Many people take the time as one year transitions into a new one to reflect on the past 12 months and to look forward to the future. Often this is a time when people make changes in an effort to improve themselves so that the new year can be even better than the past. While many people make this effort with regards to their personal lives by making resolutions to lose weight, give more freely of themselves, save more money, and so forth, many mystery shoppers are also doing this same thing in an effort to make the new year more profitable than the last.
Of course, it’s one thing to say, “I want to make more money mystery shopping this year,” and it’s another thing to actually do that. If you want to be successful in your goals for the new year, you have to lay out a path of stepping stones that can help you to reach your final destination for next December. So just how can you ensure that next December when you look back at the income you’ve earned for the year as a mystery shopper, it’s a larger figure than ever? Here are some tips:
Work More Efficiently. Mystery shopping is one of those jobs where you really can take your time and enjoy yourself while working on-site. Some mystery shoppers love to stroll through aisles, browse the merchandise, and really interact for long periods of time with store staff, too. Of course, whether you take twenty minutes to complete a site visit or an hour, the compensation is the same. If you want to earn more money in the new year, you will need to find a way to work more efficiently so that you can squeeze in more assignments to complete during the day.
Analyze Your Income. It’s pretty easy to go on auto-pilot as a mystery shopper and simply request assignment after assignment on the job boards without really considering the work you are signing up to do or who you are doing that work for. The new year, however, is a great time to analyze your income more closely. Consider the types of assignments that you do for different providers, paying attention to the ease and time requirement on average with each. Also consider how easy each of your providers are to work for and how quickly they pay you. Your goal is to weed out the providers with harder and more time consuming assignments, as well as those that take up your valuable time by asking unnecessary questions about your reports. It is amazing how much more time you will find to work on assignments when you do this!
Keep Your Eyes Open. If you are one of those mystery shoppers who simply selects assignments on the job boards because they sound like fun today or because they have a higher base compensation amount than others, you may want to re-think this strategy if you want to be more profitable. Base compensation is just one of many factors that affect your total compensation on an assignment. Consider other factors like the travel time, expense reimbursement, the tax write-off for miles traveled, and the purchase itself. Are you being required to buy something that you don’t need, like a nick knack, or is the purchase something that you will indeed need to buy anyway, like food for the fridge? While it can be fun to blindly pick out random assignments from the job boards, you likely will find that your time is more well spent as a mystery shopper when you pay attention to the total compensation of each assignment, including what the value of the required purchase is to you.
The new year is the perfect time to start making these changes in your mystery shopping job so you can start earning more with each assignment you do. You likely will notice such a big difference in your income level during that first month or two after making these changes that you will want to continue on with them for the remainder of the year and beyond!