Avon / Betterware / Kleeneze Etc!

My wife has been looking into several ways to earn a little extra in the community. She has looked at Avon, Betterware, Kleeneze, phoenix-cards and a few others.

Does anybody have any experience in these fields that may care to shed some light on this? I know that none of them are get rich quick schemes like they all seem to put in the info packs, but are any worthwhile? Kleeneze seemed very expensive running costs?

What say you all????????
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Comments

  • rushnowt
    rushnowt Posts: 24,749 Forumite
    ive been an avon rep a few times over the years, and things have changed alot now, not only can you do your own selling but you can now have other reps working under you and make extra earnings from their sales.

    Im not saying its easy by any stretch of the imagination, you have to help them to boost their sales to make it worth while for you as well as sorting out your own area, you also have to recruit so many in a certain time to get your bonuses :(

    If you choose just to sell around an area given to you, its not always as easy as it sounds, there are other reps that will have already spread out into other areas that could well encroach on yours and it can get nasty.

    Having said all that, the money is there to be earned, unless like me you spend more than you earn lol, there are lots of extra special prices and discounted/discontinued items that sometimes you feel you have to buy and it can eat into your profits, you need to purchase your brochures, bags, and sales aids and theres a one off fee i think its £15 at the mo that is taken out of your first two campaign earnings.

    Whatever you decide to do, its worth remembering that your self employed and as such will need to declare any earning to the IR.

    I hope that helps a little :)
    Nobody can make you feel inferior, without your permission ;)

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    ya still freezing :p




  • maggut
    maggut Posts: 58 Forumite
    I worked for Betterware last year, i started about easter and gave up in Oct due to the dark nights and bad weather. I have to say it was a lot of hard work but after a couple of months i built up good regular customers and could make anything from £20 to £80 a week delivering an average of 250 books a week. You dont have to pay for anything up front, you get 10% of your sales and there are ways to get bonuses too but you do have to work hard for them. Its a lot of foot work plus you have to put leaflets in all the books before delivering them,then you have to collect all the orders, write them on an order sheet and make sure all the money tallies with the orders. In the summer it was fine but have to say that picking up soaking wet books and then having to go back if people werent in plus the constant knocking on doors if people didnt put the books out did get quite disheartening. Is it worth it? It really depends how hard you work, how regular you go back for the books, how much effort you put in to your customer service. If people know you will go back for their books then they will order. Your rep will be able to tell you how good an area is etc etc. If i could do it just in the summer then i would but give me the comfort of my TV and a hot drink in the winter and i'm afraid that wins every time.
    Share a smile today :D
  • jellyhead
    jellyhead Posts: 21,555
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    i've done betterware once but i much preferred avon, have been a rep 6 times now lol! would never try kleeneze because you don't get a territory, we get 3 or 4 brochures at the same time and i feel sorry for the people who've paid for the brochures because nobody is going to order from them, there a guy who's been doing it for 5 years and everybody orders from him, they get cross if anyone tries to encroach on his territory but newcomers are never told which territory to use.

    with betterware you get your own territory but it's larger than an avon territory, i found my territory quite hostile to betterware catalogues but happy to look through avon catalogues so i made more commission with avon.

    avon have a newish thing called sales leadership, where in addition to being a rep on your own patch they want you to look after a larger area, keeping vacancies filled and training new reps etc. then you get a percentage based on the sales of the people under you as long as they meet certain targets and as long as you're hitting the targets they set for you. i tried it but it wasn't for me, i don't have a car for starters.

