make the product even more appealing.

Not only that, upon further research, I found out that Cindy is actually a seasoned digital product creator. She has launched more than 10 products on JVZoo:

This raised my doubt towards Covert Commissions because most people who create lots of digital products are usually scam artists who are just trying different product with very similar strategies to see which one works and makes more money for themselves.

Cindy claimed that Covert Commissions is a 100% Done-For-You system for you to build a hands-free, profitable list and start earning affiliate commissions on autopilot:

To be honest, my scam alarm went off when I saw the sales page of Covert Commissions because it's the typical hyped up sales page.

Are the claims really true? Let me dissect the entire "system" for you and see how it really works...

Basically, Covert Commissions is very much like Patric Chan's CB Passive Income where everything is all Done-For-You. All you need to do is to drive traffic.

The DFY resources include:

• Squeeze page/landing page/opt-in page
• Confirmation page
• Thank you page
• Download page
• Email follow-up sequence

They even have training to teach you about how to drive traffic despite it's not very updated and thorough.

Below is a quick Covert Commissions Demo video walking you through the overall process of using the product:

Let me summarize the over process for you...

Covert Commissions has a one-time cost of $24. But there are a number of hidden upsells within the sales funnel.

Covert Commissions can only integrate with 4 affiliate networks - ClickBank, JVZoo, WarriorPlus & PayKickStart.

These are the platforms for you to get affiliate products to promote and make money.

There's a page inside the Covert Commissions members area for you add your links from the 4 different affiliate networks listed above.

By doing this, the system will automatically help you insert your affiliate links into their pre-made Email autoresponder and all other promotional resources inside Covert Commissions.

In Covert Commissions, "credits" are tokens for you to "redeem sales funnels". Sales funnels include pre-built landing pages, autoresponder series and other promotional tools.

There are 60+ ready-made sales funnels for you to use. But they're NOT free even if you've purchased Covert Commissions.

When you first joined as a member, you'll be entitled to 5 credits. 1 credit can be used to redeem 1 sales funnel.

You'll need to purchase credit if you run out of them.

I'm not sure why they want to use such misleading names but "missions" basically means sales funnel in Covert Commissions.

One funnel represents one affiliate product.

So this step is basically choosing the product you want to promote.

The last step is to drive traffic to the landing page provided for you in the sales funnel.

Then your job is done because the ready-made sales funnel will help you follow-up with your leads and help you convert them into buyers.

Whenever someone purchases something through your link, you earn a commission.

That's Email Marketing + Affiliate Marketing in action!

Just a side note, Covert Commissions does not require you to have a website. You can just use their ready-made landing pages and drive traffic to those pages.

But for those of you who have your own WordPress website, Covert Commissions has a WP plugin to help you easily integrate affiliate promotions in your website.

Below is a video demonstration of how Covert Commissions WP plugin works:

I've reviewed too many scam products so I'm too used to sales pages with all the fake testimonials, fake success stories or even fake owners.

Despite Covert Commissions' sales page looks pretty hyped up, everything there is real. They didn't hire Fiverr actors to create fake testimonials or use stock photos as their happy customers.

Even the owner Cindy, she's a real person and you can find her on Facebook here.

For this part, I'm really satisfied for this product. I'm really sick and tired of all the fake stuff!

Covert Commissions is relatively cheap. Despite it has some hidden but optional upsells, it's quite cost effective for beginners to leverage this system.

For those of you familiar with affiliate marketing & email marketing, you'll know that there are quite a number of costs involved if you really want to build a profitable website and sales funnel.

Some of the costs involved are:

• Website hosting
• Domain name
• Email Service Provider (Autorepsonder)
• Copywriting & content creation (either you spend lots of time to do it or you hire someone to do it)

These are the main costs involved. Take my favorite Autoresponder, ConvertKit, as an example, it costs me USD$29 per month. 

If you add up all the costs, you can easily spend hundreds of dollars every month just to run your own online business.

The fact that everything is done-for-you in Covert Commissions at just a one-time fee of $24 is really a great benefit.

That's why I said it's cost effective for beginners. (I'll explain why more experienced marketers should really avoid such products in a sec.)

Another benefit of this product is the 30-day refund period. At least you can get your money back if it's not for you.

But one problem with money-back guarantee is that this technique is way too common. Many times you're still unable to get a refund because you may not meet certain criteria.

Just take note of this and never make a purchasing decision because it "seems" risk-free because it has a money-back guarantee.

Despite this is a legit product, I still need to criticize its hyped up sales page.

