Making money online programs can come in many forms and activities. Some reward you lucratively, some don’t. In this SFI Tripleclicks review, we’ll discover yet another ‘business opportunity’ that combines three revenue models – affiliate marketing, eCommerce and network marketing – to generate an online income stream. Will this technique work for you? Let’s find out more.
What Is SFI?
SFI is a training program that teaches one to build a long-term online business without having to own any inventory. The key is to refer customers to their eCommerce store and when someone makes a purchase, you’ll earn a sales commission as a result.
Technically speaking, the higher the referral rate, the more commission you make. However, instead of relying on this linear relationship, SFI takes it a step further by encouraging team building whereby recruitment activities can lead to bigger profit sharing from the overall product sales.
This merit is determined by the amount of points awarded for every action/task completed within the training area. As you accumulate more points, you’d earn higher titles that qualifies for a bigger compensation plan.
What Is TripleClicks?
TripleClicks is the online shopping platform (run by SFI) where referral make purchases using your tracking ID. Just like other online retailers, you can find all sorts of products for sale there.
Besides eCommerce, it’s also functions as an online auction site and game centers whereby all the activities can be translated to member’s earning points and prizes.
So, what to expect when you venture into this seemingly robust platform? Let’s start off with the advantages first.
The Pros
1) For starters, this is not a get-rich-quick-site and the company certainly doesn’t guarantee any success by just becoming a member. There is a system in place to follow through before you can expect to earn any money from it.
2) Anything that involves team building can be very complicated, so it’s good to see that SFI goes into depth and length with their resources to help members in developing this skill set.
3) They even provide a long list of marketing methods that you can apply immediately to refer people to the program or the eCommerce store.
4) One of the methods include buying a domain and building a WordPress website to drive online traffic. I personally like this idea for any type of online business because it puts you in control of marketing instead of relying on any third party platforms.
5) Their affiliate commission (about 45%) for product sales is way more generous than most online marketplaces that I’ve seen. It’s almost the same as promoting digital products whereby the profit margin is usually 5-6 times higher than physical products.
Surely this is a good money making machine when there’s a combination of three marketing models in it. Or is it? Let’s dissect the program deeper to have a closer look.
The Cons
1) Remember the system where you are rewarded for accumulated points? Well, we are not buying things with credit card bonus points here. With internet convenience, we naturally want to see faster results which in this case, to generate money online.
However, I found it to be counterproductive to do online tasks and playing games which reminds me of the time-consuming and unrewarding work at Amazon Mechanical Turk. If you have an abundance of time, why don’t learn to write a good product review and generate recurring affiliate commission with it?
2) About the part that team building is challenging – well, that’s because when you start using terms like sponsor/down line/up line in the recruitment process, people are going to quickly relate it to the MLM business model (by the way, 90% of the people have very little success with this) and shy away from this type of program.
3) Despite the vast tutorials, I am not too impressed with the content delivery format. For example, certain topics are too long-winded and the important ones such as website building and keyword research are kept too brief without recommending any up-to-date techniques/tools.
Also, the topics don’t flow well with one another; you are taught to promote before understanding what a niche is all about and worst, you learned about paid advertising even before having a good grasp of organic search ranking. This is a bad move for beginners because when you don’t have a strong foundation in keyword research, you could actually end up wasting a lot of money in paid traffic.
The other thing is that they are ALL published in bulky text paragraphs – no videos, no images – which is very difficult to read, much less trying to digest all the information.
4) Although I appreciate their resourcefulness in marketing materials, I don’t really know what to say about banners like this one. With online scams being so rampant these days, it seems a bit cheesy to put something like this on your website to attract visitors. I certainly don’t want to have that on mine.
5) Lastly, the biggest problem I have with this program is the TripleClicks marketplace. I have been shopping online for years, so I know what to look for when I am browsing through an eCommerce platform. Unfortunately, TripleClicks – the portal that SFI used to generate sales – is less than the average online store that you’d see.
The product descriptions are poorly written, some brands are unheard of and customer reviews are severely lacking. How can a place like that be attractive to online customers, much less be profitable?
Let me show you what I mean. Here’s an example of a product page on TripleClicks.
