How to Start Your Mystery Shopping Career

Mystery shopping is a pretty easy job to get started in. You sign up with a few providers, and then search the job boards for an assignment you want to complete. It’s really as simple as that. But as easy as it is to get started in mystery shopping, there are a lot of places where you can get in over your head if you’re not careful. Here are some tips for the beginner mystery shopper:

Find A Few Providers. Likely you have already found a few providers. You may want to jump into the deep end and sign up with as many mystery shopping providers as you can. But before you spend all this time and effort, consider the reasons to work with just a few providers initially.

When you work with just a handful of providers, you can learn more easily and quickly what that provider’s preferences are on reporting style. Each provider differs slightly on how they prefer answers to be worded or how questions should be addressed. It seems like a fairly simple concept that you can tackle with many providers all at once, and perhaps you can. But you will have a much simpler time learning the ropes of mystery shopping by learning the ins and outs of just a couple of companies at a time. Also, keep in mind that if you have issues on reports, a scheduler can reduce or even completely cut your pay on an assignment. So you can save yourself some hard-earned cash by adding just a few providers at a time to your line-up.

You can also get a good idea of how many assignments each of these providers can throw your way and gauge how many other providers you realistically need to sign up for to hit the income level  you’re looking for.

Start Slow. Initially, select an assignment or two to complete. Walk through these assignments as learning experiences, trying to figure out where you need to learn some tricks of the trade. For instances, if you have trouble doing timing on one assignment, you can easily hit the mystery shopping forums and ask for help before you head off to your next assignment. Then your next assignment will be easier for you to complete.

You will also want to wait a few days between your first several assignments so you can get feedback from your schedulers on your work. If you have some issues with your initial reports, you can learn from these before you start kicking things into high gear by completing more assignments.

Get A  Variety Of Experiences. When you’re just starting out as a mystery shopper, you will want to try out a lot of different types of assignments. If one assignment at a retail store turns you off, try another couple of retail store assignments before you write off that kind of assignment completely. Be sure to try assignment types you may think initially you won’t like. You may surprise yourself by branching out and trying new things.

Then, once  you’ve determined how to complete reports, some of the tricks of the trade, and which types of assignments you enjoy working on, you can start knocking out assignments left and right without many hang-ups.

What New Mystery Shoppers Can Expect For A Paycheck

Many mystery shoppers get into mystery shopping for a number of reasons. Among those reasons are a flexible schedule and the thrill of doing something covert. Plus there are the perks of getting to keep most of what you buy while you’re “working.” Mystery shoppers often are pulled into this job with the hopes of making great side money, or maybe even quitting their regular job to be a full time mystery shopper. If you’re new to mystery shopping, chances are you have wondered how much money you can realistically expect to earn as a mystery shopper.

Reality Check. While there are some skills required to be a mystery shopper (such as being detail oriented and the ability to write a clear and concise report), the job is largely open to just about everyone. On a pay scale, this puts the job on the equivalent of perhaps working in a retail store or waiting tables. There is some skill required, but most people could do the job.

What this means for your paycheck is that when you look at your mystery shopping pay on an hourly basis, you can expect to make maybe $10-15 hour on a decent assignment. Of course, with mystery shopping you are paid for completing the assignment and not per hour, so if you can work faster than that and fit in more assignments into your day, you can make more money for your time.

There are assignments that pay more than this, but they are largely few and far between, and they often go to more seasoned mystery shoppers rather then new or inexperienced mystery shoppers.

Why Mystery Shopping Is Better. Mystery shopping of course has additional perks that traditional part-time jobs don’t have. You have the ability to work as much or as little as you want or need to. You can work one month, and take the next month off. You get reimbursed for most of your purchases, giving you “freebies” on on a variety of goods and services. You can also write off your travel mileage to and from your “job.” With most hourly or part-time jobs, you’re not allowed to do this.

Making Mystery Shopping A Full-Time Gig. For the vast majority of mystery shoppers, mystery shopping is a part-time gig. Some may work just a few hours a month, and some may work up to twenty or thirty hours a week. Some mystery shoppers may work around their kids’ after-school activities while others may work around their college course schedule to make extra money.

