Most people in America work on the clock.

They earn money by the hour, day, week, month, or year. And that’s comforting, because their bills come in hourly, daily, weekly monthly, and yearly.

There’s predictability and reliability to it.

So, along comes a commission-only job offer, especially in selling, and how do these folks react? They’re scared, as one of my readers told me in a recent email.

This is an absolutely normal reaction. But it shouldn’t be the final one.

All job offers or opportunities should be examined on their merits. Some are tremendous chances to break the shackles of wage-slavery. Many can pave the way to opening a business of your own, which will usually pay you out of results achieved, very much like what you get from commission selling.

But I believe the very best reason to seize a pay-for-performance opportunity is that you’ll learn a ton about a specific business. Typically, when someone brings you aboard without pay, he’ll lavish insider information on you that would never be shared with a salaried worker.

Why?

Because, being on contingent pay, you’re more like a colleague, a peer, a fellow businessperson, and you can ask for and get top notch insight into key business practices.

For example, during grad school I took a part-time job selling office supplies, business-to-business on a straight commission. I was able to decide which products to sell, and I chose Bic ballpoint pens that were stamped 49 cents, on the barrels.

I “bought” these pens from the house at 17 cents and resold them at 33 cents. My achievement was hustling them two gross at a time on cold calls. I earned about $35 an hour, which today is equivalent to $75-80.

Had I worked hourly, I might have been paid $5 an hour with a small spiff for performance, resulting in possibly $8-10 per hour.

Anyway, I made great money, bought a brand-new car which was the envy of other graduate teaching assistants, and only worked 2-3 hours a day.

Key Insight: I could make it on my own without the safety net of having someone pay me a salary. A few years later, after accepting a top university teaching position, I cold called my way into a lucrative consulting practice that enabled me to earn, in a short span, ten times what I was paid, annually, by the school.

So, that commission opportunity may look meager, but believe me, you can get a career out of it, if you learn what it has to teach you.