Can I Make Money Selling Scentsy

Hi there! Welcome! If this is your first time at bottlesoup , thanks for joining us. In this article, we're going to discuss selling Scentsy. Please note that these articles are the opinion of the author and should not be taken in place of professional legal or professional financial advice.

With a "Livin' the dream" caption above their "Join" link and a big banner about "opportunity" and starting "your Scentsy business," the home page makes it clear: Scentsy wants you to sell Scentsy.

What is Scentsy?

Scentsy is a direct sales company that markets "wickless candles" or wax warmers, in addition to other home fragrance products. Like many other direct sales companies, one of the primary ways the company earns money is buy recruiting consultants to join Scentsy.

Who sells Scentsy?

A quick search of #Scentsy on Twitter will give you an idea. Here are a couple tweets:

What's the worse that could happen? You join for $64 & decide to quit & go back to your life with more than $200+ in stuff? 🤷🏻‍♀️#Scentsy #lifechanging #ownit
— Steph (@hiddenjewel) February 26, 2019

Shhhhh…It's #QuietDay #JustWhatTheDoctorOrdered #WhoIsGoingToLetMyKidsInOnIt #WAHMLife #Mompreneurship #MomHustle #HustleHard #MomBiz #ILoveMyJob #Scentsy #WaxBoss #BossLady #NoWickBrandy pic.twitter.com/eruUpDVVSg
— Brandy Kleinfelter (@NoWickBrandy) February 25, 2019

So who's selling Scentsy? Mostly women with children. This is typical of many direct sales companies, which are known to recruit stay at home moms.

What's so bad about giving SAHMs an opportunity to earn an income, you ask? Well, nothing is bad about that. In fact, that sounds awesome. But when we dig deeper into the actual feasibility of the opportunity, that's where things get sad.

How much money can you make selling Scentsy?

We'll break this up into two parts: how much money you can make in theory vs. how much money Scentsy consultants are actually making.

How much money can you theoretically make selling Scentsy

With any direct sales company, a lot of the marketing pitches the idea that your income opportunities are infinite. It's a nice idea, but it's not really accurate. Walmart is a huge company and a household name, but even Walmart doesn't have infinite opportunities.

Getting started with Scentsy

In order to make any money with Scentsy, you must first sign up as a Consultant.

Screenshot from the Scentsy "Join" page.

While you can get started for "just $49" according to the homepage banner, most Scentsy Consultants spring for the $99 Starter Kit. (Because it has "everything you need")

Once you join, you'll earn 20% commission on the first 1,000 in Personal Retail Volume (PRV).

Another screenshot from the Scentsy "Join" page.

It's important to note that PRV = sales price. A product can sell for $10 but have a PRV of just $5. So that's something to lookout for.

But anyway. You'll earn 20% on the first 1,000 PRV, then 25% after that. For the sake of simplicity, we could assume that's all you have to do: get a Starter Kit and start selling. But if you're considering this as a legitimate, long-term business opportunity, then you need to understand that there are other costs involved.

Additional costs for Scentsy Consultants

Your Scentsy website. Things like your Personal Website (PWS) which is included for "free" for the first three months, but you must then pay for after that. It costs $10/month. That's $90 the first year, and $120/year after that.

Always be sure to read the fine print. You'll be charged using the credit card you signed up with automatically. So if you're really tight on cash, you won't want to be surprised by this. Source: Scentsy New Consultant Start-Up Guide.

Your minimum sales volume. While they won't charge you for this directly, you're required to sell 200 PRV per month to remain active. If you don't, you can't earn commission. Many consultants wind up buying a bunch of their own product in order to remain "commission eligible." While the official stance on this by all direct sales companies is that you shouldn't do it, don't be fooled. It's strongly encouraged and the peer environment pressures you into believing that you're just moments away from getting a bunch of huge orders. And if you're not commission eligible, you'll miss out. The problem? Even if you are commission eligible, 20% of 200 PRV is $40. If you spent $200 or more to get to 200 PRV, then you haven't earned. You're $160 in the hole.

Marketing materials. You have to purchase these through Scentsy. You're not allowed to make your own order sheets or DIY your marketing efforts.

How much Scentsy product do you need to sell in order to earn the equivalent of minimum wage?

We know that you probably have goals beyond minimum wage. But we use minimum wage as a baseline to show how much effort goes into to earning. So, the current federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour. That's about $271.87/week assuming you work 37.5 hours (40 hour work week with 30 minute unpaid lunch taken out). Before taxes, that's $14,137.50 per year.

The average price of a Scentsy product is about $8. That's what their "best selling" spray goes for. On each $8 product you sell, you'll earn $1.60 in commission.

Using our free Direct Sales Calculator, we plugged in the commission of 20% and the $8 product.

This is what the first month will look like if you want to earn the equivalent of minimum wage and recoup your $99 Starter Kit investment.

So, you'll need to sell 799 Scentsy products in the first month to earn the equivalent of minimum wage and earn back your $99 Starter Kit investment.

"But wait," you say. "After 1,000 PRV, you earn 25%." Sure, that's true. We don't know what the PRV is on the $8 Scentsy sprays. But for fun, let's say you wind up earning 25% on everything.

If you earn 25% instead of 20% in commissions.

You'll still need to sell 639 Scentsy products to earn the equivalent of minimum wage and recoup your initial investment.

How much money do Scentsy consultants make

If you look at the most recent Income Disclosure Statement from Scentsy, you'll get a pretty clear picture of how much profit Consultants are taking home.

Screenshot from Scentsy Income Disclosure Statement.

You'll see that the majority of consultants have been with Scentsy for nearly three years (32.4 months) and only make an average of $676 in commission per year. That's just $56.30 a month. And after you deduct the cost of buying samples for new customers to try and keeping your Personal Website (PWS) up, you may have much less.

TL;DR: What's the bottom line?

As with all of our direct sales/MLM analysis articles, we cannot tell you what to do. The choice is yours. But we urge you to look at the opportunity with a critical eye. Consider your selling abilities, the commission rate, the product, the Income Disclosure Statement – basically, consider all the facts. And use our free Direct Sales Calculator to help make your decision.

You can do anything

Women need to be empowered to succeed. And while direct sales companies are very good at putting forward an empowering message, the opportunities usually fall short of what we'd define as successful. You don't need a direct sales company to start your own business. You can start building your brand on your own, right now. You can start your own blog, or make your own Etsy shop. Heck, make a Facebook page and start selling your creations or services there. Bottom line? You're incredible. And you have things to offer the world. Peddling someone else's product won't get you the financial freedom you crave. Invest in yourself, either through education or paving your own way. You deserve it. We're rooting for you.