Since you can customize your work schedule, mystery shopping allows you to work as much or as little as you like. There is the opportunity and the possibility for most mystery shoppers to work 40 or more hours per week and earn the equivalent of full-time pay for their efforts. In some parts of the country, particularly rural areas where assignments are scarce, this is not a feasible possibility. The mystery shoppers who have successfully turned their mystery shopping business into a full-time job are few and far between. These pros work hard to line up a consistent work schedule on a regular basis and put in full-time hours to this job each week.

As with many things in life, with mystery shopping will get out of it what you put into it. But before you get too involved in the job, it’s nice to know what pay scale to expect!

Easy Ways to Find Mystery Shop Assignments in Your Area

A common question asked by both new and experienced mystery shoppers alike is how to find shops in their own little part of the world. With mystery shoppers’ travel costs going up as the cost of gas rises, many mystery shoppers want to remain fairly close to home when doing mystery shop assignments. Rural mystery shoppers often have difficulty locating shops in their own small town or nearby towns. Likewise, shoppers in major metropolitan areas may enjoy many mystery shop assignments in their town and surrounding suburbs. However, they may not want to fight traffic for assignments across town and may only want to complete assignments within a 10 or 15 mile radius of their home.

Is there an easy way to find mystery shop assignments in your area? Absolutely!

Use The Web! One of the favorite sites of experienced mystery shoppers is jobslinger.com. This website compiles mystery shop assignments from numerous mystery shop providers, providing you with one easy location to search for and find shop assignments. It’s easy to register for the site, and there are no fees associated with registering or obtaining jobs. There are jobs posted on this site for locations across the country, and you can easily search for jobs by location.

This site compiles jobs from volition.com, SASSIE, DemoZilla, and the MSPA, so there is no need to spend your valuable time searching through job postings on so many websites when you can do a quick search at just one website.

WAIT….There Are More! While jobslinger.com conveniently encompasses many of the mystery shop providers, it is not a catch-all. You may need to do some additional research into other shop providers out there in your neck of the woods, especially if your neck of the woods is off the beaten path. The number of shop providers you should register for has been suggested at anywhere from 10 to 75 or more. However, if you use some common sense and devote some time into researching providers before you register for them, you may save yourself quite a bit of time. Registering for a handful of providers who you know have assignments in your area is far better than registering for twenty or more providers who rarely or never have assignments near you.

The Power of the People. Mystery shoppers are a very open and supportive group of individuals. Most shoppers are more than happy to help out a fellow shopper in need. Use online forums and discussion groups to post specific questions you have about a mystery shop provider or about assignments in the specific location you are in. While it may seem counter-intuitive for a mystery shopper who is busy in their own part of the world to share his or her secrets of success with other shoppers, there are usually more than enough shop assignments to go around from the hundreds of shop providers across the nation. So use your (human) resources to get the information you need to find more and better shops.

The bottom line is to do some research into shop providers. While it may be tempting to put all of your eggs in one basket like jobslinger.com, it may be worth your while to branch out and find some less trafficked shop providers who aren’t associated with jobslinger.com yet. Use the web and your fellow mystery shoppers to get the insight and knowledge you need to find more and better mystery shop assignments near you.

Why New Mystery Shoppers May Not Be Getting Assignments (And What to Do About It!)

One of the biggest frustrations new mystery shoppers face in their new career is getting enough mystery shopping assignments to work on to generate the amount of income they are looking for. As a new mystery shopper, there are some steps you can take to maximize your chances of getting some assignments.

Ask For It! Many new mystery shoppers simply don’t know where to start. After you’ve signed up with a few mystery shopping providers, you may not know what the next step is. You receive plenty of emails for new assignments posted to the job boards, and you spend time looking at the many assignments available, but for some reason you simply are not being requested to complete assignments.

It may sound simple, but some mystery shoppers do not know that most assignments will need to be requested. For the large part, providers will not ask for you to complete an assignment. Rather, they will post an open assignment on the job board and will wait for an interested mystery shopper to request the assignment. So if you aren’t requesting assignments, you are missing out on possible job opportunities.

