AVON - Can you REALLY make a living or is it just extra pin money?

truered03

I need some advice and would appreciate anybody's help.

I normally work for myself as a contractor but work is extremely slow at the moment and so I have some time on my hands to look at alternative ways to make money and I came across AVON.

I looked on their website, which will obviously be bigging itself up, but I didn't find it that informative. I did a few searches on the internet and the jury's out because there wasn't too many positive opinions.

Anyway I have received a call this morning and am meeting a lady called Catherine in a cafe. I have several questions for her already but would ask for anything which you may think I should ask.

Thanks

mishkanorman

as no-one else has replied i will give my viewpoint/advice but im not associated with avon (im usborne)


Questions i would think you need to ask would be initial cost, any minimum order limit/frequency, any local reps ?, any targets, any consumables cost (orders pads etc)


I started out in march/april time and im treating this as a long term business, ive had expenses that were not compulsary but i knew i wanted to start it off full steam or nothing. After 4 months the business sat at £0 with a stock of around £1000 +.

My personal opinion is its a case of what you put in you get out, if i wanted to i could have just had the expense of my initial pack and built it up from there but its actually been great fun making it a business rather than a bit of dabbling on the side.


mishka

lozza1985

The good thing with avon, is that you don't pay anything upfront, so you can try it and see how you find it - however, in order to earn a "decent" amount of money from it, it will take time to build up a big customer base &/or building a team.

I work full time as well as doing avon, and find it fits in nicely - but theres no way I'd give up work and relay on my avon earnings as I don't earn anywhere near enough to pay the bills. Might change in a few years of course when we start a family due to child care costs I suppose!

Best bet is to have a read through the avon thread thats already on here - it's pretty balance (ie we comment on the good & the bad as well, having a good rant at times lol) and see what you think.

Treacle1983

Hi,

I did avon for a while whilst i was working in a big call centre.

I made quite a lot of money maybe £150/£200 in profit each month from leaving books on the break areas and in the canteen - with bosses permission.

Big call centre - 3 floors and about 1000 staff.

The actual patch I was given was crap - most of the pubs and the supermarket already had avon reps working it - so literally earnt nothing from it.

Did a couple joint parties in a pub function room with some friends that were doing similar - we had christmas card rep, tupperware, ann summers, avon, bodyshop and a massage lady - made about £50 profit each time from that.

Kinda died a death after 6 months as someone else at work started doing avon too and left books everywhere and never picked them up etc.. so boss stopped us both from leaving books around or mentioning/selling avon at work.

I would say that if you do go for it - don't buy the bag they try to flog you or the samples etc.. as really not worth bothering with.

Have seen some people selling avon packages on ebay and gumtree etc.. so could be an additional outlet there.

lors71

Hi i did Avon a year or so ago,its alot of trailing to deliver books,get books back with hopefully some orders(loads of people not in,no books on doorsteps,or "oh i havent looked yet can you come back...")...orders are easy peasy online,deliverys usually good,alot of the time i was slighly embarresed at the items that arrived,the quality can be a bit cack!!..you sort your orders yourself...i always had about £400 + worth of orders...cannot mind how much i made(£100 ish i think??anyone??)...anyways then you have the task of getting people in to deliver to and that can mean 2/3/4 or more trips....it can be worth it and alot of people do love Avon...but people do get fed up,you know families and friends buying , the "have to get something feeling?"....and people get sick of seeing the next avon book..some might have hid from me lol
basically i think you pay £15 to sell some stuff to your family and friends(avon will know people sympathy buy)....great sales pitch from AVON ...
.....if you do do it ...you usually order from one book...but have the previous and new book to order from(good for checking if you have items cheaper or on multi buy etc)so you can make a bit extra ...sorry for rambling on..lol...go for it ...see how you go...but if your friends start avoiding you then ......lol

PurpleSmile

There was a lady in a magazine not long back, she makes 300k a year from avon, no qualifications or anything, she just built up a group of people working for her.

Anyway I love avon products but I just get the book in post and look at the offers then go online and order it lol. Normally there is a free delivery code floating around somewhere. If not I am prepard to pay £3.50 delivery to avoid the hassle. I'm too impatient to wait a few weeks.

