One of the biggest frustrations new mystery shoppers face in their new career is getting enough mystery shopping assignments to work on to generate the amount of income they are looking for. As a new mystery shopper, there are some steps you can take to maximize your chances of getting some assignments.
Ask For It! Many new mystery shoppers simply don’t know where to start. After you’ve signed up with a few mystery shopping providers, you may not know what the next step is. You receive plenty of emails for new assignments posted to the job boards, and you spend time looking at the many assignments available, but for some reason you simply are not being requested to complete assignments.
It may sound simple, but some mystery shoppers do not know that most assignments will need to be requested. For the large part, providers will not ask for you to complete an assignment. Rather, they will post an open assignment on the job board and will wait for an interested mystery shopper to request the assignment. So if you aren’t requesting assignments, you are missing out on possible job opportunities.
Be The Early Bird On The Job Boards. Once job assignments are posted on the job boards, they are often divvied out on a first come, first serve basis. Meaning the first qualified mystery shopper who requests the assignment gets the job. This is not always the case, but is more often true than not. So if you want to make the most money as you can as a mystery shopper, you need to check the job boards often and preferably at least several times a day. Many providers send their mystery shoppers emails showing new assignments on the job boards, so it’s a good idea to check your email several times a day as well. It is not uncommon for some assignments to be snatched up within minutes of the assignment being posted, so the more often you can check the job boards, the more likely you are to get the assignments you want.
Experience Matters (Sometimes). Most mystery shopping assignments have specific pre-requisites for the mystery shopper. This may be that you are within a certain age range, that you have a certain “shopper rating”, or any other number of other factors. The shopper rating of a new shopper is typically an average rating, allowing you with the opportunity to move up on the rating scale for a good job done on assignments, as well as down on the scale if you perform poorly. If an assignment requires a higher than average rating, you automatically will not be qualified to perform that job. So while there are a great number of assignments you will be able to complete without experience, some assignments do require that you have some prior positive experience as a mystery shopper.
As with many things in life, getting assignments as a new mystery shopper requires persistence. So stick with it and soon you will be completing as many mystery shopping assignments as you can, making the kind of mystery shopping cash you’ve been looking forward to!