Can You Make Money in Direct Sales?

Whenever I read work at home message boards, I always see some variation of the question “can I make money in direct sales”? Of course the answers are always from those who hope to recruit a few and so the answers are always heavily padded.

Can you make money in direct sales? The quick answer is yes, you can. However I’d like to offer more information than just a “yes”.

Direct sales companies usually offer the distributor two ways to earn money. One is through the actual sale of a product and the other is through sponsoring or recruiting people to become representatives for the company.

This article will speak of averages only. The average commission on the sale of a product in direct sales is about 30 or 35%. If in a week, you sell $100 worth of products, you’ll earn about $30 or $35 dollars. This will not pay your rent, but it’s $30 you didn’t have prior to selling the product.

When someone comes to me and says they want to earn $1000 per month, I know I cringe a little bit, not because it’s not possible, but because the vast majority of those involved in direct sales never earn this much. Just speaking of sales, in order to earn $1000, you’ll need to sell about $3000 worth of products every single month. If the average customer spends $35 on products, you’re going to need 85 customers each ordering $35 worth of product to hit that $3000 sales mark. Again, this is not impossible, but almost no one can do this their first month, or even their first 6 months. It’s not easy finding 85 customers each and every month. For those who stick with it, for those who continue to pursue new customers each and every month, it is not uncommon to have several hundred customers by year five. These customers will not order every month, but you’ll have a large enough customer base, that by year five, it’s much easier to find 85 people to order each month.

Now let’s switch gears and talk about sponsoring others. The AVERAGE income earned from sponsoring others is about 10%. This means for every $100 sold by those you sponsor, you’ll earn about $10.  Again, using that $1000 as our target income, you’ll need to create group volume of $10,000. Ten percent of ten thousand is indeed that $1000 you were looking for. Again, this is not impossible to do, but it does not happen as often as the ads out on the internet lead us to believe it does. Let’s say you sponsor one person per month your first year. This means you’ll have 12 people in your group at the end of that year. If each of those 12 people sold $500 per month in products, you’d have group sales of $6000. Not quite the $10,000 you need, but you’ll be on your way.

So the answer is yes, you can indeed earn money in direct sales. I hope this article helps you understand how that income is generated.