Commissions are tough to overcome. But not nearly as tough to overcome as the slippage you will encounter when you are forced to take action. In order to make money, you're going to have to predict something. If you get the direction of the underlying wrong, it will be extremely hard to make money even if you get volatility right. No strategy has an edge as a strategy itself. The edge lies in the trader. Every strategy requires doing one of two things, make a directional prediction or a volatility prediction and don't buy anything from anyone that tells you any different.