Be The Early Bird On The Job Boards. Once job assignments are posted on the job boards, they are often divvied out on a first come, first serve basis. Meaning the first qualified mystery shopper who requests the assignment gets the job. This is not always the case, but is more often true than not. So if you want to make the most money as you can as a mystery shopper, you need to check the job boards often and preferably at least several times a day. Many providers send their mystery shoppers emails showing new assignments on the job boards, so it’s a good idea to check  your email several times a day as well. It is not uncommon for some assignments to be snatched up within minutes of the assignment being posted, so the more often you can check  the job boards, the more likely you are to get the assignments you want.

Experience Matters (Sometimes). Most mystery shopping assignments have specific pre-requisites for the mystery shopper. This may be that you are within a certain age range, that you have a certain “shopper rating”, or any other number of other factors. The shopper rating of a new shopper is typically an average rating, allowing you with the opportunity to move up on the rating scale for a good job done on assignments, as well as down on the scale if you perform poorly. If an assignment requires a higher than average rating, you automatically will not be qualified to perform that job. So while there are a great number of assignments you will be able to complete without experience, some assignments do require that you have some prior positive experience as a mystery shopper.

As with many things in life, getting assignments as a new mystery shopper requires persistence. So stick with it and soon you will be completing as many mystery shopping assignments as you can, making the kind of mystery shopping cash you’ve been looking forward to!

How Many Mystery Shopping Providers Should You Sign Up To Work For?

Whether you’re new to mystery shopping or you’ve been doing it for years, you likely have wondered at some point if there is a magic number of mystery shopping provides you should work for. Is it better to focus on just a handful or will you get more money in the long run by branching and working for as many providers as you can. The simple answer is that there is not a magic number.

Making Time For The Job Boards. Simply signing up to work for a mystery shopping provider is of little use to you if you don’t have time to scour the job boards and sign up for assignments. Look at your own personal schedule, thinking about the time you have available to commit to mystery shopping. If you have more time to work on job assignments, it may be worthwhile for you to add a few more providers to your work list. On the flip side, if you don’t have enough time as it is to regularly check the job boards of the providers you’re already working for, it makes little sense to add more providers to your work list.

Find The Right Providers. Something to consider, however, is that if you are spending all of your time looking for assignments and very little time completing assignments, you may not be signed up to work for the “right” providers for you. To make the most money as a mystery shopper, you want to find the ideal providers that offer plenty of assignments in your area, as well as the type of assignments you enjoy working.

You can do a little homework on providers before spending your time signing up for them by using the resources available on the mystery shopping web forum. Your fellow mystery shoppers on the online forum are more than happy to share tips and advice on providers they have worked with. However, part of locating the right providers for you will be trial and error as well. If you sign up for a provider and spend more time viewing their job boards than working on paying assignments, you may want to cut that provider loose and move on.

New Mystery Shoppers. If you’re new to mystery shopping, you may not know what type of assignments you prefer working on. You also may not have a good idea based on personal knowledge of what makes a provider “good.” It’s advisable to sign up with just a couple of providers initially. After you’ve complete a few assignments for each provider, you will not only have a better idea on what type of assignments you enjoy doing, but will also have a good idea on which providers are able to provide you with enough work to properly compensate for the time you’re spending searching through their job boards.

Don’t be afraid to end a relationship with a provider if that business relationship is not in your best interests, providing you with a sufficient number of the type of assignments you enjoy doing.

What To Do When You Don’t Get Paid

One of the most common complaints mystery shoppers have about their providers is that they don’t pay fast enough. For some providers, this complaint has turned into a full dilemma when the paycheck doesn’t arrive after weeks of waiting. Before you go into panic mode about your missing paycheck, take a deep breath and think about your options.

Check The Calendar. Before you call up your provider with an angry tone and even angrier words, double check your dates. Verify the date you submitted the report, but keep in mind that most providers don’t count the report as “complete” until after all questions have been answered. So if you and your scheduler went back and forth for a week answering questions on the report, use the date of final correspondence on the report as your starting point on the calendar. Then count the number of weeks until today.

