Hiring someone to distribute flyers

I have tried to find an answer to this question by searching the posts but have not been able to find anything. If I hire someone to distribute fliers, am I responsible for them if they get hurt or damage someones property. Do I have to hire them as an employee? I would like to pay them one time, have them deliver the fliers and that’s it. Maybe hire again each month, but I don’t want an employee, workers comp and all that. Not yet anyway. I want to pay a per peice price. Would they be a sub contractor? I put an ad on Craigs list and got several responses for flier distributors. I want to know what I’m getting into before I hire anyone.

I’ve had some good luck with flyers. Im not sure about your own liability. If you have concerns you may want to go with a professional distribution company. Here it runs about .15 a flyer, and will most likely will be bundled with at least one other delivery.

The other option is to hire your friends/family, someone you think you can trust. If you hire a random craigslist person make sure you go back and audit the area before you pay them to ensure they don’t end up in a trash can.
The last w options should run you right around .10 a delivery. With a professional company you can get out several 1000 in a day, versus a couple buddies could probably do 300-500 each if you plan their route properly and they don’t give up half way through the day.

For a first timer I would not expect them to get more than 300 out. This kind of work is easy, but it wears on you quick.

You are hiring this person to provide the service of delivering fliers. As long as you just give them the fliers and expect them to distribute them on their own time, in their own vehicle, it should be a 1099. Now if you tell them to meet at your office at 8am on Tuesday and distribute for 8 hours and then meet back at your office to talk about it, you may be bordering on employee. Also, in my state, I believe you can pay an employee up to 600 dollars before you have to claim taxes on them.

Thanks guys that helps. I would prefer to hire a neighbor kid and some of his buddies, drive them out to an area and kind of supervise them. Make their parent happy as well. I did speak to a professioanl company in my area and they will do 1000-5000 for 20 cents apeice. Over 5000 and the price starts going down. To get near 15 cents, I would need 10,000 or so. However they have a crew of 6 people and get it done quickly. I was just cheap and trying to save a few dollars. I appreciate the advice.

i asked my guys if they want to put out door hangers on there own time. one guy said yes…i pulled him aside and told him that any work comes our way from his door hanging he gets 7% of that job off the top.
he went out for 3 hours and we got $1700 in work in the next 2 weeks. gave him $120.00 bonus on his payroll…he can’t wait to do it again!
i also have a 15 year old kid that has a pretty bad off family. i keep him busy w/ cleaning my truck, walking my dog, racking leaves, door hanging and all kinds of stuff. we both throw our bikes in the back of my truck and find a nice area w/ mail boxes on the street and flyer for about two hours on our bicycles. get out about 400 - 500 flyers. i give him $20.00 and a lunch of his choice. each time we go out , the company gets at least $1200.00 of work. the kid can’t wait to work for us full time when he’s a little older…there’s a lot of good kids w/ no where to turn right in your back yard. take a walk in your area and ask the young bucks if they wanna flyer for 2 hrs w/ you for $15.00 bucks. you’ll be surprised w/ the outcome, and you’ll be teaching kids the value of work.

Why not call a local paper that everyone reads and find out how much it would be to put a single flyer insert in the paper. Around here I’m pretty sure the cost breaks down to less than 5 cents a piece - they print it and deliver it. Not full color but from my experience, you can design a successful black and white flyer.

Here it is from the horse that counts. The IRS rules for independent contractor. Keep yourself out of potential trouble and take a look at this.

p1779.pdf (805 KB)p1779.pdf (805 KB)

I ended up finding a company in my area that distributes flyers as a business. I found them online and she charges 14 cents per flier. Not as cheap as I would like and I was afraid she would not deliver where or when I asked her to. I gave it a shot and it worked. She delivered 1000 for $140. It took her crew (6 people) most of a day and a couple times they took 2 days, but the phones started ringing so I knew they were delivered. Anyway, even though it’s not that cheap, it was cost effective, within IRS rules for private contractors and kept me free to work. I used them once a month during the summer and fall along with other ads in local papers, website and such. I will use her again to target specific areas with a special ad for that area. I am doing to be doing direct mail in spring for the first time. I will see what works best and it most cost effective to refine my advertising for next year.

I do direct mail for 14.2 cents per piece (postage). It gives a lot of freedom as far as the areas you can hit, and you can better control when and where they go out, as well as do more volume through the USPS.

If direct mail is successful for you, you may end up ditching the flier company completely.

I am sure I will dump them when I get started with direct mail. The cost is the same for delivery, just have to figure in printing costs. My old flyers (that worked pretty well) were just made up on a word document by me (cheap to make and print). I will be using some of the WCR flyers for spring. I know they will cost more to print. Really looking forward to it. I was at my local UPS store mailing some packages when I discovered they handle EDDM right from their store. I think I will check with them to see if it’s affordable. I’m sure it will be much easier. The handle everything from printing to bundling and delivery to the post office. I’ll look into it when I am ready.

This is what I do,I pay a couple kids at the local high school who their parents happen to be friends of ours,and the results have been pretty good

i remember one of our fellow members saying “you gotta go back to when you started sometimes.” think he was holding a sign and on the side of the road chillin.
too ballsy for me. but i will be starting door to door through our postal system soon. the hittin the concrete marketing will dwindle down a lot.
but i’ll still hit the concrete maybe 3 times a season.

Make sure you have a way of tracking where they put them, not every address but have them trak every street they put flyers out on and then go by the site and you should see them in some doors. I had this clown tell me he put flyers out and dropped 200 of them in one persons mailbox. They called us and told me and l went to pick up the flyers from them and actully ended up selling them work. Needless to say I never used the guy again.

You need a license form the SDPD in order to put flyers out here and I now pay my employees commission on all the calls that come in off the flyers, have had good success with them and we normally put them out when it gets slow

Company I do business with sells us 1000 for like 85.00, they will probably ship them to you

You can mail them for 14 cents a piece.

I have given a mailer some thought, what company are you speaking of?

i have found that most leafletters can do 5 hrs walking twice a week max. its hard on the body . i usually give them a streetmap and a marker to colour in the streets on the map as they go. its difficult to keep check on a leafletter,one time i wore a black Elvis wig and borrowed a car to check in disguise !and he was doing the leaflettiing just fine / ive also heard of a competitor using borrowed cars to check on his workers too

Check out this thread. There is also a video linked to the first post of the thread.
http://windowcleaner.com/vBulletin/marketing-advertising-sales/13358-10-steps-direct-mail-success-video.html