Most of my income in my second career came from commissions and over riding commission It provided me and my family with a good quality standard of living. There are no guarantees but the sky is the limit on what you can make.
I've worked on the purchasing [sales support] side of a lot of industries, and have dealt with a LOT of commissioned sales people in a lot of industries. There were many times I knew I could do a better job. But not only are there no guarantees, I've seen businesses change their commission structure with no notice whatsoever. They start you off with something reasonable, and as soon as you build the customer relationships and the revenue stream, you get your commissions cut...they don't need you anymore. There are lots of ups & downs to it.
I'd suck at it. I have little patience with people and am not much of a salesperson. I have that "take it or leave it and quit wasting my time" thing.
I worked a straight commission job, for a company, for a year. Too much travel, but I did OK, money-wise. Since most of my working life has been spent self-employed, I think I've mostly worked straight commission, for myself, most of the time: If I didn't generate leads, and close them, I made zero income. My "commission" was what I cleared, after expenses.
As for me, I've always had an hourly job. Never worked in commission and never wanted to. In some ways, even though I could "sell snow to Eskimos" (old sales saying), sales was never my kind of work.
For me the worse job I can think of is a salesman. I especially don't trust them if I find out they are working on commission, but it's just a knee jerk reaction. I'm sure there are some very nice salesmen working on commission. I'd have to really believe in the product/service I was pushing, to make a living, commissions or not. Maybe a Hershey's chocolate salesman? A financial advisor making a commission based on your gains might make sense. I'd have to read the fine print.
Real estate, life insurance, and car salesmen are the ones I'm most skeptical of. Travel Agents... maybe.
I was self-employed for a few years. I really enjoyed the challenge, the freedom, and how it pushed me out of my "comfort zone." But I spent more time trying to get work than I actually did working and earning money. It was fun for a while, but it got old. I exited it learning a lot about myself, really deepening my skills, getting a greater appreciation for those who do that long-term, and shifting my perspective on what others have sacrificed so I had the option to choose a 9-5 work life. It also put the "problems" of a regular job in their rightful place, that's for sure.
I spent decades in corporate purchasing in a lot of industries. There are a lot of different types of "sales jobs." The guy who is your IBM or HP rep is more of a long-term business partner than the cliché salesman who is trying to walk away with an order in his hand right then & there. Of course, IBM is like that the end of every quarter when they expect you to be a part of them hitting their projections, but generally (though not always) there's a long-term context to that conversation. But with IBM (and their ilk), there are long-term repercussions to saying "No." You always say "Yes, if..." and take it from there. If you are in manufacturing, the guy who sells capital equipment is not gonna expect you to buy something unless you're expanding or your equipment has served its useful life. There might be some sales jobs I would really enjoy (being a manufacturer's rep), but my main hurdle has been that in purchasing I always sought the best solution for the problem, while being in sales would mean I gotta tell every customer that my solution is always the best one. It's too disingenuous. I could not keep a straight face.
As a musician, I hustled my band, tirelessly. I booked 95% of our gigs. As a tattoo shop owner, I promoted our work, and that brought in clients. We were on MTV! I tattooed a billionaire, and an Oscar winner. As a Certified Arborist, I have to get out and make favorable impressions on prospective clients, to get the job. As a landlord, I had to put ads out, and screen prospective tenants, once I convinced them my houses were right for them. Isn't any job, then, about sales? Aren't we always selling ourselves to those who may avail themselves of our services, or selling ourselves to bosses so they'll look favorably on our job performance? Perhaps the only non-selling type gig would be in a supply type business where you're the only show in town. In this day and age, with so many people doing so many things, I doubt that cushy job exists anymore. Competition is ever-present in most markets.
I have had both commission jobs and hourly jobs, and for me, it was more about how much I enjoyed the job, than how I was paid for it . There are some jobs that I look back on with fond memories, and some that I totally hated. Probably the best commissioned job that I had was for Combined Insurance, as a life insurance agent. The company was started by W. Clement Stone, and he has written several book on positive mental attitude, plus was always recommending books by other authors that we should read. I think that no other job has encouraged me to have a positive attitude like Combined did. We had a sales route, and my territory was most of northern Idaho and Eastern Washington down as far as Oregon. I was on the road a lot, traveling from town to town, and often put 1,000 miles a month on my little Mazda pickup. At first, I barely made enough money to go back to work the next week, but gradually, I got better at it, and began to enjoy the work. I had an assignment each week, so once I had finished that, I was done for the week. Some weeks I got to go home early, and other weeks , I had to work 6 days and travel back home on Sunday, do my weekly paperwork and get my assignment for the next week ready, so I could be on the road again by Monday morning. I really enjoyed meeting the people, and it made me feel especially good when people welcomed me back the next visit to that area. I never tried to push for the largest sale, but listened to hear what each person needed, and could afford. I think that people appreciated that, and could understand that I was trying to help them and not just push a sale for something that was not what they needed. One time, I came back to a home, and the lady was almost hugging me, because her husband had passed away shortly after getting the life insurance policy, and she had no other insurance for him, and things like that made me glad for what I did. Combined also had prizes and even trips for top agents, and I won silver dollar coins fairly often, and my daughter still has the ones that i gave her. Once, I won a trip to Palm Springs, California for several days, and actually got to meet Mr. Stone and his sweet little wife. It is definitely one of the things that I look back on with happy memories.
When I turned from assisting bookkeeper to bill collector I was assigned non collectible accounts. You know the ones that are not expected to get paid. Once I learned to skiptrace I was on a roll and found people and got them to pay. I earned a pretty good commission. I worked collections long enough to be eligible for unemployment when the company moved to another city.