Is Usborne Books a Scam? Sell Books But Not Earn Money!

Welcome to my Usborne Books review!

I remember back in my childhood when my dad bought an entire encyclopedia set. Companies that sold these sets were actually direct selling companies and I only got reminded of them when I reviewed this company: Usborne Books.

Is this company worth joining and do they have a great income opportunity?

Let’s find out…

First of all, I must Congratulate you for taking your time to do your own research before buying into any "seemingly good" product.

That's the way to avoid scams and find the legitimate way to make money online!

Let me be completely transparent with you, I'm not associated with Usborne Books in any form.

So, rest assured that I'm not here to pitch or sell anything to you.

Instead, I'm here to reveal what this company has to offer and why it's not a good idea to enrol into.

Usborne Books is a company that sells children’s and young adult’s books.

They are a direct-selling company that runs on a MLM or multi-level marketing business structure, so all your income opportunities work the same way as any other MLM.

The company was founded by Peter Usborne in 1973 and opened their direct sales department in 1981 called Usborne Books at Home.

Usborne Books Product Line

Usborne Books has a wide array of children’s books and a lot of them are intended for babies, toddlers, and up until middle grade. On their website, they categorize their books according to age:

1. 0-2 years
2. 3-5 years
3. 5-7 years
4. 7-11 years
5. 11-13 years
6. Young adult

They also have different categories to choose from:

1. Flip books
2. Spanish titles
3. Season titles
4. Touchy Feely
5. History of Britain
6. Discovery
7. Look & Say
8. First Picture Books
9. Phonics Readers
10. Farmyard Tales
11. True Stories
12. Classics Retold
13. See Inside
14. Fabulous Fiction
15. Things to Make and Do
16. Puzzle Adventures
17. Beginners
18. First Thousand Words
19. Spotter’s Guides
20. Usborne Reading Programme

Does The Product Work?

It’s often difficult to gauge the quality of these products mostly because you have to review them for their content.

However, I would assume that the products are of high quality because of the numerous awards they received over the last few years.

The illustrations are pleasing to the eyes and the presentation is very well-done.

Here are some of the more recent ones:

• Children’s Publisher of the Year 2014
• Independent Publisher of the Year 2014
• Publisher of the Year 2012
• Touchy-Feely That’s Not My Penguin nominated for Children’s Book of the Year 2008 at the British Book Awards
• UK Times Literary Supplement Award
• Touchy-Feely That’s Not My… series – voted Best Buy in the Toddler Book category of Prima Baby Reader Awards 2006
• First Picture Action Rhymes – Practical Pre-School Gold Award 2006
• Snuggle time Sleepy Baby – Practical Pre-School Silver Award 2006

There are two ways for you to make money with Usborne Books:

• Sales commissions
• Bonuses from recruiting and team sales

How To Get Started With Usborne Books?

You can choose between two kits if you want to start your business with Usborne Books. There’s the New Consultant Mini-Kit which costs $75 and the Regular Consultant Mini-Kit costs $125.

You’ll also be automatically subscribed to a 6-month e-business package, which means you get a website for free to sell your products on.

The New Consultant Mini-Kit:

Here’s what you can get from the $75:

• Display set of books which includes two featured titles plus additional 8 titles from various popular series (totaling to 10 books at $100+ in retail)
• 6-month e-business package
• A 5-pack count of Usborne Books catalogs
• A 20-pack of mini catalogs
• Customer order forms
• Host guides
• Monthly e-business package which includes 6 months of your website for free
• And a branded Usborne Box where available

The regular New Consultant Kit:

• Three featured titles plus additional 17 titles, totaling to 20 books valued at $200 in retail.
• 6-month e-business package
• A 5-pack count of Usborne Books catalogs
• A 20-pack of mini catalogs
• Customer order forms
• Host guides
• Monthly e-business package which includes 6 months of your website for free
• And a branded Usborne Box where available

Usborne Books Compensation Plan

Usborne Books has a straightforward compensation plan, and we’ll only highlight the important details. You’ll find more about the compensation plan in the video posted below:

There are three different levels for you to reach, and increasing your level also increases the money you make.

Consultant

Your commission at this level is 15 to 30% starting with your first sale. You also get a 3 to 5% sales bonus if you generate $350 in monthly sales.

You also earn 4% bonus of the net sales of your personal recruits if they net $350 a month.

Supervisor

You’ll need to have at least 5 personal recruits and 5 active consultants to qualify for this level. On top of that, you’ll also have to net $350 in sales for 2 consecutive months.

Your commission at this level is 15 to 30% starting with your first sale. You also get a 3 to 5% sales bonus if you generate $350 in monthly sales.

You also earn 11% bonus of the net sales of your personal recruits if they net $350 a month.

Executive Supervisor/Senior Executive Supervisor/Director

 To qualify for this level, you’ll need three first levels, 1 third level, and a monthly income of $25,000 from your combined sales of the central group.

#1 Expensive Startup Costs

To become a consultant, you’ll need to shell out at least $125 or more to get the amount of books you need to build a steady catalog.

Remember that you also have to host parties to promote their products and that means spending extra money just to sell items.

Usborne Books doesn’t provide their consultants with any training on how to sell the products, so you’ll have to teach yourself how to do that.

#2 Complaints about Customer Service

While their books’ quality is excellent, I wish I could say the same thing for their customer service.

As of this writing, most of the complaints about this company focused on their customer service department. Some reviews from Glassdoor and BBB talk about how their representatives are not good at what they’re doing.

Here are some complaints that you’ll see on their profiles:

To be honest, I don’t really expect MLM companies to have stellar customer service mostly because they just want to hold on to you for as long as possible until you simply just give up.

#3 Low Success Rate

The expensive startup costs combined with the lack of training results to a low success rate within their business opportunity.

It’s surprising that the company doesn’t have an income disclosure statement because they’ve been around for more than 30 years now.

With that being said, it’s safe to assume that people in the lowest tiers aren’t earning any real money at all.

#1 Quality Books

The books are of high quality and there’s a lot of great feedback about them. The awards that they received are simply proof that they know what they’re doing, and it’s not going to be a difficult challenge to sell these books.

Usborne Books is a legitimate direct selling company with a MLM business structure. However, I don’t want to recommend this program to anyone.

The success rate is low for consultants and that it’s not even worth getting into because you may not get your money back.

This, combined with the lack of training on how to sell the books, makes it difficult to generate leads and you’ll have to spend a lot of time hosting parties to get products moving.

I'm not a fan of MLM, not because it's illegal or not profitable, but because of all the restrictions and the expensive costs involved.

Instead, Affiliate Marketing is my top recommended business model for anyone to make money online.

The reason is simple...

• You don't have to recruit anyone to make money
• You have the freedom to promote any products you want and not being restricted to only promote the products from one MLM company
• It's Free to get started

In fact, with affiliate marketing...