New mystery shoppers often timidly enter this new and promising career. Even if a friend or family member suggested the job to you, you may feel a bit uneasy about committing yourself to something that seems uncertain, and where most of your interaction with your new employers is done via the internet and email.
This uncertainty soon turns to excitement and motivation after you realize through your own personal experiences that mystery shopping is indeed a relatively easy way to earn money, and a job where you can control your own schedule. Your mind then turns to ways to make more money as a mystery shopper. Here are some steps every new mystery shopper can take to get started making more money:
Find The Right Providers. Some mystery shoppers mistakenly believe that you should sign up with as many mystery shopping providers as you can. This is not necessarily the case. Ideally, you only want to spend your time perusing job boards of providers that offer the type of jobs you like to work on and in the territory where you are working. Otherwise, you are wasting time searching through job boards where you really have little to no chance of finding decent assignments.
Providers often feature assignments in a certain part of the country or work with their own specific clients (such as a specific gas station, a specific retail department store, and so on). You can narrow down your list of providers by checking online at the mystery shopping forums to determine which providers offer assignments in your area as well as which ones offer the types of assignments you enjoy working on. If you don’t know what type of assignments you enjoy doing, keep your options open here to really give yourself the most job possibilities.
Keep A Calendar. Most mystery shoppers are drawn to mystery shopping because they can earn money around their already busy schedules. Perhaps you are juggling work at your full-time job, you are a college student with a full load of classes, or a busy mom juggling a family schedule. Whatever your other commitments are, it’s often hard for a busy person to find empty spaces in their commitments when they have time to pick up a few extra assignments. Get started today keeping a calendar that has all of your business, personal, and family commitments all in one place. This way, you can quickly and easily see if and when you have time to pick up an extra assignment. If you can squeeze in an assignment near your office at lunch on Tuesday or while the kids are at swimming lessons on Thursday afternoon, a quick glance at your calendar will let you know for sure. The most profitable mystery shoppers are those who are organized and keep detailed track of all of their commitments.
Analyze The Assignments. At first glance, it can seem like a no-brainer to pass up a $5 assignment and pick up the $20 assignment right under it on the job board. But this is not always the case. Consider the $5 assignment that is located at your neighborhood grocery store and offers a $10 expense reimbursement. First, you likely were planning on a trip to this same store at some point during the week, and were likely going to make a purchase from this store. So this not only gives you $5 for a trip you were going to make, but also reimburses you $10 for an expense you needed to make, too. Not to mention being able to write off the mileage for travel you had intended to make, too.
Next, consider the $20 assignment. Let’s say this assignment is at a novelty store in the mall that requires an un-reimbursed purchase of at least $5. Once you arrive at the store, you find there is nothing in the store you need, and the lowest priced item is $10. So now your net pay is $10 when you take into account the required purchase. Further, the mall was not a location you had intended to visit. So while you can write the mileage off, the travel expense is still an added cost to doing the shop. Smart mystery shoppers will take the time to analyze each and every assignment in detail before decided for or against requesting it.
These helpful hints will get you well on your way to making more money as a mystery shopper!