Commission River Set to Take Over

All good things (and good companies) start out small. Commission River, Inc., founded by Patrick Oborn (me) and Adam Edwards in 2005, will - one day - be the preeminent online affiliate marketing company in the world. I know that is a pretty bold statement given the size of the companies currently occupying top position in that space, but I believe we have the employees, the agents, and the ideas to take us to the next level.

We originally got the idea while working on Telarus, Inc. - a company focused solely on the sales of commercial broadband and voice services. Our agents would repeatedly ask us "do you have any other products I can sell and market on the internet?" From 2002 to 2005, our answer was "not yet". Not only did we not have any outlet for these agents, but we also lacked the cash sufficient to build such a massive platform. Having worked for Cognigen (an online affiliate marketing / MLM hybrid) from 1999 to 2002, I knew first hand just how difficult and involved putting together a new program from scratch would be.

As Telarus grew, both in terms of income and employee head count, Adam and I began slowly assigning programming tasks to our programming team that allowed us to build up Commission River slowly, over time. This allowed us the luxury of financing the construction of the foundation over the course of almost 3 years. (A debt that Commission River will eventually repay to Telarus). This is important because it kept us from going into debt and more importantly, kept us from having to sell stock to raise money. History and experience has taught us never to bring in outsiders when you don't have to - having decision-making capability is critical to success. When we see opportunities, we act; immediately. We don't sit down, plan to have a board meeting, prepare endless power point presentation, deliberate, and then hold a vote. If something makes good business sense, it's done.

The version of Commission River (www.commissionriver.com) you see today is the culmination of three years of steady, pain-staking work by a team of people dedicated to creating the best, most lucrative affiliate marketing company in the world. Even though we are small now, expect huge growth in terms of agent count, vendor count, and commissions we pay out to our agents.