How Much Do Mary Kay Sales Directors Make?

Written by TRACY on . Posted in Numbers in Mary Kay, Sales Directors

We at Pink Truth are very familiar with the often-uttered phrase “My director makes six figures!!!!” Women believe the hype that Mary Kay Sales Directors are making big money. So how much money is “big money” and how many sales directors are making it?

Here are the numbers, straight from the horse’s mouth. From the August 2012 issue of Applause Magazine, we have the top 100 sales director incomes in each of the 5 divisions for April. These 500 sales directors represent the top 3.5% of all sales directors, and the top 0.07% (yes, way less than 1%) of all consultants in the United States. 

The top 10 monthly checks of those top 500 sales directors were:

$22,945
$18,385
$17,060
$17,053
$16,488
$15,727
$15,642
$15,111
$15,110
$14,672

So if you’re in the top 10 of all sales directors in Mary Kay, you’re grossing about $176,000 or more per year (multiplying these commissions by 12, even though we know they vary a lot from month to month). This is prior to the deduction of any business expenses.

But what about the bottom of the upper echelon of Mary Kay?  The bottom 10 monthly checks of these top 500 sales directors were:

$5,486
$5,507
$5,534
$5,587
$5,620
$5,628
$5,629
$5,638
$5,672
$5,681

The bottom 10 of the top 500 Mary Kay sales directors are grossing about $5,600 a month, prior to business expenses. That’s about $67,200 per year gross income.

And 13,500 sales directors are making less than that. This is certainly not the “executive income” that is so often bragged about in Mary Kay.

So the next time you hear someone talking about the woman in Mar Kay who makes six figures, chances are it’s a lie. 13,500 Mary Kay sales directors (96.4% of directors) are making less than $67,000 per year in gross commissions. In fact, a tremendous number of sales directors are barely making minimum production each month (the amount required to keep the sales director status), which gives them monthly commissions of $800 to $1,000.

Remember that those who get to the position of sales directors in Mary Kay are deemed to be the hard workers and the successful ones. Yet the vast majority of sales directors – 96.4% are making less that $67,000 per year before the deduction of any business expenses.

And also remember, the fantasy about the big money is not limited to Mary Kay. Every multi-level marketing company promotes the idea that they have lots of big money makers. And that, my friends, is a lie.

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Comments (15)

  • bellaone

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    Now now, Tracy! You KNOW those directors are counting the numbers after the decimal as “digits”, so if they are making $67,000.15, that six, seven digit income! :)

    Reply

  • NeverWasPink

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    the other interesting thing about MLM claims is it doesn’t matter if YOU are making the income, just know someone who is, or just wish you were.. you can share the same numbers regardless.. :P

    Reply

  • onceapinkhead

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    Nice way to pervert the quote from St. Francis. >:(

    Reply

  • enorth

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    I never used MK products. I looked at the prices of the Timewise items in the Applause. Those prices are obscene. $25 for cleanser? $50 for sunscreen? $70 for lifting serum? (besides, no serum will “lift”) I feel a little sorry for women who try to sell this drek.

    Reply

  • Nutmeg

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    First, I was a director for 3 years and I personally knew about 50 directors. I have only seen 2 of them ever listed (in the very bottom of the commissions) in applause.

    The 2 directors I was closest with before I stepped down have never been in applause and one claims she makes close to her “six figure” salary from when she was full time working in Boston and the other refers to herself as an “executive paid mommy”. Both are total BULLSH*T. I feel bad for the poor suckers they recruit with those lies.

    I bet a lot of the directors listed in applause have bought a ton of product themselves to get their commission over $5,000 so they could be on that illustrious list. *gag* So sad…

    So GLAD not to have ANYHTHING to do with it (or them) anymore!

    Reply

  • TRACY

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    Well of course, there’s always the “SHE SELLS TONS OF PRODUCTS” claim which is assumed to fill in the gap between the commissions and six figures. No, she ORDERS a lot of products. Probably to top off monthly production and meet minimums. She probably GIVES away lots of products, to incentivize interviews and otherwise unload her tons of products on the shelf. But sells tons of it? Almost no one.

