by Melanie Cossey

Created on: August 26, 2010

So you are looking for a business that you can make money with and you are wondering if Avon would be a good business opportunity. The answer to that question depends on how much money you wish to make.

How Avon Works

The general premise of Avon is that you act as a representative of the company so therefore all your supplies, sales tools and demos are provided for you at a cost to you. The product is sold on demand, which is paid for by your customers alone. How much you sell is proportional to how much work you put in. The more you wish to make, the more sales material you will need, such as brochures and samples, and so it make it viable you will need to have cash upfront for your materials to get started.

Avon works on a campaign system with each campaign lasting between two and three weeks. There are usually about 24 campaigns in a year. With each campaign comes a new brochure, which you are expected to purchase from the company and circulate in order to get sales. The brochure is your “shop” with new items arriving every campaign. If you buy your brochures in bulk, by the hundred lot, then each brochure is worth about thirty cents each. Buying the samples and demo products is optional, but they are good sales tools to help the customer see what they are getting, so they are recommended.

Each campaign you get orders and then submit them to Avon via the internet or mail. The orders are then delivered to your door a week later and you bag them and deliver them to your customers, at which time they pay you, and then you submit the cost of the goods back to Avon and hold back your commissions, so there is no waiting to be paid by the company.

Sales expectations

They say on average, customer sales are between $10 and $30 each, depending on the economy per individual area. That average is based on not every customer ordering for every campaign and some customers placing periodic large orders. The higher earning level representatives in Avon, who are called President's Club members usually gross an average of $700 dollars worth of sales per campaign, with exceptional goals ranging even higher. These top earners earn 50% commission on most goods and so you can see that the hardest workers are making on average at least $300-$400 plus every two to three weeks. The time and energy it takes to earn at this level is surprisingly not that much, and only accounts for what the world considers part time hours of less than 10 hours a week.

Earning cap

The draw back with Avon is that because the representatives are under bi monthly deadlines, it greatly limits what is possible to do in a campaign. There is only so much time in two weeks to get the brochures out, phone people for orders, wait for the delivery, track down the customers for delivery and payment before the whole process repeats. Some reps have found a way around that by employing helpers who have their own customers they are responsible for, like a two-tiered system, which helps a little but still makes the deadline aspect quite limiting and stressful. Some representatives keep a bank roll so they can float customers that are hard to track down, which helps a little with the deadline.

In reality though, unless a rep is extremely organized it is fairly unusual to earn more than $3000 a month on average.

So is Avon viable? If your circumstances are such that you want to earn a small supplemental part time income, then yes it is viable. However if your needs and expectations are considerably greater, and you wish to be able to support yourself or a family, either be prepared to come up with solutions to combat the bi-monthly deadlines or look for a better opportunity elsewhere.

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