Thanks to some of the bad seeds in our affiliate marketing world, craigslist had the following text come up on a page before allowing users in my market to view the jobs section.

craigslist SCAM ALERT

SCAM ALERT – affiliate scammers are posting bogus ads promising (nonexistent!) employment, paid research trials, or other compensation, but then notifying repliers that they’ll need to jump through a hoop first, directing them to:

* background checking services
* credit checking or reporting sites
* sites where you are instructed to enter your resume or other personal information
* sites where you are asked to sign up for a “free” trial offer
* sites offering training or education
* sites offering a “system” for making money
* survey or focus group sites
* sites designed to deliver malware or misuse your identifying information

all in hopes of earning affiliate marketing commissions or otherwise profiting at the expense of persons seeking employment.

Lots of variations on this scam, but each generally involves dangling (nonexistent!) compensation, and then directing you to a website where you are asked to sign up for something, use your credit card, or input personal information such as your email address.

Continue to job postings

FUN FACT: If you are able to determine a scammer’s “affiliate ID” and report it to their affiliate marketing program, this will often result in termination of the scammer, and confiscation of the scammer’s ill-gotten gains by the affiliate program.

I routinely visit craigslist looking for IC work in web design or SEO and found this such a shame that affiliate marketers who insist on using deceptive tactics and lies to lure in recruits have compelled craigslist to inconvenience their users in this manner.

People love to gripe and complain about the government getting too involved in our businesses, but between idiotic marketers who continually look at ways to cheat quality sites like craigslist and the myriad of outright scams that rise and fall every day on the net, more government involvement is exactly what we will eventually get.

If only people could just work their businesses honestly.

As a Cognigen agent for almost 7 years(start date 03/19/2001), I’ve seen a number of reps concerned about the recent merger/acquisition with Commission River.

IMHO, I think this deal has a lot more potential upside than downside.

As the owner of the Work At Home Network Discussion Forums, I see nearly every “hot” home based business that hits the market.

While I love the fact that Cognigen has always been a no hype, honest home based business opportunity, the simple fact is that their free business model was not a good fit for the traditional style MLM/Network Marketing model.

Because Cognigen was not a pay to play scheme that required us to actually make sales to earn money as opposed to paying recruiting overrides on overpriced startup fees with little focus on sales, Cognigen simply could not compete with the other MLM structured businesses out there.

With the entrance of Commission River into the picture, Cognigen is essentially changing to a model that I believe is a much better fit for the business.

Gone is the 6 level MLM override structure for a much simpler 2 tier pay structure that is much more like the traditional affiliate networks like Commission Junction, ShareASale,  LinkShare, etc.

This will allow agents to earn higher commissions on the own sales and also those of their downline agents.  Since we only have one level of downline overrides, it will also those interested in recruiting sales agents to focus directly on just their front line as opposed to needing to worry if an agent 4 levels down is getting the appropriate help from a dormant sponsor.

Gone is the $100 sales paypoint.  Although I thought this was a very reasonable paypoint that I haven’t had trouble meeting over the last few years, it’s another obstacle removed to gathering agents and keeping them interested.  Now all sales commissions accumulate until you earn enough to get a check.

The owners and primary staff of Commission River are all familiar with the great history of Cognigen and what they have to work with in the agent base.  This should give them an edge in keeping the program attractive to established agents and making the necessary tweaks to help bring back some dormant agents.

I think Cognigen was getting stale and headed towards serious problems.  I hope that the deal with Commission River will help to reinvigorate the program and keep it going for many years to come.

I’ve always been proud to be affiliated with Cognigen and I’m happy to see an effort to stimulate growth.