Anyone looking at entering a new career field is going to have questions about what to expect in terms of hours, workload, and potential earnings. For someone entering the direct sales industry these questions become even more important, since pretty much all direct sales employees are actually business owners. They own their work, selling the parent company’s products and services as a licensed or contracted dealer. This even applies to summer internship programs such as the one provided by southwestern company , which gives thousands of college students the opportunity to become business owners during summer vacation.

Figures released by the Direct Selling Association indicate that the industry earned over $30 billion in 2007, making it a lucrative and attractive career field. It employees around 15 million salespeople, a vast majority of which are women.

Some important facts to consider, whether you’re looking at selling cosmetics, educational CD-ROM DVD packs , or vacuum cleaners:

Nearly a third of direct sales in 2007 fell into the category of clothing, accessories and personal care. This includes cosmetics, skin care, and jewlry. The next largest category is home/durables/family care including cookware and cleaning products.

The highest concentration of sales geographically speaking is in the Southern US , with nearly a third of all direct sales. The Northeast accounts for the least sales.

Direct means direct. Over 77% of sales were accomplished by face-to-face selling. Though there is a trend of remote sales. The internet accounted for slightly more than 11% of sales.

Over 70% of sales take place in the home and over 25% occur in a party or group setting.

Maybe the most important figures involve time spent. 31% of those surveyed indicated that they worked only 1-4 hours a week on direct selling with 22% spending 10-19 hours and only 12% spending 20 or more hours on sales.