Avon Calling

An extra income stream can often be the difference between keeping your head financially above water and slowly drowning in debt. You may well have thought about investing your spare time on making some extra money, but are aware of the many scams circulating, promising incomes that never materialize, leaving you no better off then when you started and only having wasted your precious time and money. 

Contending with childcare is an issue that many of us have to deal with and after weighing up the options, it just doesn’t seem viable. A full time job also hinders our best intentions, for that elusive extra income as there is frequently little time to do anything else.

Avon is a long established and genuine money making opportunity, that can be slotted in around work and childcare commitments. However you are not going to get rich quick, it does require a good amount of effort and it takes persistence to make it work. I tried and subsequently failed as an Avon representative, but that does not mean that you can’t make money doing it, it just means that it didn’t work for me.

The Benefits

Because you choose your own hours, what day’s to work and the time that suit you, your full time or other jobs will not suffer as a result of taking Avon on.

You can take your children with you, if you need to and delegate a bit by getting them to help you out.

As an Avon representative you get the perks of their special offers, sales and discounted products, which is a very nice bonus, especially if you use Avon products already.

You promote locally, the area you are designated with will usually be within walking distance from where you live, which is very convenient and your potential customers will welcome a familiar face.

The goods, catalogue and paperwork come to you, you literally just do the paperwork, collect the money and distribute. You do not have to hold any goods or buy any of the products yourself.

There is a good support network, Avon is a huge company with many people that are doing what you do and the more experienced are often very willing to help out the new people.

Avon is a good trusted brand, with some very good and popular products.

You can sell to friends, family and workmates.

The Downside

You have to buy the catalogues yourself and there is a new one to showcase every fortnight. They are not expensive but it does mean spending money up front and making your money back from them, before you actually make a profit for yourself. You will lose books.

You have to go out in all weather, so be sure you have a good warm coat and an umbrella.

The paperwork and returns can be an absolute nightmare! However I am not the most organised of people and if you can keep on top of it and get into a routine of dealing with it quickly, accurately and efficiently it needn’t be a problem.

It can take a long time to build up a customer base, not everyone will order and sometimes, no one will order anything which means at the beginning you may work at a loss!

On the other hand you may have had a lot of orders and will have to carry around and distribute a lot of products.

It’s inconsistent, Christmas time you will do very well and make a fair amount of money, if you put the necessary time and energy into it, but the rest of the time it’s pretty sporadic. You may have a few people that order regularly but it’s not usually orders of much value.

You are confined to a designated area, you can not deliver catalogues to homes outside the area you are given, as it may be assigned to another representative.

Avon can and does work for a lot of people and some have sworn by it for years, for the life of me I couldn’t make it work but you just may be able to.