Review of the Avon Representative Opportunity

Avon has been around for 120 years and offers women around the world the opportunity to have their own home based businesses. Avon is a leading beauty brand and offers things such as make-up, skin care and body care products, jewelry, personal care items and wellness products. Avon has products for women, men, children and they even offer holiday items.

Opportunity Specific Information:
Avon offers their Independent Representatives state of the art business training along with their very own Avon website. There are numerous ways to make money with Avon. You can sell at work, sell to local businesses, you can do parties if you like or you can sell strictly online through your very own website. Avon also allows you the opportunity to do local fundraisers to earn money and also the opportunity to own your very own Licensed Avon Beauty Center.

Benefits of the Opportunity:
With Avon there are numerous benefits including recognition, awards such as gifts, electronics, furnishings, US Savings Bonds, gift certificates to restaurants and stores and also travel awards.

With Avon the more you sell the higher your commission can be. If you recruit others to become representatives also your income will absolutely have no limits.

Some other benefits that Avon offers are the ability to place orders online at anytime - 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Through Avon's state of the art training you can learn how to build your customer base, how to achieve Presidents Club, recruiting techniques and much, much more.

My Experience with the Opportunity:
I signed up to be an Avon Representative because I was looking for a way to earn money but yet be able to be at home for my children. I had very little money to start with, under $20, and so I was looking for something that I could get started in with little or no money. I ran across an ad that said "Get started in Avon this month for only $5". Well for me this was a no brainer so I called the number on the ad and got a recording, I left my number and someone called me back within the next couple days.

I then set up an appointment for someone to come to my home, or place of my choosing. The lady came out and was very friendly. She had with her my starter kit which contained about 10 free Avon books for me to start taking orders with, some order forms, a nice Avon carrying bag, some free samples for me to try and also hand out to potential customers along with a bunch of brochures and paperwork.

As soon as the appointment was over and I was able to access my online account I went to check out the training that Avon has to offer and was pleasantly surprised. The training in very high tech and does a good job of teaching, not just representing, information. I did as much training as my brain would allow without going into overload because I wanted to know what I was talking about when I started conversing with potential customers.

My upline called me a couple days later and was wondering how I was doing and if she could help me with anything. She actually came out and helped me go door to door in my neighborhood which I thought was great. She also gave me more catalogs, samples and brochures because I did not have money to order more myself.

My experiences with Avon have been nothing but positive, they are a people focused company, very helpful and understanding. They will go the extra mile to help anyone succeed. I regret my decision to not pursue the opportunity any further. At the time I could not even afford the one dollar minimum order every two weeks, I got frustrated and gave up.

As with anything, it takes money to make money and if you dont have any it is very hard to do anything. My advice to anyone looking to start any home based business that does not have money to get started is to first research all possible opportunities, send for information, ask questions and find the one that is right for you. Then put together a budget of what it will cost to get started, how much it will cost to run and advertise your business. How many samples or catalogs you plan on giving out and the cost for all this extra kind of stuff.

Then start saving and putting away enough money for about three months worth of business expenses to get your business off to a successful start. I know there are a lot of opportunities out there that say it doesnt cost anything to get started but when you add up all the little things you have to do to promote your business it can all add up very quickly and be more than you have to spend at the moment.

Things that I like/dislike about the Opportunity:
I like the low cost to get started with Avon, the support from the company and personal upline. I also really liked the advanced training offered online. Things I didnt like were the fact that you had to place an order every two weeks and you couldnt receive orders in between the two weeks, at least from what I understood.

Things I would change about the Opportunity:
I would like to see separate catalogs for niche specific products so that if a person only wanted to promote say skin care then they would have a niche specific catalog and customers would not be overwhelmed or get distracted by other products. I think this would really help those of us who like to narrow down a specific customer base and product.