A little over a year ago, while trying to make a few extra bucks here and there, I decided to give mystery shopping a try. I didn’t go into it thinking it would be my first income or anything, but I was amazed at how much you could do with your time.
Secret shopping or secret shopping are both phrases to describe a job in which you review the services and facilities of a store or restaurant. . You are usually paid wages in addition to reimbursements for the items you had to buy.
An online friend gave me a few websites to check out for mystery shopping jobs. His advice as a seasoned mystery shopper is to never pay for mystery shopping job websites. I often receive emails with the subject line, “Get paid to shop and dine!” or, “Earn extra holiday cash secret shopper”, which I delete without reading. If a company is trying to sell you info on mystery shopping, it’s most likely just selling you an album. of pages he compiled by searching for “mystery shopping” or “secret shopper” in a search engine. You can save yourself their low and low price of $19.99 (or higher) just by searching for those words in a search engine like Yahoo! or Google.
While you don’t have to pay for listing sites, you can expect to spend money out of pocket for mystery shopping jobs. For most jobs you will pay for items or services and then you will be satisfied. for the finished shop. The upfront costs are usually quite reasonable. Many or fast food or pizza shops will be under $15. Some businesses don’t pay you a salary, but they pay for the meal or service you receive, such as change oil .
I began to examine how much time I spent doing the shops and I was disappointed at how little I was doing. This was followed by an average work stoppage for the nearest fast food restaurant, the cell phone service/sales center, and the phone office at travel service provider;
Type of job Time spent in location Time spent filling out forms online Travel time Total money out of pocket Total pay ( including reimbursements)
Fast food 40 20 25 (avg.) $10 (avg.) $20
Cell phone 30 15 25(avg.) $0 $14
Phone office 15 (phone) 15 0 $0 $7.50
This does not include the 10-15 minutes spent searching online for available jobs online. However, when I indicated what I wanted to do during the hour’s service, I came up with;
Fast food 1.4167 hours/$20= $14.11/hour (part of which was mostly food compensation instead of money)
Cell phone-cases 1.167 hours/$14= $11.99/hour
Phone job- 30 minutes/$7.50=$15/hour.
While these hourly rates seem reasonable, the frequency with which you take jobs is not going to pay you more than maybe ten or twenty hours of work in one month. You will also have to accurately record times, names, and conditions down to the smallest detail, which is hard to remember. Many jobs require you to know the exact minutes and seconds to enter and leave the site. You should also remember the names and descriptions of the partners who are helping you. In fact, restaurants often have to order what you need for work; if that order is not satisfied for the shop. If you have a good memory for detail, it’s as easy as it sounds, but for a scattered mom like me, it can be a challenge at times.
With all that said about the down side, I still like to do the occasional secret shop. I can have a pizza delivered to my house and get paid for it by filling out an online survey. office job I can make the store ready when I plan to do some shopping there anyway. Or I can go out to eat a nice dinner in exchange for telling the manager I’m a mystery shopper and filling out Online survey.
So if you have a few extra hours to kill and want to do some secret shopping I’d go for it. Just don’t expect a slow, free day out at the grocery store like Mystery Shop Avengers sometimes pretends to be.
