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Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

OK so I think this is a topic good for the forum..

I'm looking to add a few people that can "help me out". At this point I dont want to "hire" them as in filling out paperwork etc. (some may want to though this thread is for both)

My idea is I have a few niches in clothing that I make decent profit in. Certain style of shirts I flip $5 to $25 easy. Now my thoughts were to ask a few guys I work part time with if they want to make some extra money. I give them 5$ for every shirt they find (easy enough?). They could make 50$ bucks easy and i would think it would be better for them since they get cash at the end of the day opposed to waiting for a taxed check.

I would still run everything threw MY stealth accounts and they would have no part of that actual process.

How does this sound? I ask because we are stealth and I haven't told ANYBODY what I exactly do yet. In other words I'm a very sketchy looking dude sometimes to some people but oh well.

For other people who might add people who help package their product, or do other tasks what are the pros/cons? I'm sure some of you have hired or do have employees now. For me I would like to just give them cash and not actually act like they're employeed by me but at the same time I'm not afraid to act bossy to get my point across.

Thoughts????

Waiting for you Yankee :) haha

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

I have hired people for minor things, the same way you are suggesting. Mostly teenagers looking for a few bucks. Never (outside of the company I used to work for) for a 40 hour week with all of the paperwork and taxes that come along with that.

I had one guy who I gave ten bucks a day to take my packages to the post office. I have had others to help with packaging, etc. especially around the holidays. But I would NEVER let them touch any of my accounts. If I needed someone to do that, I would hire an adult and do it the right way, withholding and reporting taxes and all that. But I have a business partner and we use automation (like ShipStation) which saves a lot of time.

I know that technically when you hire people you are supposed to be set up for it with the tax withholding and everything, but I looked at it like hiring a kid to mow my lawn (which I have also done) shovel snow, etc.

The reason I wouldn't let anyone near my accounts is I don't want an instant competitor!

I see nothing wrong with telling some people that you are looking for whatever T-Shirts and offering them $5 for each one they find, at the right price, of course - and make sure they know EXACTLY what shirts you want, so there are no arguments over them buying the wrong shirts.

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

Don't give out too much info to your potential employees solefoodbk - you will create competition like that

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

I pay someone to pack/ship....thats all but I know bigger clients would have alot of orders questions returns and refunds - you can run it all through some helpdesk and hire someone to deal with it all.....

I have paid for product research before bit hit and miss......but got a few ideas....

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

I have employees , and it has cost me many accounts, but they are family members. I would never bring in someone off the street. I'm not worried about new competitors, I'm worried about carelessness. All it takes is 1 person daydreaming to wipe out 10 or 20 accounts. No matter what they say, no one cares about your business like you do. If I had my way I would get rid of all of them, as the extra volume and profits I can make with them is wiped out by the extra work I have to do to repair the damage they unintentionally cause.

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

never allow direct login...thats the solution if it is a linking issue.......

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

Make sure you do background check on potential hires too

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

If you use VMWare like 123 and several others here, you'll never have to worry about someone linking your accounts when processing your orders or replying to buyers.

Inside your VM, set your local connection to a proxy and DNS that does not exist - that way if you lose your VPN connection, your internet goes down and Amazon doesn't ever see a different IP. Also do this same thing with your actual VPN - set your DNS to a public DNS in case of a DNS leak.

This way, you can have default login enabled in each VM, you can do whatever you want inside that VM and never have to think about ANYTHING. The only risk is when you're setting up inventory - but you really don't need to hire anyone to do that part (just to process orders).

Ultimately, the best is probably automated. I wrote software to tap into personal accounts since Amazon only allows automation on the pro accounts - but Amazon keeps changing their system and so does firefox so it's really annoying to keep up. I'll probably upgrade to merchants and start shipstation since that seems to be what lots of people here are on.

Also, when replying to emails - use gmail and forward ALL your accounts to ONE gmail account. Add each account as an authorized sender in your settings and filter the respective messages into folders for each account. I only log into the actual email account of my sellers once - to set this up. From your main account, you can just click each seller account and reply to whatever messages you want - it's all from gmail's servers anyway so Amazon does not see anything different, and gmail does not change the email headers in any way to indicate that they have been forwarded/replied to. Then you/your people can respond directly in your one main email - it's all automatic, nothing to remember except your "name".

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

solefood, your posts would be much much much easier to read if you knew the difference between there, their, and they're. same goes for james north.

i would excuse your grammer if your flag wasn't from the US.

same thing goes for the words threw, through, and through

reading your posts is like reading a book written by a 5 year old.

you do realize that threw is past tense of throw? so you are saying that you threw your accounts?

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

Another wheel of fortune fail!

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

Hiring Cons /play on words ....give them a chance....

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

I find this hilarious! Someone who uses little punctuation, ZERO capital letters and hardly forms a sentence in a single post gives detailed criticism about spelling and grammar all the while spelling grammar wrong.
:amazed:
I love it!

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

I will call you the grammar teacher in this forum from now on because you made a comment on my post just to point out a grammatical error. Thanks grammar teacher!

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

I just started a VM with Ubuntu 32 Bit with 10 GB of HD space and 1GB of memory. I also purchased a one year VPN with HMA. How do I go about configuring this so that if the internet goes down they dno't see a different IP in Ubuntu?

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

HMA is one of the worst providers you can use, it gives shared ips & they have millions of users, chances you get an already used and blacklisted ip and get limited are extremely high.

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

Services like "Hide My Ass" are worthless for stealth. They are fine for downloading movies and general anonymity, but they are TERRIBLE for stealth. For a VPN to be effective, it must be both STATIC and DEDICATED. Static meaning that it never changes and dedicated meaning you are the only one using it. And you also do not want an IP that has been burned previously with eBay, Amazon or PayPal.

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

Thanks for the update Jeffweico and 123. I am currently in a chat with HMA having them refund me.

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

Static and dedicated is the way to go. Set up a VM for each account and you are good to go.

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

Its just so much money, $130 for each --yearly. Its a mission. I rather just use hotspot. Which I dont have to pay anything. I really would rather use a dedicated static IP so I could function better throughout the day without having to think back if I changed IP's Yada Yada, it's definately a mission. With the VPN I take it I can have all connections all eBay accoutns open at the same time with all my Virtual machines open... just a lot of money you know?

Re: Pros and Cons of hiring people
 

Hopefully they will refund without issues