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.