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Few days ago SFI had mentioned some “big announcement” coming on Friday, November 29. Logging in on November 29, I met a new login page design. “We’re taking SFI to the next level!” it stated. That next level turned out to be a totally different company altogether, I quickly saw. The home page was different too, and it featured an announcement by Gery Carson, SFI President.

It went on some more, and I took a moment to go through it.

So another structural change has come, barely a few months after the one of June. It probably meant the ECommergy subscription model that was introduced in June did not turn out so lucrative after all.

SFI is now quitting affiliate business and moving everyone that is interested to be under its affiliate membership at another company called Wealthy Affiliate. They will be concentrating only on the games division, Eager Zebra (EZ), so they will be moving ECommergy subscriptions to a new Eager Zebra subscription, ranging from $2.99 to $8.99 monthly. The last commission SFI will be paying will be for this month of November. Afterwards, earned Rewardicals (from EZ activities) could continue to be exchanged for different items, some new ones to be introduced, while some existing ones have been suspended.

When I visited the Rewardicals Exchange page, I saw the following options for exchanging of Rewardicals: ZCredit, BPA-free SFI sports bottle, SFI team leader magnet clip, ECommergy phone holder and stand, AWESOME stress squeegie. Apart from the ZCredit, I was never interested in any of the others before. Gone were commissions, TripleClicks gift certificates, and referrals (formerly PSAs and CSAs) that I went for at one time or another.

The menu bar on the home page initially looked scanty, with only CONTACT, SUPPORT, UPGRADE and one lightening bolt icon on it. For me to download the hits tracking data and make the Biz Quiz entry like I did daily, I used the URLs for the pages, as these items could no longer be accessed from the menu. It’s not clear though how long Biz Quiz and hits tracking downloading will continue to work via URLs.

The first thing I wanted to ask was what would happen to the funds in the SFI accounts, including the Bit Bank where I had a few dollars. This was addressed in the FAQ on the “transitioning” at the Forum: Options would be provided for the funds later.

Other things discussed by Gery or expanded in the FAQ include:

• Wealthy Affiliate (WA). As a premium (paid) member, you get access to a suite of cutting-edge tools, training, and expert coaching designed to help you succeed in today’s competitive ecommerce market: Expert help & support, core & traffic training, WordPress-based website builder, manager & tech support, generative AI (artificial intelligence) for automating complex tasks, SEO (search engine optimization) research platform, weekly expert live classes.
• Joining WA. It is free to join, but SFI affiliates that wish to retain their existing referrals, or be under the SFI account there, must wait for their personal advisor to first join. Premium (paid) membership attracts most of the benefits to affiliates, and costs $41.42 or $58.08 every month.
• Continuing SFI activities. The Daily Grand prize can still be entered for. The Daily Crown prize can also still be won with daily entries. Spending a ZCredit, as an Eager Zebra subscriber, will now earn from 2 to 4 Rewardicals. The EZ membership also grants full ECommergy access each month, which in effect is a big reduction in the ECommergy subscription rates. Up to 400 Rewardicals can be earned for referring members to EZ.
• To the question of whether he, Gery Carson, wanted to retire, the answer given was:
  “No, I'll likely never actually retire—being in business is way too much fun for me—but after almost 40 years (I launched Carson Services, Inc. in January 1985), I'm now handing over some of my duties to my adult children and other long-time staff members. I still have a very strong interest in doing great things in business and having an outlet for my abundant creativity. That said, I want to travel more and do other activities that I've missed out on working 60-80 hours a week, non-stop, for so many years. Bottom line: I won't be quite as "hands-on" as in the past, but I will still be very much involved in SFI and our other endeavors.”