Do Jamberry Consultants Make Money? Let’s Crunch Some Realistic Numbers

If you’re someone who’s interested in the beauty niche, especially in nail care and designs, the brand Jamberry should be somewhat familiar. This networking company offers an opportunity to run an independent business part time with the potential of generating a lucrative income stream down the road. Is it true or just a hype?

Do Jamberry consultants make money in real life? This article will reveal some realistic figures that will make you think twice about this business venture.

Jamberry Company Facts

• The company was established in 2010 by three sisters Lyndsey, Christy and Keri.
• Their featured product is the do-it-yourself nail wraps along with other nail care and design items.

• There are about 20,000 independent consultants (mostly women) working under this brand throughout the US and Canada.
• Network marketing and social media are two main channels that consultants use to distribute the products.

How Earnings Are Calculated

The basic way of earning from Jamberry is through selling and making commissions from the total product sales. Some items such as nail wraps cost about $15 per set while higher end items like the gel enamel system sells for $120 per kit.  

Commission starts from 30% so for example, if you sell $100 worth of products per month, you will earn $30. If you sell $200, you get $60 and so forth. In order to achieve the earnings that you desire, it’s important to have a rough idea of how much product volume to move in a month.

Say, if your target is to earn at least $100 per month, the estimated retail sales should be about $350. That’s equivalent to 23.3 nail wraps or 3 units of the enamel gel system. Technically speaking, to hit $1000 per month, you need to push 233 nail wraps or 30 units of enamel gel.

However, it’s pretty obvious that in the modern day marketing, it will be a huge challenge, going from door to door, to sell 200 pieces of nail wraps. Sooner or later, you’ll need to rely on the recruitment system to increase earnings.

And there’s a good reason for that because with more people moving the products, you’ll earn more from personal, team and recruitment sales bonuses, on top of the basic commission payout. That’s the “beauty of MLM”, as some people call it, and you can see a ton of these “positive testimonials” on YouTube.  

However, very few would actually tell you how much is needed to get started and to maintain the business. This is crucial information and just like any businesses, big or small, some cash investment is necessary before one can expect to generate profit with the MLM business model.

The question is, how much is required.

What Are The Costs of Selling Jamberry Products

Here are some of the things that you’ll need.   

1) Starter Kit

For a one time fee, you could choose between the ‘Business Basics’ (costs $99) or ‘Style Essentials’ (costs $200) package. These are starter kits that contain samples from most of Jamberry’s product range and various marketing tools at your disposal.

With these samples, you can test them yourself and used for demonstration during face-to-face promotion. Through such experience, customers can see and touch these products before buying them so I consider this a reasonable investment.

2) (Printed) Catalog

Jamberry launches new catalog every 6 months and just like samples, they make a good conversation starter with potential customers. However, in the modern marketing world where digital technology dominates, I found this method to be a waste of resources.

Personally, I’ve thrown away many brochures from MLM companies because they are redundant and sparks no interest in me wanting to buy their products. Haven’t you heard?

A prospect needs to see an advert message 7 times he/she is compelled to buy. So when distributing catalogs, only a small percentage of people will convert into buyers and that’s natural.

The thing is, your starter kit comes with only 20 catalogs and to get more, you’ll need to pay for them at the price of 65 cents/piece. When doing sales campaign, you will need at least 100 (if not more) to distribute around friends, families and local businesses. That’s about $65/month ($780/year), from your own pocket. But keep in mind that you can’t overstock this marketing material either because they will eventually expire within 6 months.

While I like the personal touch of printed catalogs, it’s clear that they do come with limitations and I much prefer digital formats which are more cost effective and environment friendly.

3) Personal Website

That brings me to the next point, creating an online presence for your business. I love this idea because it’s un-limiting and allows more marketing creativity.

You see, when signing up as a Jamberry consultant, you’ll be provided with a personal website that links to the official shopping page. So whenever someone from your neighborhood OR from another state buys anything through it, the sales activity will be tracked and you’d still earn from product commissions.

The bad news is, the site is only available for free in the first 3 months of your membership. After that, you are expected to spend $10/month to maintain the website. In my opinion, that’s not cool. If you get the chance to look at some of these sites, they all look the same from one another and you have very little control of the content that gets published there.

Basically, it’s just another thin site with a lot of product links and some Jamberry recruitment information. Owning such a site has little benefits in terms of ranking on the search engines or attracting targeted audience because there is just too little content going around. In other words, people and Google will never discover your site.

So would you pay for something like that? I personally don’t think so.

4) Time (and other hidden costs)

Time is money and even though I can’t put a price tag to it, it’s an essential investment in any business. Wouldn’t you agree? When it comes to Jamberry, most of your time will be spent doing home parties (going house to house promoting the products), online parties (creating live videos in front of potential shoppers) and distributing catalogs to local beauty salons (if you still want to use the catalog route).

In reality, the actual expense of doing this isn’t just time, but also the money spend on fuel, making phone calls, preparing marketing materials and replenishing the stock. The reality will hit hard when you need to travel 20 kilometers out of town to meet potential customers when you’ve exhausted the list of friends and families to approach.

Now, if you add that all up, the cost of selling Jamberry products for one year would come up to be;

$99 (Basic Starter Kit) + $780 (Printed catalogs) + $90 (8 months for personal website) + TIME

= $969 ($80.75/month) + TIME

If $80 is your cost of operation, you should at least aim to make $200 profit per month (if not more). In case you lost track of what I mentioned earlier, that’s about $700 in retail sales or the equivalent of 46.6 nail wraps.

So, Is Jamberry Worth It?

Okay, the numbers may be a bit confusing, but my point is, the nature of this business will involve seeking new customers (out of your comfort zone) and constant reinvestment in traditional/out-dated marketing tools that will likely result in poor conversions. It’s no wonder why 99% of the people leave such a business model during their first year.

While writing this article, I was hoping to find something that could convince me that Jamberry is still worth joining. After all, there’s a huge market for the mani-pedi niche online. Instead, I found a dying fad.

The company was certainly popular back in 2014, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore and I wonder if any Jamberry consultants are still making money these days.

On a brighter note, beauty eCommerce is thriving and there are other brands that offer better business opportunities through affiliate programs. With this model, the start-up cost is much lower, the audience size is much bigger and the income stream is more sustainable over time.

Check out what affiliate marketing is all about through my recommended training platform and discover what it means to create a successful online business.

Have you been involved in Jamberry or similar companies as a consultant? What are your experience or thoughts about it? Please leave your comments below and I would be happy to respond.

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