Note: This post is for serious mystery shoppers!
Everybody I talk to seems to be irritated about gas prices. Especially certain mystery shoppers. They talk about how they have to turn down more shops or how they’re losing money on assignments because they have to spend so much on gas.
But for those of us with some ambition the high gas prices represent a very good opportunity.
Here’s why: Every assignment that gets turned down because of high gas prices is a shop that we can profit from…
If we’re smart!
What am I talking about, you ask?
A practical way to profit from high gas prices.
Every time an assignment gets turned down because of high gas prices, it stays open longer…making the fee more likely to rise. In addition, it will just plain be available to you to take as part of a “route.”
If you want to seriously CUT your fuel costs, then you need to get serious about doing mystery shop “routes.”
Instead of thinking about the “gas cost” for an assignment in terms of a round trip from you home and back…you need to figure in multiple assignments per trip…and THEN calculate the cost of gas per assignment.
For example:
If a store you need to shop is thirty miles away, then you need to find other assignments in the same direction. If, during that thirty mile trip, you do TWO assignments…then it averages out to only “15 miles” per trip. Add another assignment and it averages out to 10 miles per trip.
If you do five assignments and drive eighty miles round trip…that’s 16 miles per assignment. Which, if you’re paying $3.50 a gallon and get 30 miles per gallon, you’re paying $1.87 in gas per assignment.
Compare that to doing one assignment, 20 miles away: You’d be paying $4.67 for the gas. A big difference.
Not only does “routing” save you money on gas, it also lets you :
- Shop a wider area.
- Accept more assignments.
- Make more money per assignment.
- Worry less about the price of gas.
Of course, there will always be people who will use the high cost of gas as an excuse to stop mystery shopping altogether. And you shouldn’t mind at all…because that will mean less competition for you!
Here are some tips.
- Good schedulers will help create a route for you. If you ask nicely, they’re more likely to do it.
- Use a mapping program such as Google Maps to setup your route. Its a very powerful little tool, so take full advantage of it.
- Make sure you leave time to do the reports, or you’ll end up in front of your computer well past midnight filling out those reports.
yes, if you do a shop that is 30 miles away and add two more shops, that makes it only 10 miles per shop, however, you have to go home so that now makes it 20 miles. Also, not many get 30 miles to the gallon, in fact, that is rare, especially if you are not driving on highways. If you are driving local roads, your gas mileage is almost cut in half, again, making it very, very, expensive..you might want to recalculate your position.
Jane,
there are TWO ways to look at this. You can look for reasons why this doesn’t work…or reasons that it DOES work.
The number one reason that you CAN profit from the high gas prices is because MOST PEOPLE look for reasons that they can’t succeed…
They look at the high gas prices, and then decide that the prices are just too high…and THEN they try to justify WHY they are right.
The fact is, adding ROUTES to mystery shopping is a VERY effective way to lower the amount of gas that you consume on a shopping assignment…
It also lets you take assignments in a wider area, which means you can accept HIGHER paying assignments that other shoppers have refused…which in turn pays for the extra gas…
Think about it this way: For every assignment that you do on a route, your COST of gas PER ASSIGNMENT is lowered…by a lot!
Sure, you can come up with scenarios where you aren’t going to make money….and if you focus on those scenarios, that is all you’ll find!
But, if you look for opportunities instead of looking for failure…you’re going to be far more likely to succeed!
I’m frankly sick and tired of people complaining about gas prices. Its like complaining about the weather…you can either depress yourself about it, or just DEAL WITH IT, act quickly, and move far ahead all of the ‘complainers.’
I know this is a bit of a rant, but the fact is that if you want to really outperform other shoppers…then you MUST add routes to your shopping…and you HAVE TO figure out ways to ‘get around’ the high cost of gas.
And YES…you can!
I thought this was obvious! I have 2 months experience now. I live in a small town so I have to drive for almost all of my “Good” shops—meaning those that pay $20 or higher. The companies I work most for, I go about 80-90 miles one-way. I do 3 or 4 shops. My latest are $25, and the ones I have this week, for instance, are 5 to 20 miles from each other. So my round trip is just over 200 miles. In my car that’s 10 gallons of gas, so $35.00. It takes more than one entire shop just to pay for the gas. Don’t forget the other factors: 3 to 4 hours added to your day just for the drive. There is the temptation to rush to the next shop, but it is NOT worth it. If I go from one shop to the next without getting my observations on the first one completely down on paper, it is unreal how much I forget, or I start to mix the details of the different shops up! Talk about being at your computer all night! I’ve been there till 4AM.
Even if I “do everything right”, 5 apartment shops with 12 page reports are going to add up to 60 pages no matter what! In the wee hours, adjectives don’t come to me as easily as I would like and I write slower.
Now we still have to scan and copy to files; write a message and wait for the computer to attach all those files, for each shop.
When I think of the prep time, calls made, driving and actual shop time, and then time to file the report….I have an hourly wage way below the minimum!
One other thing and I’ll quit MY rant! I will sometimes accept shops even if I don’t make money, because there is a different “pay off”. To get a start with a company I want to work for, to help out a scheduler who has helped me, or will be able to in the future. In my short time I have learned that the relationships you build are the most important thing.
jan
i just read the responses to your beating the gas prices. from day one, i had figured out my routes when i accepted shops. and its working out just fine. and because of doing this, i have had scheduler’s calling me with bonuses because i am doing a big favor and besides that, the different companies that i shop for exchange my name to each other so i am making good relationships with them. but i dont just jump on any shop. i make sure i do enough on one trip to make it work.
michael
I only mystery shop part time, but I only take shops that are already on the way to some place I have to go anyway. This causes my cost for gas to be less than $1.00 per shop. Another plus is that much of my mileage is tax deductible as well. After all, I mystery shop to make money, not spend it.
Talk about a no brainer. I usually do at least two shop that are close together, and I plan them for when I have other errands in that area. If I do not have any plans, then I schedule at least three or four. Depending on how long the report is going to take. Anything over four shops a trip is a problem. You will have so many reports to get in, and most of them have different timetables.
Hello, I’m fairly new to Mystery Shopping, 2 months, I’ve had only 7 assignments so far. I appreciate the advise on the gas usage and the routing of the assignments, however, can somebody please tell me what companies you are working for that is giving you so many a day to route them like that? I am only getting 1 or 2 assignments a week. When I did have 2 in one day I was able to take the subway into the city, that was really nice on my gas tank.
Thanks for any help anyone can offer.
my pickup only gets 12 mpg. so you know I do more than one shop a day. I make a route out of it The shops I get now aRE MOSTLY 17 TO 45.00 a big improvement since I got certified.
so I take 3-5 at a time and line them up in a row and go at it, while keeping the radius to 20 miles. good luck to all
Do you want me to change it? Marsha/rambles
I used to do this as I had to drive an hour from my home to do any real work, but what I asked of the companies I worked for was to work together. I told my schedulers how much it costs for me to drive to the shop or shops and that I’m asking all schedulers to contribute towards gas costs. I would openly reveal how much I’ve already received and how much is still needed. It worked and everyone was happy. But with the price of gas so high now I can not see that working for the miles I have to drive. Also the route….I made more by waiting for them individually than what was offered as a route. Also I always planned the trip ahead of time and hit the shops in a row. I did on average 10 to 20 shops in each trip and I planned them every four to five days as I had three different towns 1 hour from me. In the end I still did not make a good living though because my working hours made my pay min. wage.
What do you think about a company which pays $10 and informs you after 45 days inform you that you would get paid if you wrote a $100 order per visit. They did not pay you for the stores which if you wrote an orde because it wasn’t $100.