Before I answer the question: “ What is Covert Commissions?” let me briefly touch on some background information. Affiliate marketing is a performance-based type of online marketing where you earn a commission by promoting a company’s products. To earn a commission, you need traffic, or an audience to sell the product to. You can do this by joining an affiliate program or by establishing your own website to get an audience. You then link your affiliate program to an affiliate network where you will get the products to promote.
Affiliate marketing stands out because it can allow you to make money passively. All you need is an efficient affiliate program and consistent traffic. Several affiliate programs take things even a step further, removing all the barriers found in business, only tasking you with driving traffic. One such platform is Covert Commissions. Here is an unbiased review of Covert Commissions.
WHAT IS IT?
Covert Commissions is an all-in-one done-for-you affiliate (DFY) marketing system that has a ready-made sales funnel, designed to help you build your list, promote offers, and earn affiliate commissions on auto-pilot. The system provides you with the tools to use to promote various affiliate products without having to do much of the work yourself. All you have to do is to drive traffic to the system’s capture page and get people to sign up.
Covert Commissions was initially a product that was created in 2015 by IM Wealth Builders. The founders were Cindy Donovan, John Merrick, and Soren Joransen. IM Wealth Builders has a history of creating poor quality products such as Covert Store Builder. Cindy Donovan left IM Wealth Builders in 2015 shortly after the launch of the product to form her own company, Wildfire Concepts.
In 2017, she bought back Covert Store Builder from IM Wealth Builders after the other two founders left the company. In May 2018, she redesigned and relaunched the product as Covert Commissions. Cindy Donovan is, therefore, the current owner of Covert Commissions. To make Covert Commissions even more appealing, she added in some extra services.
Cindy Donovan is a seasoned creator of digital products and has launched more than 10 products in the past. This raises some doubts since a large majority of digital product creators with multiple products are often scam artists who release different products that have very similar strategies in an attempt to make more money for themselves. However, unlike most scam products that have anonymous owners or owners with fake identities, Cindy Donovan is a real person.
Check out this article I wrote about affiliate marketing
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Covert Commissions is a done-for-you sales funnel that is designed to perform all the complex tasks associated with affiliate marketing such as promoting offers, building your list and earning affiliate commissions on auto-pilot. All that you have to do is to drive traffic. The done-for-you resources that are made available to you by the system include a landing or squeeze page, a confirmation page, a thank you page, a download page, and an email follow-up sequence. Covert Commissions also provides training on how you can drive traffic. The training, however, is neither updated nor thorough and may not provide accurate information.
To gain access to Covert Commissions, certain steps must be followed:
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Purchase Covert Commissions
To use Covert Commissions, you first need to purchase it. The service costs $24, which you only pay once. However, there are several upsells in the sales funnel.
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Set up your profile
After purchasing the program, you need to create an account by providing your details including your name, PayPal address, profile picture, autoresponder, among others.
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Apply for affiliate networks
The only affiliate networks that Covert Commissions can integrate are JVZoo, ClickBank, PayKickStart, and WarriorPlus. These are the platforms that you will get your affiliate products. You will then make money by promoting these affiliate products.
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Add the affiliate links to the Covert Commissions platform
The Covert Commissions members area has a page where you can add the links you got from the four different affiliate networks named above. After adding the links to the page, the program will automatically insert your links to a premade email autoresponder. With pro membership, you can add your autoresponder code to the system. The autoresponder code will allow your leads to be added to an autoresponder of your preference. The emails will then be sent to your leads automatically.
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Get Credits
Covert Commissions has “credits” that you can use as tokens to “redeem sales funnels.” The sales funnels include autoresponder series, pre-built landing pages, and other promotional tools. The system has more than 60 ready-made sales funnels that you can use. However, these sales funnels are not free even when you have already purchased the program. New members are rewarded with 5 credits. The cost of redeeming a sales funnel is 1 credit. In case you run out of the credits, you will have to purchase them.
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Choose a mission
With Covert Commissions, a “mission” is simply a sales funnel that you will use to promote a product. One affiliate product is represented by one funnel. Choosing a mission, therefore, means selecting the product that you intend to promote.
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Drive Traffic
Driving Traffic is the last step to the landing page that you are provided within the sales funnel. You will then have completed your task since the ready-made sales funnel will follow-up your leads for you and convert those leads into buyers. Whenever a purchase is made using your link, you will earn a commission. The problem here is that driving traffic is the most difficult part of affiliate marketing !!!!!!
With Covert Commissions, you do not need to have a website to engage in affiliate marketing. They provide you with landing pages where you can drive traffic to. If you have a personal WordPress Website, the system has a Word Press plugin that you can use to integrate affiliate promotions.