    Reply

  • Kinzie

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    All MLM earnings clams I have seen are misleading and bogus.I have a good friend who sells products of different MLM. Of course, she is always in recruitment mode which is reflected in her Facebook posts bragging about how excited her hostesses were, how much free product they earned, etc. More recently she posted that she had “just made $150 an hour!”. Well, yes, you made $150 in those 3 or 4 hours, but what about the rest of the other hours you worked? Did you make $150 an hour for every hour hou worked consistently over a long period of time? If someone tells me they will pay me, say, $15 an hour I assume that will be every hour all the time. That is what people want to know….how much can I consistently make doing this job?

    Reply

    • Tigger

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      Right on, Sister. You’ve described it perfectly.

      Reply

  • bellaone

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    It’s all of those catch phrases that are used to make potential victims think there is something good going on. Like the $150 an hour. Sounds good, looks good in print, but really, what does that mean? $150 an hour for three hours a week or what? And…expenses? Hello?

    MK thinks most women are stupid and can’t do the math.

    Reply

  • MLM Radar Detector

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    The only critique I have for an article like this comes from understanding my friends who got hooked by the Mary Kay bait. They got hooked because they were working full time earning 8 or 10 or 12 dollars an hour, 16k to 25k a year, hoping that the car doesn’t break down in the same pay period that their kids got sick, because they couldn’t afford both at the same time.

    Ladies on that level – and Mary Kay has tens of thousands of them – just don’t relate to someone complaining that $5,000 a month is inadequate. To them an extra two or three hundred a month is all they need to make a difference, and they only see two ways to get it honestly: 1) Find a second job, or 2) Try to sell Mary Kay or something similar (Herbalife, Visalus, Amway…)

    The problem, of course, is that the ladies who only need a few hundred extra to get by are the ones most likely to get burned by a network marketing company. They’re the ones most likely to look around 6 months later and realize that the only thing they’ve gotten from Mary Kay is boxes full of makeup they can’t sell or wear, an even bigger credit card bill (for which they’ll REALLY need a second job), and a lot of time lost from their kids. More than 99% of those women barely scraping by now will be far WORSE off because of Mary Kay.

    The saddest part is that too many of them will think their Mary Kay failure was their own fault because the business model works (so they’ve been told, even though it’s not true), so they’ll jump right into yet another network marketing company. And lose even more money.

    Ladies – if you’re feeling these words, heed this fact about your oh-so-successful (NOT) directors:
    “…a tremendous number of sales directors are barely making minimum production each month (the amount required to keep the sales director status), which gives them monthly commissions of $800 to $1,000.” This, unfortunately, is true for ALL network marketing companies. Mary Kay is not unique.

    In truth, ladies, often it’s not even that good. A Mary Kay director loses her position if she misses two consecutive months. Vast crowds of directors fail to make minimums several times a year, and redouble their efforts the following month to keep from losing everything. If your director calls you desperately pleading for an order “for the team” late in the month, but doesn’t submit that order until the first week of the following month, you can be pretty sure she gave up on the month which just ended and is trying to put every possible order into the new month.

    Final thought:
    If vast crowds of directors, the cream of the Mary Kay cream with 30+ team members each, scarcely pull together barely enough production just to maintain their directorship, and fail to even get that much three or four or five months each year…
    If the directors themselves are constantly on the edge of failure, what would make you think you can consistently earn through Mary Kay that two or three hundred a month which YOU need?

    Reply

  • nopinkbubble

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    “The saddest part is that too many of them will think their Mary Kay failure was their own fault…”

    The MK way is to shame you so no one actually reaveals NO ONE is making money other that the FEW at the top! MK also likes to isolate you away from friends that do not believe – because “they” are the ones that do not get it!

    The ONLY way to make the $200 – $300 a month is to NEVER recruit your good customers – offer a small discount to order their products when needed and only order every 3 months….better yet – take a part time JOB in retail or babysit or rake yards.

    Reply

  • Bethany

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    What are the average deductions and business expenses for a top director? Because to the average person these numbers still look decent? AND how many hours a week do these people work? I was thinking about posting this on FB but do we have an article that fleshes everything out a bit more? Like how you basically sell your soul, give every waking hour and still can’t declare you have “executive income”? And how the expenses will eat you alive? Can someone recommend one? Thanks!

    Reply

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