    i carried on just being a rep for 4 streets though. there's a new brochure every 3 weeks. you have to buy the brochures and also the paper bags, any samples or demo products you want etc. i never bought demo products unless i wanted them for myself, samples i bought when on offer and would slip a 5p sample into most orders. they charge an admin fee for setting up your account but this is partially offset by their giving you the brochures for the first 2 cycles (i think each 3 week cycle is called a campaign). postage is free and you can order online. there are 2 tiers of commission, you have to reach sales of around £80 to get the first tier which i think is 15% of what you've sold and £120 to get the second tier of 20 or 25%, i really can't remember the details as i gave up 2 years ago. some brochures i'd earn the high commission but on others i'd end up sneakily ordering something i didn't want to get me up to the first commission tier, then send it back lol! the invoice comes with the brochure price and the price you pay based on how much commission you'll make on each item, if a customer doesn't pay you return the order for a credit to your account but you lose commission on those orders. you still get commission on the other items though, even if your returned products take the amount you sold to under the commission tier once they've given you the commission price to pay they don't adjust what you owe them so in theory it's easy to make the first commission tier by buying something you fully intend to send back. it's up to you how many brochures you buy, some reps but one for every customer but others re-use them so they're going out more often to collect in brochures and give them to other customers.

    the reason i gave up was because my customers were all out in the daytime and i wanted a daytime job, i didn't want to go out at night so i took on a paper round insted lol! i have a day job now but when my baby is born i'll give it up, i fully intend to start an avon round again when the baby is here. unless you're given a rubbish area with non-paying customers it's not a bad way to earn a few extra pounds in the daytime when hubby's at work and children are in school. if however you end up going out at night leaving kids with hubby then i don't think it earns enough to compensate for the inconvenience.
    52% tight
  • jellyhead
    jellyhead Posts: 21,555
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    like maggut i got tired of people not putting the books outside too. i provided plastic sandwich bags to keep the books dry and i included a note saying which day i'd be back. if it wasn't left out and the customer wasn't in i'd leave a slip saying which day i'd be back, if they still didn't leave it outside i'd cross that customer off my list. once though i picked up a bag from a doorstep and the most enormous spider i've ever seen in my life crawled out onto my hand, i nearly died :rotfl:
    52% tight
  • Jumanji_2
    Jumanji_2 Posts: 108 Forumite
    I've just quit Avon after doing four campaigns. I don't think it's worth it. I had to pay £14 for the admin fee (£7 from each of the first two campaigns), I also felt pressured to get the starter kit for another £10 (£5 out of each of the first two campaigns again). Yes you get your first two campaign books for "free", but I only got 15 books each time to cover nearly 150 houses!!!

    So I had to rotate 15 books at least ten times within three weeks. Now remember that people throw the books away, they get ruined in the rain (even in a sandwich bag), and sometimes they don't answer the door! (One time I knocked and could see that they were upstairs looking out of the window, not answering!!

    If they miss something out in the order, it is impossible to to try and get it from them! They have useless customer service.

    You have people calling you at all hours to ask about Avon, and you're constantly having to go out in the dark and cold to try and find out if people have decided to come home yet/answer the door.

    One time I've knocked on the door, and the catalogue has been on the floor in front of me, and they have looked at it, looked at me, and blatantly lied about not receiving it! I've also had a man shout at me and give me a lecture about how he hates people that put catalogues through the door!

    I don't think it's worth it, the most I've made has been this month £20 - and that's only because I didn't have to buy any books, bags etc.
  • jellyhead
    jellyhead Posts: 21,555
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    i was always given 30 books for each campaign when starting off, i think the admin fee sounds steep though :-(

    with avon, or anything else i would knock on the door first and if they're in, ask if they want the catalogue. that means you haven't wasted lots of books on people who don't want them. i also put a slip on the front for them to cross if they want me to go away and never darken their doorstep again.

    you have to be quite strict, at first i was going out at all hours, trying to catch people at home all the time then i realised that my mum's avon lady tells people when she's coming, finds out what time is best to call on that day but will only come out once, twice at the most. if people aren't in or don't have the money she just tells them it has to go back the following day so it will have to be returned. if there's nobody in she puts a slip through the door with her phone number saying to contact her if you still want the stuff. she probably doesn't make as much money as she would if she went out all the time but it's a lot less hassle for her and most customers who've forgotten she's coming will just write her a cheque.
    52% tight
  • Fran
    Fran Posts: 11,281
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    Jumanji wrote:
    I don't think it's worth it, the most I've made has been this month £20 - and that's only because I didn't have to buy any books, bags etc.

