Ebay Retail expansion

[mrgazer]

Hello all

Are there any big ebay sellers here who can shed some light on how to go about expanding your ebay business more in terms of the employing staffs side..

I am in process of expanding the operation and probably in the next year or so, i will be employing a part time or full time helper to come in on a day to day basis.

my question is, with stealth accounts & all these sensitive information. how do I go about getting someone to help but without having them to accidentally getting my accounts linked?

In short, how does BIG eBay Stealth sellers expand their operation when you have a few employers dealing with sales?

Many thanks......

[chicagoIL]

Why would you give then access to your computers?
Would you be hiring them for more than just packing/shipping help?

If you make any employee mad or upset they could turn you in.
I can't see where you could ever give that information to anyone.

[newjerseymax]

I am control freak so all computer access is by me only... However, packing and shipping most people can do with very limited, if any access to computer....

[cool customer]

Originally Posted by newjerseymax

I am control freak so all computer access is by me only... However, packing and shipping most people can do with very limited, if any access to computer....

I would be saving the packing slips every morning as a PDF and emailing it to your packer to print off. That way they wouldn't need to access any accounts, you could set them up with some integrated label sheets and a laser printer safe in the knowledge that the only error they could really be accountable for is mis-picking an order.

[yankee]

shipstation.com is perfect for this.

They log into shipstation and manage shipments from that only.

Dedicated listers are always good if you have a regular influx of new products. They can simple work on the one account you set them up with.

If you use a series of small accounts inkfrog or auctiva are ecellent tools for listing agents without logging in and out of accounts.

As for the person above paranoid about an employee turning you in. That is a bit of a stretch. Have you ever tried calling ebay and telling them about a seller doing something horrible? They will tell you to use the report member link and ask you to confirm your own account.

[Play]

@Yankee I think he meant how to prevent accounts getting linked as oppose to getting reported.

On the whole I agree with what Yankee said, that is the perfect solution.

To add, there are even some shipping management softwares that let you refund customers etc. - so in the future this may be something you want to look into, so you can pass more of your workload down to employees and focus your time and effort on the bigger picture.

[Ubaida]

Just as the guys mentioned above, don't give anyone access.

If you are hiring one guy that means your eBay business is not big enough to have a dedicated employee checking sales and posting. You would want this employee to take care of the labor aspect of receiving, packing and shipping. So figure out a way where you have the labels ready and he does the labor aspect.

If he must see what sold, give him access to the email only where he can see what needs to be shipped.

[yankee]

Originally Posted by Play

@Yankee I think he meant how to prevent accounts getting linked as oppose to getting reported.

This seems clear lol Maybe I am wrong. Wont be the first time today

Originally Posted by chicagoIL

If you make any employee mad or upset they could turn you in.
.

[bigbill]

Reply Manager for managing questions and linnworks for orders, your staff won't need to log into stealth accounts directly this way.

[yankee]

Originally Posted by bigbill

Reply Manager for managing questions and linnworks for orders, your staff won't need to log into stealth accounts directly this way.

What is linnworks?
This one is new to me.

[yankee]

Originally Posted by yankee

What is linnworks?
This one is new to me.

I have never seen this one. How does it compare to shipstation?

https://www.linnworks.com/overview

[glacier922]

Whoa, this works with multiple amazon and eBay accounts? Interesting.

[yankee]

Originally Posted by glacier922

Whoa, this works with multiple amazon and eBay accounts? Interesting.

Looks awesome but not for smaller sellers who dont use all features.

Prices:
https://www.linnworks.com/plans-and-pricing

[glacier922]

With that pricing it might be better to get seperate platforms and pay the monthly price seperately. After all, to get to amazons api, you'd have to pay that 40 dollars selling fee for each of amazons accounts anyways.

[bigbill]

Linnworks is an order management and inventory system used by a lot of big Amazon and eBay sellers I know in the UK. We can batch process 100s of orders with one click, automatically printing labels, invoices, marking as dispatched with tracking info and emailing the customers etc. It will tell us how much inventory we have in the warehouse and send us alerts to place new orders for stock based on sales volume.

It saves us hours and hours each day. Worth looking into.

[glacier922]

Do U have multiple Amazon/eBay accounts? Have you been linked?

[bigbill]

Yes. We use have 3 eBay accounts, 2 Amazon accounts and 3 Woocommerce websites all linked to linnworks. Not had any issues with linking.

[Play]

Originally Posted by bigbill

Yes. We use have 3 eBay accounts, 2 Amazon accounts and 3 Woocommerce websites all linked to linnworks. Not had any issues with linking.

Nice. Have you ever had any accounts go down, 'whilst being linked to linnworks' with other accounts also linked to linnworks?

That is the only true way you will know if its 100% safe, if the rest of the accounts remain unscathed.

Bear in mind, most of this tools don't share any data with ebay any way, and are solely token based. They literally download data onto their platform for the user to utilise. So more often than not they can be deemed safe.

[newjerseymax]

Originally Posted by bigbill

Yes. We use have 3 eBay accounts, 2 Amazon accounts and 3 Woocommerce websites all linked to linnworks. Not had any issues with linking.

I like it, however so many eggs in one basket makes me think twice about it...

Definitely a great way to streamline all your work..

[glacier922]

Does anyone know if you can manage paypal accounts on there as well? Might be a little dangerous though. Putting your eggs all in once basket. What about issuing refunds and answering to return requests directly from linnworks? Thx.

[yankee]

How has inkrog been working for you glacier922?

[glacier922]

It's been great, love it. It can do pretty much everything except answer return requests, but I can just respond directly thru the platform for that. Also it cannot manage your pp acct, but oh well, nothing is perfect.