It claimed things like:

• 100% Done-For-You system
• Set up everything in under 3 minutes
• Automated traffic with their WordPress plugin

There's nothing in the world that's really 100% Done-For-You. They may have ready-made sales funnels in place but in order to make money, there are a lot of work to be done.

There's really no shortcut to success. Don't sabotage yourself with the mindset of getting rich with little or no effort. There's no such thing.

Covert Commissions may have good system in place for you to set things up fast but it's definitely not possible to do it under 3 minutes.

Also, there's no such thing as Automated Traffic unless you have website with good Google rankings.

Some more the WordPress plugin provided by Covert Commissions is only for you to integrate affiliate promotions into your WP website. It has nothing to do with driving traffic.

Just now I mentioned that one of the advantage of Covert Commissions is that it's cost effective. But the downside to that is you're actually NOT building your own business.

What do I mean?

Since all the landing pages, autoresponders are already put in place for you, you don't OWN any of those stuff, including your subscribers/leads.

Yes, you can make money by leveraging their DFY sales funnel. But ultimately, all these "assets" still belong to Cindy.

If Cindy decides to shut down this system one day, your entire business is gone while she still has hers going.

Cindy provides one solution to this. You're actually allowed to build your own list and integrate it with your own Autoresponder. But that's only for Covert Commissions Pro, an upsell that you have to pay for.

If I'm not wrong, it's $27/month or $197/year or $297 one-time.

Not only that, she'll be promoting to you another product of hers called "Email Suite Pro" which costs $67-$97. This is just like an autoresponder for you to host your own subscribers.

However, there's still a problem to this. And that leads us to our next point...

Everything Done-For-You seem really appealing. But if you think carefully, you're relying on other people's system and you actually learn nothing.

Like I said just now, if someday this system is down, not only your business is gone, but you're unable to re-build another business of your own because you do not have the skills to do so, right?

That's why I would recommend every single one of you to equip yourself with the necessary skills so that you are self-reliant. You have the skills to build your own business and not relying on someone else.

If this sounds good to you, I recommend you to take a look at my top recommended platform - Wealthy Affiliate!

That's the place where you can learn all the foundation to replicate your business.

Another problem with their DFY system is that if you look closely, you'll realize that their sales funnel is really not that good.

Their Email autoresponders are all about promoting and selling which shouldn't be the way.

An effective Email marketing campaign should start by building relationship first.

Also, they have other promotional tools such as:

• Tweets
• Pay Per Click (PPC)
• Articles
• Banners

But, take a look at their Tweet:

"Make $1000/week online without a website or a product of your own..."

What kind of crappy Tweet is this? Do you really think such Tweets are effective and will make you money?

They're just trying to add more features to the system to make it "seems" more valuable.

Agree?

According to Cindy, traffic generation is the only thing you need to do to make money with Covert Commissions.

Not only that, they actually provide you with training to help you do that.

But if you take a look at their training, it's really ineffective and outdated.

One of the strategies they teach is to use article directories like Squidoo to rank high in Google and give backlinks to your site.

But this strategy has been abandoned long ago since Google updated their algorithm about article directories.

Not only that, Squidoo has been acquired by HubPages since 2014.

Yet another problem with Done-For-You system is that you'll be facing the duplicate content issue. 

Since all the landing pages are the same, it's impossible for you to be ranked in Google and get free traffic from Google.

For other free traffic method, you're left with:

• Social media marketing
• Guest blogging 
• Forum marketing

These require a lot of effort and time to see results, which most people don't have the patience for.

In other words, you'll need to turn to paid traffic like Facebook Ads, Solo Ads, things like that. But the problem is that paid traffic can be really expensive.

Most beginners don't have the skill and capital to make it work.

Last but not least, Cindy claimed that you only need to invest a one-time cost of $27 to access the "100% DFY system".

This is not true at all because there are various upsells.

Just take a look at the screenshot below taken from JVZoo:

It says Covert Commission is part of a sales funnel which includes up to 9 other products.

This include the Pro version of Covert Commissions and other products created by Cindy.

Another cost you have to consider is the cost of buying "credits".

Remember that you need credits to acquire more sales funnel within Covert Commissions members area?

If you run out the credits, you can purchase 1 credit at $9.97 or 5 credits at $47.

So the whole one-time fee is only true because it has no recurring fee. But it has other costs and upsells in the funnel.

If you purchase the Pro version, there will be a monthly or yearly recurring fee for sure.

No, Covert Commissions is NOT a scam. It has legit sales funnels, training and resources within the product.

But you really need to think twice about getting a Done-For-You system.

Yes, it has its benefits but in the long run I think the cons outweigh the pros.