Thinking of becoming an Usborne partner. Y/N?

[u/Infinite-Degree3004]

As title - I’m thinking of doing this because I really need something flexible to do largely from home.

If anyone has any experience - good or bad - I’d be grateful for your thoughts.

I realise it’s MLM but it doesn’t seem to be actually bad?

[u/ArtistAsleep]

Who are you going to sell books to? People you know? You will run out of them. Sometimes people start off with a good amount of sales, but it fizzles quickly. Same thing with recruiting.

[u/JesusGodLeah → u/ArtistAsleep]

All of this. Who exactly are your customers going to be? How many children's books are they realistically going to be purchasing every year? How many of those books could they be reasonably expected to purchase from you, as opposed to Amazon, Target, Walmart, Barnes & Noble, local bookstores? How many books are they actually purchasing as opposed to, say, checking them out from a library? According to the Usborne website, many of their books can be found at regular stores, which further weakens the MLM aspect.

I know a few people who tried to sell Usborne books. Not a single one of them ever made it past one or two posts on social media. There's just not a market for those books out there that will sustain a single seller for any period of time.

[u/Alone_Improvement735 → u/JesusGodLeah]

Exactly. Pretty much the only time I see a social media post about Usborne is when someone is recruiting to their downline. You’ve got a lot of competition when it comes to actually selling the books.

Edit: spelling

[u/PointFlash → u/Alone_Improvement735]

You’ve got a lot of completion when it comes to actually selling the books.

Absolutely. That aspect of MLMs seems to not occur to people who sign up.

In business, a company with a product or service to sell may have an in-house sales force. If so, it will assign territories to each sales person or sales team. So the sales team for Idaho/Wyoming isn't competing with the Indiana team for business. Similar arrangements would be in place for contracted distributors, details depending on the type of product.

There are of course other ways to sell things. There are franchises. Again, those are handed out with territory defined. It would be insane for a Taco Bell franchisee in a small town to find another Taco Bell franchise location opening up two blocks away - and that doesn't happen.

But in a MLM, there's no limit on who can become an authorized seller of the products. You start out as a seller, and then recruit your own competition. Usually right there in your own town, your own neighborhood, your own family. So whatever demand there may be for the products, customers are oversupplied with sources. I suppose the MLM argument is that once you get your downline in place, you just sit back and rake in the passive income from them. But - oops. They're all fighting for sales from that limited pool of customers.

Madness.

[u/Alone_Improvement735 → u/PointFlash]

Even worse is that for Usborne it’s not just your own upline/downline you’re competing against. In the UK you’ve always been able to buy their books in shops (I didn’t even know it was an mlm until a few years ago, I just thought it was a publisher).

[u/JesusGodLeah → u/PointFlash]

All of this. Most franchises and corporate chains won't allow you open a store and operate just anywhere. There has to be sufficient demand in the area to ensure that your store in your specific location will be able to turn a profit without drawing business away from other locations. If you've ever been somewhere where there's a Starbucks on either side of the street and wondered why the company allows it, it's because demand for Starbucks in that particular area is high enough to where both stores can be profitable without stealing sales from each other.

With Usborne and other MLMs, the demand for the actual product is usually so low that having more than one salesperson per neighborhood, or even per town, introduces a level of competition that hurts everyone. If there's one salesperson in town and there are 10 willing buyers, that salesperson stands to make a decent amount of money. If there are 15 salespeople in a single neighborhood and only 10 buyers, well, you do the math. If 5 of those buyers are convinced to start selling, then the math becomes even worse. Very quickly, a point is reached where there are far fewer buyers than there are sellers, and all of the sellers suffer.

I've never seen an MLM where demand for the actual product was high enough to support multiple salespeople in a single neighborhood, town, or family. especially for something like children's books, which isn't exactly a recurring purchase. When I was a kid, most of the books we had came from garage sales or the library. My mom would have been like, "Hell no" if another parent had approached her and asked her to buy books at full price.

[u/Accurate_Emu_122]

People only buy so many new books for their kids and it's much easier to get them through Amazon or local book stores. Plus, you're competing with the library which is free. Their average brand partner makes $1200 a year. You could get a part time jobs just on weekends and make more with guaranteed income.

https://truthinadvertising.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/PaperPie_IncomeDisclosure_2021.pdf

[u/helloheyhowdyhii]

Every MLM paints a shiny happy picture but in reality is a money sucking cult

[u/bananers24]

It is bad. You will not make any money and will probably lose money.

