Legend has it an Avon lady named Miki Crowl who hails from Ottumwa, Iowa, convinced enough acquaintances to become Avon representatives that she could earn a fortune without moving a finger. As the story goes – and everyone who sells Avon seems to know this story – Ms. Crowl fell into a coma and woke up three weeks later to find herself $15,000 richer, thanks only to her underlings’ sales.

It costs only $10 to join the sales program and instantly “become the C.E.O. of your own business,” as the recruitment literature puts it. And if most Avon representatives will never reach the point where they’re weekending in Hawaii and buying $6,000 shower curtains, a person always can dream. An incentive system drives the company’s more-than-4-million representatives to push harder, and not everyone comes up dry. Consider the unnamed New York City woman who, according to a district sales manager in Harlem, Genevieve Fotios, left her job cleaning hotel rooms and last year sold $120,000 worth of Avon products.

The membership fee covers a starter kit, but those who are serious about moving ahead enroll in a Beauty Advisor Certification course. The course in make-up application costs $125 and is broken up into medical sounding parts. Phase I, an introductory meeting, takes up two hours of a weekday night. Phase II covers the bulk of the load and occurs on a Saturday, spanning from 7:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. There’s good reason to bother going through with the class: Avon representatives are repeatedly told that those who get their Beauty Advisor certificates make three times more than those who do not.

Since Beauty Advisors are not licensed cosmetologists – pursuing that avenue tends to cost $1,200 and requires state certification – skin-to-skin contact is strictly prohibited, and everything must be applied via an elaborate spatula-to-sponge-to-swab-to-face transfer system.

Tables in the Times Square hotel conference room where a Phase II class was held Saturday were piled high with Q-tips, cotton puffs, and disposable sponges, and the students, before getting to work, made like boxers applying tape before a fight – wrapping their hands in sheets of facial tissue.

Avon claims an estimated 7,500 representatives in New York City, mostly in the outer boroughs. “There’s a lot of us out there,” one of the more enthusiastic members of the class, Marcelino Morales, said. “It’s like we’re underground.” The East Harlem resident joined the company seven years ago, at 17. Although he was the only man in Saturday’s class, he is in good company: The first Avon lady was David McConnell, a bookseller who abandoned his door-to-door business in 1886 when he realized the perfume he also carried was outselling books.

Every two weeks, each district office in New York City signs up about 30 new representatives, up from eight a week in 2003. The company’s name recognition in New York grew that year when it introduced mark, its trendy line – there’s a double-sided applicator wand called “the hook-up” – and advertised it in teen magazines and on television. The company is focusing on gaining a toehold in New York, opening a salon and a few new stores with decor that breaks away from the traditional district office aesthetic. “The old stores are like Holiday Inns and the new ones are like the W Hotel,” Mr. Morales said.

Even though the past weekend’s students had to wake up at the crack of dawn and spend a gorgeous Saturday in a windowless conference room, they seemed, for the most part, happy to be there – and to be with Avon. Some said they’ve made friends through the program, and the youngest students, both 18, said they were making money toward college tuition.

But the real reason to sell Avon is to get to the point where, whether or not you fall into a coma, you can wake up one day to find wads of cash landing at your feet. To sell Avon is to be in a perpetual state of hunger: There’s always room for improvement, and financial liberation is always just around the corner. Ever since 1992, when the company introduced a Leadership Program, sales have been based on a multi-level marketing plan, meaning representatives can profit by recruiting other Avon sales reps. A representative can make money from her referrals’ sales, and their referrals’ sales.

Before the Phase II lesson got started, people were instructed to dig through their bags and put all their Avon products on the table. The representative at each table with the most products would become team captain, because, as the instructor explained, “passionate users are passionate sellers.” That system seemed slightly sexist: The only Avon product Mr. Morales had in his bag was a stick of eyeliner. “I had a mascara but my roommate took it,” he muttered to himself.

Team captains designated, the lesson commenced. Vials and jars of what seemed to be the company’s most expensive products were passed around the room, and representatives were encouraged to smear them on the backs of their hands – using disposable trowels, of course.

As people played with the creams, the leader shared selling advice with her acolytes.

Why push skin care rather than lipstick? Because people replace their skin-care aids more frequently than any other beauty product.

Should you ask customers if they dye their hair? Heavens, no – say, “Do you enhance your hair color?”

A manual that was distributed to the class discouraged representatives from telling people, “I’m an Avon representative,” when asked what they do. “Even though that’s what you are,” the book said, “the answer in no way sets you apart from the other 660,000 Avon representatives in the United States. Your answer should be truthful, but catchy. How about: ‘I paint faces – and I’d love to talk to you about yours.’ Wouldn’t you be intrigued if someone said that to you?”

The representatives at the Phase II class didn’t seem to be making enough money to get by on commissions alone, but they all seemed convinced that if they played their cards right they would, and soon. Ages ranged from 18 to mid-50s, and the numbers of fulltime versus part-time Avon employees seemed pretty even, though most of the people who still have other jobs said they’re hoping to quit them soon to focus on Avon.

In February, Gemma Ferraro of the Bronx was laid off from her job managing a bookkeeper’s office. She looked for another job in the paper and came upon an ad for Avon. “I had never heard of it before, I didn’t know what it was,” she said. Now she’s in the swing of things, and seems pleased to be making about $500 a month selling products – or $6,000 a year.

Another Bronx resident, Michelle Ibarrondo, laid off from her hotel job after the attacks of September 11, 2001, turned to Avon shortly thereafter. She said has yet to earn money comparable to what she was making at the hotel. “But I will,” she said.

Geyda Arber used to be a production manager overseeing coffee-table books at Harper Collins. She initially took the job to support herself until her acting career took off, but it turned out to be stressful and she was having a hard time making it to auditions. In February she decided to quit her job to focus on acting. She supports herself holding “beauty bashes,” where people go to her Washington Heights apartment for cocktails and makeovers. This fall she expects to hit it big: She’s currently writing an interactive play about Trudy, a 1950s-era Avon lady who is transported to present-day New York. Audience members will go to the playwright’s home, get makeovers, and be able to buy products at the end of the show.

After all, not everyone gets to fall into a coma.