There are two ways to get assignments as a mystery shopper. You can click on a “self-assign” job and instantly know the job is yours, or you can “request a job” and wait for a scheduler to assign the job to you. While many of the (often) higher paying and more complicated assignments have to be scheduled through the scheduler, there are some definite pros to seeking out and selecting self-assign jobs.
It’s Mine! Assuming your profile with the mystery shopping provider meets all of the requirements, the self-assign job will be yours as soon as you request it. Some of the criteria may include your age, income level, and shopper rating, as well as any number of other criteria.
There is a huge advantage to knowing immediately if you will have a job assignment on a particular day and time, versus having to wait possibly several days to receive a response back from your scheduler. You can immediately pencil that job into your calendar, as well as strategically plan other mystery shop assignments for that same part of town on that same day to make your shopping outing more profitable. It does nothing but drain your valuable time and resources to wait several days and pass over other possible assignments while you sit and wait for a scheduler to get back to you and let you know if you have a job.
And of course this allows you to more easily plan your personal life as well!
Work It Out! One of the main reasons many mystery shoppers originally chose this line of work is the ability to have a flexible schedule as well as to have an unlimited income potential. While it initially may seem more advantageous to hold for the possibility of a (usually) higher-paying requested assignment and get paid more for your time and effort, there is a point where you will be waiting to get that assignment only to end up not working at all that day because the scheduler assigned the job to someone else.
With self-assign jobs, you can very strategically scan down the listings of job assignments and see which assignments are in roughly the same part of town and on the same day. This way, you can schedule 2 or 3 jobs in one part of town on Monday, and then do another couple of assignments in another part of town on Tuesday. Although not impossible, it is usually much more difficult to book to scheduler-assigned jobs in the same part of town on the same day. Often you have more flexibility with the dates you shop a self-assign job, so you can conveniently work these around your personal life as well. There’s really no point sitting at home waiting for a job when you could be out working as much as you want!
Use Them Wisely! While you very well could make a great living off of self-assign jobs alone, ideally you will learn how to strategically combine self-assign jobs with scheduler-assigned jobs to maximize your earnings. Many scheduler-assigned jobs are scheduled several days to a week or longer out, whereas you can self-assign a job for yourself as early as the same day. Strategically, it is better to use scheduler-assigned jobs to plan for your assignments a week or two out. Then use self-assign jobs to fill in the holes in your schedule as well as book around the scheduler-assigned jobs on your calendar.
So don’t pass over the scheduler-assigned jobs, but rather use the two different types of jobs strategically to fill up your mystery shopping calendar and make more money!