And here’s the same product on Amazon that comes with more clarity in terms of product content/buying options, reviews and hey, it’s about $3 cheaper for the same item.
SFI claims that TripleClicks is “one of the fastest-growing e-commerce website in the world”, but after browsing through the shoddy set up, I honestly don’t think I would buy anything from there.
Would you?
Is SFI TripleClicks Worthy of Your Time?
When you put the two together – the SFI ‘ambitious’ revenue model and the ‘defective’ TripleClicks that’s suppose to drive profit for the members, they don’t quite match. That begs me to ask the next question – does this program actually work?
One can outline a robust compensation/marketing plan, but if the products are crappy, nothing is going to sell for the long term. So if you are expecting to achieve residual income from this type of system, I think the result is going to be very disappointing.
On the other hand, if you spend your time building a niche blog and learning about SEO, you are likely to have more success with affiliate marketing, partnering with reputable companies and brands. Since SFI is a bit outdated with their training in this area, I would recommend that you check out the resources in Wealthy Affiliate instead.
This is the program that I used to start my online business from scratch, so if you wish to know more, just send in your comment below and I would be more than happy to help you out.
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I appreciate this review. It is an interesting concept, but I would agree with you that it seems like they are trying to run uphill with this program. Even though you mentioned that the team is good at training and investing in all of these people, I am still curious to see what percentage of people have actually succeeded in making a profit.
Certainly not many Austin. I’ve seen their banner ads around, but I’ve never been directed to buy a product from their marketplace. Most bloggers that I know use Amazon or other reputable merchants.
Just finished reading your article on SFI TripleClicks, and I must say that you have covered it quite well.
I had been introduced to this awhile back and I agree with your assessment that it is set up very much like a MLM program.
It did not take long for me to move on. I checked your recommendation on Wealthy Affiliate, just wondering what their customer service and support is like?
Hi Brendon, I’ve been with Wealthy Affiliate for 3 years now and I’m very happy with their technical support team. Every time I run into trouble with my WordPress site, they responded within minutes, if not, within a day. It’s one of the reason why I’ve stayed so long with their hosting service.
Hi, Cathy. Being familiar myself with the online opportunity at SFI/tripleclicks and issuing my own thoughts about it done in a review, I am so glad to read that you also agree that this program leaves A LOT to be desired as far as allowing a person to make $$ pursuing it as an online business.
I almost want to call SFI’s compensation plan/business structure an illegal pyramid scheme. What is the company’s product – a discount on membership to an online shopping store? Would one call that a “physical product”?
An online MLM business such as what SFI truly is, and in order to be legal regarding how people are recruited and then placed in a member’s down-line must have an actual physical product being sold. SFI’s discount membership being their “product” I find to be quite dubious.
In addition to which, that compensation plan in which a member can have a down-line going 12 levels deep is virtually unmatched by any other MLM business that I am aware of. 3 or 4 levels, okay. But 12? Really? A member being able to achieve that, (with the help of A LOT of other members recruiting individuals for him/her) would be at the “platinum” level as far as achievement.
As you pointed out, in addition to SFI’s massive yet inferior online store, the fact that a member can earn points by playing/wasting time interacting with online games to me is time that a person would never get back in his/her life ever again. Can you say “unproductive”?
I called SFI for what it truly is when I first came across this program – it’s a complete scam. I’m sure that the person suckered into joining SFI, and who would look up and see 12 levels of people in his/her up-line, all benefiting from the work that he/she does trying to build up a business would no doubt agree! And also regret that he/she invested even one penny into this fraud program.
Jeff
Wow, so it seems as though the people who created this site weren’t exactly looking to really teach newbies about online marketing. It does sound like it might possibly work if you understood the general idea of online marketing like what a niche is and the SEO stuff. Although, I personally feel like one might have better luck selling things through Amazon. I’m glad I didn’t use this site for my online business.
Hi Jada, you aren’t missing out anything for not joining SFI TripleClicks. The earning model is very complicated to understand and I feel that the time spend on those tasks will not be rewarding for the long term. However, there are two ways to partner with Amazon 1) through the FBA program or 2) become an Amazon Associate. I much prefer the later because it’s straightforward affiliate marketing without the hassle of inventories.