Hey!

If you were approached to sell for Usborne Books you may be wondering if it's a scam or pyramid scheme.

There's a lot to unpack with this company and in this post you'll see background information, compensation plan, price to join, pros, cons and more.

By the time you're done reading you'll know if this business opportunity is right for you.

Ready? 

Some people claim that all MLM's are pyramid schemes and this isn't necessarily true. Many people like to throw around the term pyramid scheme with MLM's because people don't like them.

Usborne Books isn't an outright pyramid scheme but has elements of one.

Let me explain: Look at the picture below:

This is what part of the commission structure looks like at Usborne. The reason for this is because a large part of your income relies on recruitment.

When you recruit someone it's called building a downline. When anyone in your downline (your recruits, the people your recruit's recruit) makes a sale, you get a piece of it.

Commissions are always flowing upwards.

The reason Usborne isn't a full on pyramid scheme is because you can make money without recruitment. You can just sell the books straight to customers and earn commissions that way. 

Usborne distributors seem to rely less on recruitment than other MLM's as well. 

Success Is Rare At Usborne

Most companies like Usborne have an income disclosure statement that shows the percentage of people making money, how much and who's losing money.

However, after searching around I couldn't an income disclosure for this company.

This is never a good sign and usually means the numbers are so low they feel it's a detriment to release the information. 

Here's the numbers for MLM's on a whole - around 75% of people that join MLM's straight up lose money. 

Of the small amount that do make money, most make peanuts - on average they make $2400 a year. This comes out to $200 dollars a month and less than $1 per hour of work.

Does this sound like a business you want to get involved with? Don't you think there's better ways to make money?

How Much To Join Usborne?

Usborne does have one good thing going for them - it's pretty inexpensive to get started with.

Some MLM's are very expensive and can cost thousands after you tally up the costs. Many even make you purchase hundreds of dollars worth of products a month just to qualify for your commissions.

That's not the case with Usbrone, though.

All you have to do is pay for a kit when you sign up. The first kit will cost you $75 and the second kit will cost you $125.

The first kit comes with 10 titles and the second kit comes with 20 books. 

Once you sign up you won't have to keep buying books every month or anything like that.

It's important to note that sales of books are usually made at parties and you'll more than likely need to buy a good amount of stock for this - that's going to cost more than $125 most likely. 

What is Usborne's Compensation Plan?

MLM's usually have very complicated compensation plans and very complicated graphs with complicated language.

Usborne isn't that bad, though, and is pretty straight forward. This is mainly because recruitment isn't the main focus.

If you want to see the entire compensation plan for yourself, click here. 

There's a few parts you should definitely understand if you plan on selling for Usborne Books.

Direct Sales

Like I mentioned before Usborne is one of the few MLM companies that rely more on direct sales than recruitment. 

There's many different ways you can sell the books from this company and the type of event you hold determines your commissions.

Below is the commissions you can earn based on the event you're holding:

This chart is pretty straight forward and easy to understand. If you're doing a home show you need to sell $85 worth of books to qualify for commissions and you get 25% on every sale.

According to the compensation plan the average home party generates $400 in total sales, which would net you $100. 

You can also earn bonuses if you reach certain amount of sales per month. 

Recruitment

This is the second way to make money and is a little more complicated. 

Below is what it looks like when you build a team:

There's three levels you can reach and you make more money as you advance in rank. 

Here's what you get at each level:

As you can see there's definitely an incentive to recruiting people and building a downline. 

What Products Will You Be Selling

Like the name suggests, you will be selling books and children books in particular. 

There's many different books you can choose from as well and there's literally hundreds of different titles.

Also, there's different types of books too, including:

• Flip books
• Non-fiction
• Fiction
• Spanish titles
• Season titles

There seems to be very good variety. Many people love Usborne books too. So while I don't recommend this company to join and to sell for, I do recommend their books.

What I Like About Usborne Books

There's more I don't like about this company than do but there's still somethings I like, including:

1) Focus on direct sales: MLM's usually focus on recruitment and building your downline. This creates a lot of losers and means your success is more dependent on your place in the pyramid rather than your hard work. Usborne is different and your sales are more likely going to come from home parties and book fairs. 

2) Quality books: These books aren't some run of the mill books either. Usborne is known for putting out very quality products and parents/kids tend to really like the books. 

What I Don't Like About Usborne Books

Overall, though, I think you should skip this opportunity because:

1) Low success rate: Usborne doesn't have an income disclosure which is a bad sign. The success rate for MLM's is very low and Usborne clearly doesn't do any better than most. They say home parties generate about $100 per party in commissions for the seller. You'd have to have A LOT of parties to make any real money.

2) Need to recruit: While recruiting isn't the main focus of the compensation plan, you still need to do it if you expect to have any chance in making real money.

3) Bothering friends and family: One of the worst parts of a MLM is you'll have to bother friends and family to buy your products - this is more true with Usborne as well. Throwing parties and trying to sell books to the people who come is the main way you make money with Usborne. 

Is Usborne A Scam?

So it's time to make a decision: Is Usborne a scam or isn't it. I personally don't think it's a scam but instead a bad business opportunity.

A scam is when you're being misled about how much you can make or if you're selling knock off products or if you're getting your money straight up stolen.

None of that happens here. Usborne products are legit and there's no indication they steal your money.

However, it's just hard to make any real money with this company. You're more than likely going to lose money and even if you do make money it's not going to be a lot most likely.

Here's Better Way To Make Money

Hopefully by now I've talked you out of joining Usborne - they have some nice books but it's going to be extremely difficult to find a customer base to make significant or even just average money.

However, there's still plenty of ways to make money from home and online.

I started making money online as a complete beginner and have made over 6 figures since.

To see how, click below:

See How To Make Money Online Here!