Despite Covert Commissions being a legitimate product, their sales page is overly hyped up. In their sales page, they make exaggerated claims such as providing you with a system that is 100% done-for-you that you can set up within 3 minutes together with traffic that is automated with their WordPress plugin. This is highly exaggerated since no affiliate marketing system is 100% done-for-you. Even though they might provide you with ready-made sales funnels, you will still need to put in a lot of work to generate an income. The sales page creates an impression that the program will help you make a lot of money with little effort, which is false. Besides, you can’t set up the system within three minutes. Also, the only way you can get automated traffic is only if your website has good rankings on Google.
Even though Covert Commissions might be a cost-effective option when it comes to affiliate marketing, you will not be developing your own business. Since the autoresponders and landing pages are done for you, they are not yours. Not even your leads or subscribers. The system might help you make money through its DFY sales funnel but eventually, all these assets still belong to Covert Commissions.
If Covert Commissions shuts down, you will lose your entire business and the only beneficiary will be Cindy Donovan. Luckily, you can avoid this by building your own list and integrating the list with an autoresponder of your own. This, however, is only available to users of Covert Commissions Pro.
The product also has a low-quality sales funnel. The email marketing services provided are poor. Effective email marketing campaigns start by establishing relationships with the leads first. The marketing campaigns done by Covert Commissions’ email autoresponders, however, only involve the promotion and selling of products. They also have other promotional tools that are subpar.
The product also provides training that is outdated and ineffective. In the training, you are taught to use article directories such as Squidoo to help you with search engine optimization in Google and provide you with backlinks to your site. This strategy, however, is ineffective since Google updated its algorithm regarding article directories. Besides, Squidoo was purchased by HubPages in 2014.
The program also has duplicate content. This is a problem associated with DFY systems. All the landing pages provided by Covert Commissions are similar. This makes it impossible for your website to be ranked on Google. Therefore, you will not get any free traffic from Google. With free traffic from Google out, the only other sources of free traffic you will have are social media marketing, forum marketing, and guest blogging. These options are much more difficult since they require a lot of time and effort which you might not have the patience for. The other options you will have is paid traffic such as Solo ads, Facebook ads, among others which might cost you a lot of money and will most likely result in loss.
In the sales page, Cindy Donovan claims that all you will need to invest in the program is a one-time cost of $27 to access all the services that Covert Commissions has to offer. This is not true. The product has several upsells. The product, however, is part of a sales funnel that includes nine other products. One of the nine products is Covert Commissions Pro, which is a pro version of the product and has a membership fee of $27 per month or an annual fee of $97.
The other products in the sales funnel are also created by Cindy Donovan. Another expense that you will incur while using Covert Commissions is the cost of buying credits when you run out of them. The credits are essential since you need them to get more sales funnels within the members’ area of Covert Commissions. The credits are expensive with one credit going for $9.97. There is also an option of purchasing 5 credits for $47.
PROS
– It is a legitimate product with a real owner who is accessible through social media, unlike many scam products
– It is relatively cheap for beginners since you will not have to incur the costs related to having a website such as paying for a domain name, website hosting, content creation and copywriting, email service provider, etc.
– The product has a 30-day money-back guarantee. This means that if the product is not for you, you can get your money back within the 30-day refund period. However, there is a high chance that you might fail to get a refund since you may fail to meet certain criteria
– It has training videos which show you various ways of driving traffic.
– It is relatively easy to set up since most of the work has already been done for you
CONS
– The landing pages provided by the product are duplicate
– It may be difficult to generate traffic since the landing pages are duplicate
– To promote other products, you have to pay even when these products are available for free via direct affiliate networks
– The training provided is outdated and not detailed
– Only Covert Commissions Pro members can add their own autoresponder codes
– The product lacks a social platform where the members can gather and share tips on how best to use the platform
VERDICT
Covert Commissions is a legitimate affiliate marketing system. The product has legit resources, training, and sales funnels. Although it is possible to make some money using it, you will likely not make as much as the sales page leads you to believe you would. Being legit does not make it good!
The idea of a DFY affiliate marketing system may seem very appealing. However, this system will have you depending on Covert Commissions and you will not learn a thing about making money with affiliate marketing. This means that if Covert Commissions gets shut down, not only will you lose your business, but you will also have no skill set whatsoever to rebuild another affiliate marketing business of your own.
It is, therefore, wiser to equip yourself with the appropriate skills such that in case such a scenario occurs, you are self-reliant. You can borrow some of their ideas and use them to develop better funnels for your business. I suggest that you take the time to learn Affiliate marketing the right way. With knowledge you will be in full control of your business and your financial future.
CHECK OUT MY TOP RECOMMENDED AFFILIATE MARKETING RESOURCE
I hope that this review has been useful and that it will help you make an informed decision concerning Covert Commissions.
To your success,
Mike Aha