There's a ceiling to what one person can accomplish, and most resellers hit it somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000 in monthly sales. Beyond that point, growth requires either working unsustainable hours or getting help. The decision to bring someone else into your operation feels massive, fraught with questions about trust, cost, and whether you're ready. But done correctly, delegating the right tasks frees you to focus on what actually grows the business.
The first question isn't whether you can afford help; it's whether you can afford not to get it. If you're spending hours on tasks that don't require your specific expertise, every hour spent there is an hour not spent sourcing, analyzing inventory data, or building relationships that yield better deals. Your time has a value, and when low-value tasks consume your high-value hours, you're effectively subsidizing inefficiency.
The First Tasks to Delegate
Shipping is almost always the best place to start outsourcing. The work is straightforward, requires minimal judgment, and eats enormous amounts of time at scale. Packaging items, printing labels, and making post office runs can be taught to nearly anyone in a few hours. The skills required are care and consistency, not deep reselling knowledge. Many resellers start by hiring a local teenager or stay-at-home parent for 10 hours per week at $12 to $15 per hour.
Photography is the second strongest candidate. If you've standardized your setup with consistent lighting and backgrounds, an assistant can photograph items following your template. They might not have your eye for which angle shows the garment best, but you can train them on your specific requirements. Some resellers photograph their own inventory but delegate the editing and uploading to assistants or virtual workers.
Delegation Priority Order
High Priority (delegate first): Packing and shipping, post office runs, inventory organization, steaming and prepping items
Medium Priority: Photography, basic listings from templates, cross-listing to additional platforms, responding to standard customer questions
Low Priority (keep yourself): Sourcing decisions, pricing strategy, brand authentication, complex customer negotiations
Cleaning and preparation work represents another delegatable category. Washing, steaming, and prepping items for photography requires minimal judgment once you've established standards. An assistant who handles prep work while you source can dramatically increase your throughput without increasing your working hours.
The Math of Hiring
Calculate your effective hourly rate by dividing your monthly net profit by the hours you work. If you're netting $4,000 per month and working 60 hours weekly, your effective rate is roughly $16 per hour. Now look at which tasks consume your time. If shipping takes 15 hours per week and you can hire someone for $13 per hour, the cost is $195 weekly, freeing 15 hours you could spend sourcing.
The key insight is that your time sourcing generates more value than your time shipping. If those 15 freed hours let you source $1,500 more inventory monthly, and that inventory yields a 50% profit margin, you've added $750 in profit for $780 in labor cost. That looks like a loss until you realize the inventory compounds: you've built up stock that will sell over multiple months, and your sourcing efficiency improves with more dedicated time. Within 60 to 90 days, most resellers who delegate shipping find their profits have increased despite the additional labor expense.
Start with a small time commitment, perhaps 5 to 10 hours per week. This limits your financial exposure while you learn to manage someone else. Increase hours as you prove the arrangement works and as your volume justifies more help.
Finding the Right People
Local hiring typically works best for physical tasks like shipping and prep. Post on neighborhood Facebook groups, Nextdoor, or community bulletin boards. Avoid formal job sites initially; they attract overqualified candidates who won't stick around for part-time, flexible work. You're looking for someone who wants supplemental income with non-rigid hours, like college students, retirees, or parents of school-age children.
Virtual assistants work well for listing, customer service, and administrative tasks. Platforms like OnlineJobs.ph connect you with experienced virtual workers, often at rates of $4 to $8 per hour for basic tasks. These workers can handle cross-listing to multiple platforms, responding to customer inquiries, and managing your inventory database. The time zone difference can actually work in your favor: your assistant works while you sleep, and you wake up to listed items and answered messages.
Never give anyone else access to your selling platform passwords or payout accounts. Create separate sub-accounts with limited permissions where possible, or have the assistant work on tasks that don't require account access. A single dishonest helper can destroy years of reputation and inventory.
Training and Systems
Before your first hire, document your processes. Record yourself packing orders with a phone, narrating each step. Create a simple checklist for photo requirements. Write out the template you use for listings. These materials become your training program and your quality control standard. When something goes wrong, you can point to the documentation rather than relying on memory of what you told them.
Expect the first few weeks to feel slower, not faster. Training takes time, and you'll be correcting mistakes. This is normal and not a sign that hiring was a bad idea. The efficiency gains come after the training investment, usually around week four or five. Resellers who abandon the experiment after two weeks never reach the payoff.
The Transition Challenges
Letting go is hard. You've built this business by controlling every detail, and handing pieces to someone else feels like risking everything. Start with low-stakes tasks and build trust gradually. A mistake in packing an order is fixable; a mistake in pricing a rare item might cost hundreds of dollars. Match the task's risk level to your trust in the person handling it.
Some resellers discover they're actually building an obstacle for themselves: the business can never grow because it requires them specifically for every function. This isn't dedication; it's a trap. The goal is a business that operates systematically, where your role shifts from doing everything to overseeing the system. This transition enables genuine scaling rather than just working longer hours.
Family members represent both the easiest and most complicated option. A spouse, teenager, or retired parent might happily help for minimal or no pay, but mixing family and business creates its own tensions. Set clear expectations from the beginning about hours, tasks, and quality standards. Treat family helpers with the same professionalism you'd show a hired stranger, including regular feedback and appreciation.
Not everyone should hire help. If your enjoyment comes from the hands-on work, and you're not trying to scale beyond what you can personally handle, staying solo makes perfect sense. Hiring is about growth capacity, not status. But if you find yourself turning down opportunities because you're already maxed out, or resenting the time spent on repetitive tasks, help might be exactly what your business needs to reach its next level.