Welcome back. As always I hope you have taken a step or two forward on your journey towards earning extra cash. Dan (first issue) is working like a crazy man building down lines for those enrolled in Homepages Friends. [Get paid to web surf] If you haven’t emailed Dan yet; what ya waiting for? tenorman8@ymail.com I would also hope you have signed up for a survey company or two (second issue). Give that a bit of time, but the surveys do come around. Those of you, who emailed me for the large list, you see how long it is. Take your time with them, you can burn out. [This is supposed to be fun as well as lucrative] Today we are going to take into the world of mystery shopping.
My daughter loves to shop. She is not quite obsessed to the point of going into debt or breaking up her marriage. It is just that she gets this gleam in her eye whenever someone mentions needing anything that might necessitate a trip to Target or anywhere else with a cash register. A while back I told her if she was going to be such a connoisseur of the shopping arts, why not get paid for it. In short work we both set to researching how being a mystery shopper (aka: secret shopper) would work and she has been getting paid for it ever since. Just like surveys, you will not get rich and it takes a little time to get established but it is legit and it pays.
Mystery shopping is a tool for business to track and improve service quality, which ensures a familiarity known as brand recognition that corporate America desires for their businesses. Using anonymous, regular folk spies (secret shoppers) has always been a popular tool to get a real boots on the ground evaluation of how things are going for multiple types of businesses. Be it in an in-person visit to the local Mickey D’s or a simple phone call to catalog company or call center, a test drive at a car dealership a customer service review by a secret shopper is a little known but growing tool for Corporate USA.
This is not hard work, you might walk into a local shoe store, and you are tasked with measuring certain behaviors and looking for certain practices or décor/cleanliness. You might have to notice if the associate greeted you as you came in. How long did it take to be served? Where the items you were looking for there and how knowledgeable the sales person was. There are many other scenarios, but they are always laid out for you when assigned.
Many companies not only shop themselves but also their competition. The allusion to being a spy is not that far off? You must be discrete and you are not supposed to discuss your assignments with others. These shop can be of a general nature or a pinpoint accurate search for a certain act or procedure.
There is an off shot of this called merchandising, you know, those folks in stores or conventions handing out free samples in front of displays for a certain company or product. I will cover this in a bit more detail in another issue.
Now for a few warnings.
Scams abound in the Mystery Shopping game. Just follow a few rules and some common sense and you should be okay.
NO legit mystery-shopping site will send you a check out of the blue for thousands of dollars. This happens way to often, sometimes using a name of a legit agency. These are check-cashing scams and should be reported to the US POST OFFICE.
You don’t need to pay for a list of companies that use secret shoppers. There are multiple sites across the web where you can find this information. I will be giving you a few good places to start at the end of the blog. I have also got a very large list of legit copies I will send to you free, just drop me an email with Mystery Shop/blog in the subject line to request yours.
Never pay to be a mystery shopper or merchandiser. No legitimate opportunity requires a fee. (The MSPA offers a certification process that is optional, not required, to get work.)
Pay attention to distance. Don't accept an assignment that pays $10 if you have to drive 20 miles each way to complete the task. The gas will eat up your fee.
Stick to the facts and leave your opinion out of your reports. Unlike surveys where they want your personal opinion, here you want to be Who, What, When Where and How long. Whenever you apply at a mystery-shopping site there is an application process to determine what kind of shopper you are. It would not hurt to have a resume on line but not required. Similar to the survey companies from last issue they have a question that gives them a picture of you as a shopper. Often you are asked to write a short paragraph about the best and worst shopping experience you’ve had.
TIP: Go ahead and write this ahead of time, you want this paragraph to be sharp. They check for proper spelling, grammar and punctuation, since your proof-of-completion reports are submitted in writing. Poor spelling won’t help you get in the door. Don’t let that throw you though. Its not 9th grade English Class.
Once the company accepts you in general you wait for an invite. When they need you they almost always send an invite email; you apply for that particular shop, if you are chosen you are on your way. They will explain how a shop will work. There is sometimes training involved, sometimes not. When you complete the shop you fill out your report, if you have done your job correctly and covered all the information they wanted you to gather your report should be accepted. Your report accepted you can expect your payment to be on the way. The more experience you get and the happier they are with your report accuracy the faster the better paying jobs will come. Most mystery shopping assignments pay between $8 and $10. Merchandising is generally in the range of $13 to $18. Some assignments offer free meals and/or groceries either as a form of compensation or in addition to a small fee. More complex assignments pay more — up to $30 or so per assignment. If you're being offered a lot more than that it should be a warning to you that something just might not be legit.
So are you ready to get started. Let’s start with some of my favorites.
Start with:
Customer 1st http://www.customer-1st.com/shopper/default.aspShoppers
Confidential http://www.shoppersconfidential.com/
Beyond Hello http://www.beyondhello.com/secure/index.htm
If and when you want more drop me an email and I will get it right off to you.
Talk to you all next time,
Eileen
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