In my very long experience reviewing programs that teach people online marketing, I notice that the fancier the name, the worse the product. Enter Commission Shortcut.
This is the latest example of this. While the idea isn’t bad, I really don’t think you actually need the product to do what it teaches you. In this review, I’ll explain why.
Commission Shortcut in a nutshell:
When you get the product, it gives you 20 eBooks (articles) you can use as your own, aka PLR. Then you take those articles,put affiliate links for relevant programs/products into it and submit them to popular sharing websites like Scribd.
The idea is that places like this get a lot of visitors and you can get “quick” exposure and directly promote products without having your own website. The idea isn’t that bad actually and I’ve got to admit I’ve never though about it until I started looking into Commission Shortcut. That’s basically the whole idea. I am certain you can do this on your own without having to buy the product.
On a side note, if you look at the sale’s page for Commission Shortcut, I’ve got to say, it’s a bit cheesy. A man offering US dollars to English people on the street? Then they get invited, do 15 minutes of work and earn a lot of money the next day? I’m sorry but my skepticism is in the red zone when I see that…
An example Commission Shortcut in action:
While doing research on this product, I came across a forum post on it through the Warrior Forum, which is a place where internet marketers get together and talk/sell/discuss programs/ideas to make money online. Usually I won’t get much information from there, but this time I lucked out.
One person was kind enough to post an example of the Commission Shortcut. He provided a link to a Scribd, which showed me an eBook on a specific niche.
There were links on this eBook that directly took me to a relevant product I could buy. This link was an affiliate link, meaning if I or anyone purchased the product through that link, the person who posted that book would earn a commission.
I was curious to see how many people read this book and at the top of the page it said over 1,000. Not bad at all! But this was since 2012 (I believe) and we’re in 2014, so if you do the math, that’s not a lot of people over a course of 2 years. Plus I do not know how many if any people actually purchased the program through that page.
Overall this is how the program works. You use the articles/eBooks provided OR make your own, post them in places Commission Shortcut tells you about, and “hopefully” earn commissions that way.
Why I think the program is a waste of money:
1. You can do this on your own. I said it before and I’ll say it again. Why purchase this stuff when you can just write your own material and post it? The only time you could ever find a reasons not to do this is if you’re lazy or don’t know what to write about.
In truth there’s plenty you could write about:
Write content on things you’re interested in or have experience with that most don’t. I can almost guarantee you that everyone in this world possesses knowledge in 1 field or another that can be sold or shared with others.
But even if you take the lazy way out and utilize the 20 eBooks/articles given to you, this brings up another problem…
2. You’re using duplicate content. Think about this for a second: Odds are you’re not the only person who purchase Commission Shortcut. And the other people who did are probably going to be using the same resources and posting them in the same exact places as you. What does this mean?
3. Too many people using the same articles/ebooks in the same places is going to look like spam. This means the places which allow you to post these resources are probably going to be very watchful OR they just won’t allow you to post links on your articles. I wouldn’t be surprised if Scribd has already taken actions to close down people caught using the same content.
I’ve seen this process before and it all ended the same way. Case point: Article directories.
What happened in this instance was that at one point in time, article directories were very popular tools for making money through the internet. They would rank high on search engines and in time, people began to abuse this by posting tons of articles, unique and copied in hopes of gaining high rankings, having a lot of people view the article and buy the product they were promoting.
In time these article directories began to shut this option down, but in spite of that, the same people kept finding loopholes in the system, until search engines like Google completely took away the article directories privileges on their search engines, meaning the once high rankings they had were gone.
The point here is that with any sort of abuse, changes will come. With the model Commission Junction follows, I wouldn’t be surprised if it sooner or later gets shut down.
Pros:
- It’s an OK idea.
- You can technically make money with it.
Cons:
- You shouldn’t use copied articles. It looks like spam.
- You can do this stuff on your own without using this program.
- It’s not stable way to earn money online in my opinion. There are MUCH better ways.
Final Rating: Commission Shortcut
Red Flag (Avoid!)
2 out of 10 stars. Decent idea, but the program itself I would not recommend. See my #1 recommendation.
Final thoughts:
The idea behind Commission Shortcut is interesting, but I honestly feel the model can easily be replicated on your own without having to invest in the product itself. And by the way, for those of you thinking you could just copy content from the internet and apply it there, DON’T!
NEVER copy anyone’s work and post it as your own. That’s plagiarism and is illegal. Always write your OWN unique content.
But even if you could make this idea work, it’s just not sustainable in my opinion. Jumping from site to site posting content with links just seems like too much work with likely very few if any results. There are FAR better ways to succeed.
As I said in the beginning of this review, products with fancy wording usually indicate the quality of the product itself. With Commission Shortcut, there is in theory a shortcut, but overall, I don’t think this approach will ever make you a lot of money.
Do you agree/disagree with this review? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this 🙂