How To Be A Mystery Shopper

Major companies hire "Mystery Shoppers" to visit their stores and perform some sort of activity while there. They send people in undercover to evaluate the cleanliness of the store, the helpfulness of the employees, the quality of their service and so much more. You can help these companies by becomeing a "Mystery Shopper".

As a Mystery Shopper you do get some perks, FREE STUFF. If you are asked to buy anything as part of your assignment, on most occasions you get reimbursed what you spent AND you get to keep the item you bought.

Your Duties

As a mystery shopper, you will need a bit of acting skills. When you make your visits, many times you will have a mission to accomplish. Talk to certain people. Ask them certain questions. For example, a camera store wants to know how knowledgable their sales staff is. Your assignment may require you to pretend to be a customer interested in purchasing a certain camera. You need to act like a customer and seem genuinely concerned about finding the right camers.

You also need to be part detective with an eye for detail and a great memory. While you are carrying out your undercover assignment you may have been asked to notice hings about the store, the names of the people you talk to, what they looked like, etc. You can't be taking notes where people see you or your cover will be blown and you won't get paid.

After you carry out your assignment, you have a certain amount of time to get back to the company and report your findings. Failing to do so in the alloted time, you don't get paid.

How Much Can You Make?

You definately won't get rich. Most assignments pay $11 to $45 dollars. Out of that you have to pay your expenses of driving to the locations. Your time goes to driving to the location, doing the assignment, then uploading required documets and information your collected on your visit. If you choose assignments near where you live, you could easily do one in 30 minutes.

The downside to this, is that the assignments go quick. Lots of people mystery shop on the side. When that assignment goes public, it's first come first served. Some asignments require certain type of car (you get free oil changes and lubes) to do and those are more easily available to grab. I may be wrong, but I think this one is hard to do for a full time income. If your heading to the mall anyway and want to do a shop while there to pay for the trip, that is doable.

How To Get Started

It costs nothing to apply. You can do an internet search for mystery shopping companies. You can sign up and join many of them to get more work. During our testing of this opportunity we signed up with Bestmark. Many of the major companies come to them for their mystery shopping needs.