While many mystery shoppers would love to get paid a week or two after an assignment is complete, in the real world most providers won’t send out your payment until one to two months after the report is submitted. A few providers average even more time than this! Don’t start harassing your provider about your check into the provider’s average stated turnaround time on payments has passed.

Check The Website. Providers offer a range of useful information on their websites. Take a few moments to log in to your account with that provider and check your account status. You can often get valuable information from your account page that may clear up any questions you may have. For instance, some providers require payment to be sent via PayPal. If you don’t have a PayPal account on record with your provider, some providers will simply hold your payment until you submit that information to them. Some providers also include payment information on-line, such as the date a check was mailed as well as what address the check was mailed to.

Check The On-Line Forums. Mystery shopping forums are often used by mystery shoppers to share feedback on providers, including information on slow and no payment. Take some time to peruse the message boards to locate the information you are looking for. If you can’t find the information you need, simply post a quick message about your issue and await the response. Usually you will get back several relevant responses within just a few short hours.

Ask Nicely. When every indication points to the fact that your payment should have arrived long ago, simply send a polite email to your provider to request an update on the payment. Keep in mind that any number of things could have happened, from a simple oversight in the provider’s bookkeeping to a check getting lost in the mail. A polite email can be used to both give the provider a gentle reminder that you are still expecting your payment as well as to notify them that there may have been an issue the paycheck’s delivery (via PayPal, US mail, or other methods). While you may be livid that it’s been three months since you completed the assignment and have not yet gotten paid, it really accomplishes nothing to get angry. So unless the matter escalates, try to keep a friendly and professional tone to get your check faster.

While not getting paid (or not getting paid promptly) can be a frustrating issue for mystery shoppers, you will usually get your end result of receiving a paycheck by staying calm and exploring the situation in more detail on your own before you raise the issue with your provider.

How To Find Easy Mystery Shopping Assignments

Whether you are new to mystery shopping or you’ve been a mystery shopper for years, the question still remains – how do you go about finding easy mystery shopping assignments? Sure, there are plenty of difficult or time-consuming assignments around, some paying well and others that hardly pay enough to cover your gas money to the job site. Many mystery shoppers shy away from the more complex assignments, even when the pay is good, and opt for easier assignments.  If you are looking for ways to find a few more easier assignments to work on (and who isn’t?), here’s what you need to do:

Know Your Source. In the mystery shopping world, schedulers are the metaphoric “hand that feeds you.” While there are some self-assign jobs where the assignments or doled out on a first come, first serve basis, the large majority of assignments must be requested by the mystery shopper and than ultimately decided on by the scheduler. As you work with your mystery shopping providers, you will come to realize that there are typically just a handful of schedulers at each provider that you will work with. With these select few individuals deciding who works on assignments and who does not, you can see that it pays to get in the good graces of your schedulers.

You don’t have to be a scheduler’s best friend. Simply be professional, polite, and friendly with each interaction you have with the scheduler. Make sure that each report you file is accurate, complete, and your best quality work. When your report is sub-par, you create more work for your scheduler by requiring the scheduler to work with you to fill in any holes and clear up discrepancies. The last thing your scheduler wants to do is assign the next job to someone who creates more work for them to do!

Check The Job Boards Often. In the mystery shopping world, the saying, “The early bird gets the worm” rings all too true. On self-assign jobs, the first mystery shopper to request the assignment gets the job. Even on assignments that you must request, the scheduler will often hand the assignment over to the first qualified mystery shopper that comes along, provided that mystery shopper is good to work with.

With the vast majority of providers, an email is sent out to mystery shoppers when new jobs are posted in your area. So even if you don’t have time to check each and every provider’s job board several times a day, be sure to check your email as often as you can so you can get first dibs on the plum assignments!

Keep Tabs. As you take on more and more assignments, you will soon see that most providers run the same series of assignments from the same companies. So if you find a few providers that offer the easy assignments you are looking for, be sure to frequent their job boards more frequently. When you know where to look for the easy assignments, you will have a better shot at being the first one to see them posted on-line and request them!

It is not always easy to find the easy mystery shopping assignments, but when you have the right contacts and you know where to look for the assignments, you will find yourself doing more of the easier assignments that you prefer working on.