I'm thinking of hiring some employees for a project. The work is very simple and straightforward — one step above clearing dirt. There's a machine that requires about five minutes of training to use. The whole process can basically be taught in 10 minutes. It's in-town, so completely safe. You need a sword with Looting III. The work can be done any time. I'd like to let employees schedule work in hour blocks when it is convenient to them (with a minimum number of hours per week of course) What's about the going price (per hour) for some fairly unskilled but competent labor? Am I talking like 1k, 5k, 10k, 50k!? What should I be able to hire someone fairly competent and trustable for?
This is the best way to do it. Very few people without the initiative to go and do whatever it is you have planned without doing it themselves will work for an hour. But lots of people would work for 5 minutes for a decent amount of rupees. The best way for you to do it is, assuming it's some kind of mob drops, is give approved workers/players all needed flags and set up a private sell sign for them. This way workers can work when they choose, determine how many rupees they make/minute by how hard they work, eliminating the risk of them slacking off whilst being payed an hourly rate no matter how hard they work. It also lets people work for you while you are offline, out of town, etc.
I don't think an hourly wage is applicable to a Minecraft job. Some players can do complex sequences with rapid succession and others have a hard time crafting 5 DCs of paper per hour. Plus, nothing stops them from slacking in their work and intentionally not working as efficiently as they can. I suggest paying a fair margin of the production of the worker instead of an hourly wage. So say what they produce makes 20,000 in however long they work for your business, they can have 10,000r of that. Obviously, that ratio depends widely on what the job is and the circumstances of the business so you decide what portion of the profit to share. Other than that, I personally find that's the best way to do it.
You should follow DH32's advice. That will be the most cost-effective way. Another thing to keep an eye on is what is being collected isn't too easy to get by other means. What I'm saying is that you need to be sure that your workers can't bring twenty stacks of the materials with them and make ya broke in five minutes. Just my advice. ^_^
I trust your judgment Well, I work too much to have a whole hour dedicated to working within Minecraft, but I could learn and adapt if ya want. You've got me interested in this job. =D [EDIT] I'm not in it for the rupees, just for the interest of helping, so I'd let you pay me 2500r per shift.