A few weeks ago I told you about my first serious disappointment with Get-Paid-To-Read-Email, remember? Today's time for another "history of a disappointment".

I hope you'll learn about how to avoid it. Oh, and I also hope I don't have many more of these stories to tell. :)

The thing is, after my first sweet taste of one-time affiliate commissions I was ready and willing to promote a recurring commission affiliate program.

What are those anyway?

Well, think about your monthly telephone bills. You pay your monthly bills gladly, don't you? Ok, maybe "gladly" is not the best word to define it, but you get the idea.

You see, if a service is working for you reliably day after day and is properly priced, there is a strong bond of loyalty there, a comfort level, reluctance to change or however you wish to call it.

The best recurring programs to promote are those that create that kind of loyalty. For instance domain names, hosting, ad-tracking and autoresponders are excellent services to sell to Internet Marketers for the same reason, because once they start using them and are working properly it's unlikely that they decide to switch service providers. Again, unless they're overly high priced, of course.

So the idea behind recurring commissions is:

* Pick a product or service that is likely to create a strong bond of loyalty with your customer.

* Sell it once.

* Get paid a recurring commission for as long as your customer remains a paying member. Of course you want this time to be as long as possible. That's why you picked a "loyalty" product in the first place.

I was aware of all of this and was ready to begin promoting that kind of program when I received an email that seemed to present precisely the right opportunity for me.

The service presented in that email was a Web conferencing / VoIP thing, but that's not really relevant.

The compensation plan was structured as a matrix, and my upline advertised a "big promotion" guaranteed to place members in my downline as a result of matrix spillover. Multi-level compensation plan, infinity bonuses, you know.

Well, I joined for free to get more information, started to get some emails enticing me to become a paying member... the usual.

But a few days later I received an email more or less like this: "This Guy has upgraded to a paid membership. You could've benefited from this, but unfortunately you're a free member, and only paid members get matrix referrals. You've lost him forever, eat that! If you don't upgrade right now you will keep on losing sales, you big loser!".

No, the words were not those, of course, but that's how the email looked like in my head with a bit of reading between the lines.

I had strong doubts about if "This Guy" was real, but anyway at that point the opportunity looked so appealing to me that I decided to join, based on the compensation plan, on the hi-tech appeal of the product, confident that my upline's efforts and mine combined would be enough to make some sales.

So I studied the product to be able to answer questions about it...

I acquired a domain name specifically to promote this product and setup a site to promote it...

And I *did* promote it as well as I could!

But, as I realized later, there was a big problem preventing my success in that program:

In consequence,

* I didn't use it too often. Once a month at most.

* So I wasn't really "feeling the benefits".

* So I couldn't recommend it wholeheartedly.

* So I wasn't as good at advertising it than I would if I were a true user.

After paying a few months' memberships and getting no sales, it became obvious that it was a recurring expense that would unlikely turn into recurring income.

So eventually I had to cancel my membership, lost money, lost time... (sigh)

Anyway, here's what I painfully learned from that experience and my advice for you:

Don't join any paid membership program based on the business opportunity unless you would use their products or services on a recurring basis, even if the business opportunity didn't exist at all.

Read the above "telling to yourself" three times in silence, and the lesson will be yours! ;)

Take care,

P.S. - Next week I'll tell you about my first success with a paid membership, recurring affiliate program. Of course after applying today's lesson!