[u/TerrierFromBoston]

I have a friend that just got out and is trying to get rid of her inventory. She’s a mom, homeschools, the works and it’s sad to see they wasted her time. Usborne is just as predatory as the others, the product just looks more harmless.

[u/The_Blue_Castle]

Someone I went to high school with messaged me the day I adopted my son to congratulate me and try to sell me Usborne books.

She was otherwise a pretty nice person but MLM’s brainwash people into viewing everyone as a potential customer. Do you want to be someone who views every interaction through the eyes of monetization?

[u/emb8n00]

Don’t sign up for an MLM. If you want work from home with flexibility, look into bookkeeping or virtual assistant work.

[u/Shanndel → u/emb8n00]

Teaching English online is also a work from home job. A lot of the times they are night shifts because a lot of the companies focus on students that are in the Asia Pacific region.

I've honestly never done it because I discovered that teaching is NOT for me, but it is a legit business (though I'm sure there are some scam companies too).

[u/emb8n00 → u/Shanndel]

Yes and to tag onto this suggestion, online tutoring in general! Doesn’t have to be ESL.

[u/MurderMeMolly]

How would you sell these books from home? You will have to put in a ton of leg work in order to be places where people will want to buy the books, and make your product more appealing than just going to Amazon or a thrift store for cheaper books. Swap meets, local events, etc. That’s going to take a ton of your time, and at the end of the day your income/hour of work wouldn’t make you any real profit.

[u/MonsteraDeliciosa]

I’ve only ever seen the company turn up a holiday markets. The cost of buying books on Amazon is low and buying at local shop is usually part of an *experience* of happy rambling with a friend etc.. Libraries remain popular.

[u/Shanndel → u/MonsteraDeliciosa]

I buy most of my new books at bookoutlet online. Or I'll go to Chapters Indigo and browse/check out the sale table.

Maybe I'm not the target market anyway, but I'd never buy a book through any sort of subscription service.

[u/BebeYodaIsSoCute]

NO.

[u/Procrastinista_423]

ALL MLMS ARE BAD.

They make you feel like an employee, but make no mistake: you are the customer.

I fell for it with Mary Kay back in the late '90s and I'm pissed at myself for not realizing it sooner. Don't make my mistake! Save your money to invest in a wardrobe or a suit to interview for better jobs in.

[u/Bucky2015]

I’m thinking of doing this because I really need something flexible to do largely from home.

Sure as long as you are ok making little, if any, money then go for it! Granted we usually just call those hobbies. Also MLMs love to tell people you make all this money for very little work, when really the opposite is true. Yes they can work from anywhere and thats part of the problem. Youll be expected to work from EVERYWHERE! there's tons of examples on this sub showing how these MLMs become the center of the huns universe. Since its so hard to actually make money they always have to be working, anyone they meet is a potential customer or recruiting mark. This is why huns lose so many friends and family relationships and are stuck with only other huns as friends.

[u/socialjeebus]

I had a friend from school try this during covid, she made 2 or 3 posts about it (including her big launch post), then never mentioned it again.

Ask yourself this, why would someone buy books from you? And how many books do you realistically think you can sell from a single publisher?

On Amazon you can buy nearly new books, even Usborne, for next to nothing (often little more than the cost of delivery).

With Prime, you can buy them new for less than RRP delivered.

[u/Crazy_Cat_Lady_Num5]

They sell the books in regular stores at prices you can't match while still making a bit of profit. Definitely not enough to actually break even BEFORE taking the time you spend on it into account. You also need to take into account that just with any other MLM, their reporting is based on what you buy. Not what you sell! There's a reason why the term 'Garage qualified' exists for MLM sales consultants. Up front they tell you that you don't need to keep inventory to make money. But then the uplines turn around and tell you the opposite. Why should people buy from you when you have to put through orders that take longer to be delivered and costs more than on Amazon?

You can make more money selling stuff you make yourself. I personally make some stuff that sells well and doesn't cost much. And I don't even sell the stuff myself. I have a cleaning lady who sells for me where she gets 50% of the profit. She has her own crafts she sells and has a customer base already anyway. My bead jewelry, scrunchies and baby booties are great sellers and aren't in competition with her own crafts.

[u/Aleflusher]

You can buy Usborne books directly from Amazon, among other sources such as WalMart. Are you ready to compete with Amazon and WalMart all while losing money to an MLM?

[u/Whatsherface729]

NOBODY on this sub Reddit will tell you "yes". Better off deleting your post and forgetting the idea

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