    How many hours did you spend to make this amount? This is a very interesting thread and confirms why I've never tried and never would any of these type of things. It seems like you're almost on call all the time and calling back again and again sounds like a nightmare (specially in bad/cold weather). I'm surprised so many people do it, I suppose it's ok if you get an area where they're interested but they could be quite dispersed in some areas (?).

    I don't like catalogues shoved through my door and find it especially annoying when they leave a note saying they will pick up the catalogue on ...day and expect you to care less about it (sorry to reps!!). I left an Avon catalogue on the wall outside a month ago with a note in it saying that I didn't ever want Avon & not to call as she had kept shoving it through but I never saw her.
    Torgwen.......... :) ...........
  • jellyhead
    jellyhead Posts: 21,555
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    fair enough that you hate having catalogues stuffed through your door ... as a rep if somebody didn't give me the book back then i just wouldn't call on them again, i never hassled anyone and i certainly wasn't on call. most of my customers were pensioners who found shopping from home easier for gifts, or people who had a preference for a certain scent and therefore WANTED an avon rep to call on them.

    i didn't make a lot, probably about a pound an hour once expenses were taken off, i know that's appalling, but if you're doing it during hours when you're not doing anything else then it seems worth it for the bit of extra money. if you're on income support etc. you're allowed to earn £15 a week, probably more as i'm talking about 5 years ago and despite the inconvenience of doing avon it's better than nothing. when my baby is born i will try avon again, putting the baby in the pram and going out for a while isn't much like hard work and i would only stick to the times when hubby's at work and spud's in school, i won't be going out at nights, i made that mistake before - this time i will only serve the customers who want me to call, and who are at home when it's convenient for me. if after a few rounds i find i'm not making enough profit to cover costs then i'll quit again ... i know avon's not idea, i've done it loads of times but 12 months is the longest i've stuck at it without quitting. there's not a lot else i could do with a baby to look after, maybe put the baby in a sling and do a paper round?
    52% tight
  • Spendless
    Spendless Posts: 24,109
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    My friend was an Avon lady for several years. She did it for extra cash when she was married but when she split up from husband she kept it as she discovered that by making her round bigger, so it took up 16 hours a week she was able to claim tax credits.

    It wasn't the current tax credit system that is in place though it was the one before WFTC (i think it was called).
    It benefitted her to do it this way even if she didn't make a great deal from the round as she had her income topped up and was also able to keep her maintainance payments.
  • Hi all

    been reading the comments on betterware./avon and Kleeneze

    We have been kleeneze distributors for 9 and a half years and long before I built a team of distributors I WAS CONSISTENTLY earning over £400 per month from Retail , how people say you cannot earn good money retailing I find questionable

    Now we have over 400 people in our team , hundreds earn over £400 per month , dozens and dozens earn over £1000 + per month , many over £2000 per month

    We earned last year over £75,000 from Kleeneze
    it has taken us from being on the bones of our backside to having a lifestyle most people wish for

    Does Kleeneze work ? - most definately
    Do some people fail at it? - most definately

    Like any opportunity / job/ conventional business , you will have success and failure

    You cannot have success if it isnt measured against failure

    I believe those who follow the advice 100% will always be profitable

    From my 9 and a half years of experience the only ones who seem to fail at it are those who dont have enough catalogues / attend the training meetings and give it time

    Unlimited income . free holidays / free cars/ unlimited recognition , personal development , loads of fun and friendships

    NOBODY EVER HAS SHOWN ME ANYTHING BETTER

    all the best Rhino
    Help enough people get what they want and you will automatically get what you want
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