Last time I ordered from a seller, I wrote on the order form to ring or text day before the come round so I can make sure I am in. (I am constantly out) and they never rang. Missed them 4 times. She caught me 5th.
Seems a hassle for few quid. I am sure if avon reps counted there earnings and compared it with hours worked. took off their tax. They'd be on less than min wage.

jusnoneed

I tried it years ago when my kids were small, found it a lot of hassle for very little income. You have to be lucky to have a large area with enough interested people.

truered03

Thank you all for your responses.

Well this is my experience so far of avon.

I have been given a territory which the Area Manager informed me was made up of 200 houses, this is completely inaccurate. The actual round contains over 500 houses and is in fact over 3 postal rounds.

I was given 40 brochures which does not give me enough books to enable me to just go out and make any sort of impact on covering the round. After informing the manager of the actual size and requesting additional brochures and order forms. I am the sort of person who wants to get the job done efficiently and in the most effective way and I will work incredibly hard to do this. She eventually gave me an additional 20??? No where near enough to let me take on the territory in the manner I would have wanted to. Oh and she didn't send me any additional order forms so the additional brochures made no impact. She didn't respond to my texts and I have to say I have been disappointed.
I have delivered all the brochures and discovered that the best time to collect is after 5.30pm which I have done.

I have hit 4 of the Roads and have got £200 of orders it has taken me hours and I have earned £50 (a lot of work for not a lot) and I have had some casualties of some of the brochures. I have asked for information on ordering but she has informed me that I shouldn't worry about this just concentrate on getting orders.

I am a very positive and driven person when it comes to work and when I am collecting I actually enjoy it and I don't give up easily.

I will be redelivering the brochures again tomorrow and attempt to collect the brochures which were not left out. It has been a steep learning curve.

This is a completely new experience as I am a full time contractor in real life but contracts are limited at the moment. I have never had any down time previously so need to keep myself going until I can secure another contract and I chose avon.

I sound very negative reading this back but my experience hasn't been too good so far but I will keep going.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Money_maker

I am an avon rep with a love/hate relationship with them! 40 brochures for a new rep is the norm, you get given these to cover the first two brochures and thereafter buy your own. Canvassing means putting out to the first houses, collecting 2-3 days later then out again. Dont worry about covering all your houses in the first campaign. When you get to the second one, you will already know which houses you have covered are potential customers.

I would strongly recommend you check out the avon thread https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2565873 and post any questions there. We have newbies joining very regularly and some lovely posters who can answer just about anything!

In avons 'defence' (!) I would suggest you consider other self-employed options and how you would achieve them. With avon you do not need to carry £000's of stock, they deliver regularly free, provide brochures at low cost and free paperwork, have supportive website, offer full refunds on returns (no restocking), you have no bad debts to chase as its cash on delivery, thousands of items at your disposal in non-minimum quantities and on top of that you get a percentage of items you neither hold in stock nor produced. All the rep has to do is find the customers. Once you have established your customers then all thats required is time and a little legwork.

Good luck and hope to see you on the avon thread.

gingernights

It depends , if your just selling out of the catlouges then its 25 percent comminsion for orders over £150 so it isn't that much money, sell £200 and earn £50 , i was once doing £400 sales a camp earning £100 and was working really hard for that money, canvassing territory , going back and collecting books if customers wern't in when i called, delivering, packing the orders, sorting out the cats and stamping the order forms ect... the best way to make money out of it is to do sales leadership that seems to be where the money is. also my asm at the the time wouldn't give me any more streets so i couldn't earn more money as she said there wasn't any left to give in my area, so i give it up for a about 2 years but missed the products so started up again now i only have a few streets and sell a lot to people at work and friends which is easier i only make about £90 every 3 wks selling which is all i really want to make. anyway
good luck!

marshmallowbliss

I have just started doing it again. I done it in Ireland but only for fun with Family and Friends. I'm trying this time to get more business from it. I have put books in my workplace but no one has contacted me to order . I also have handed a few to a few neighbours and given a few copies to my B.F to bring to his work.
I did notice a big difference between here and Ireland, They charge you for posting and packing , which is quite strange.
Lets just hope I get enough orders for this campaign to cover my losses so far.