1.) Find Legitimate Mystery Shopping Companies
Mystery shopping presents a great opportunity for many people to earn money in a convenient and largely less stressful way than with other types of employment. The job allows people to enjoy a great deal of flexibility that other jobs don’t offer, including the ability to work as much or as little as you like, and you can even bring your kids along on many jobs. What’s more, there really isn’t any experience required, and you just need to have good writing skills and some attention to detail to be good at the job.
With this in mind, it’s no surprise to learn that mystery shopping is the ideal job for many different kinds of people, from college students to stay-at-home moms to retirees. If you are considering becoming a mystery shopper, there are a few things that will be helpful for you to know up-front.
What Is A Mystery Shopping Company? Mystery shopping companies essentially act as go-betweens for businesses such as retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters, gas stations, and just about every other type of business that involves direct interaction with the general public with mystery shoppers. The offer the various assignments these businesses offer to mystery shoppers, ensure the assignments get completed, and review the reports you write on your assignments before handing them back to the businesses.
There are several hundred mystery shopping providers out there, and each one usually specializes in a different area. Some may specialize in a certain part of the world, such as the southeastern United States, while others specialize in a certain section of industry, such as restaurants or movie theaters. Unfortunately, there are also some scam artists out there who act like they are legitimate companies and pray on unsuspecting mystery shoppers.
How Can You Find Legitimate Mystery Shopping Companies? Legitimate mystery shopping companies are registered with the Mystery Shopping Providers Association. This association has a website that is chock full of information on mystery shopping, and provides you with a complete, up-to-date list of mystery shopping providers. You can also learn about the latest scams targeting mystery shoppers by visiting this website. Keep in mind that there are plenty of websites out there that offer to sell you a list of providers for a fee. This information is available for free via the MSPA, so you should not have to pay for it.
You can sign up for as many companies as you want to, but keep in mind that each company has their own unique sign-up process that can range from about five minutes to close to thirty minutes. So it will be in your best interest to sign up for companies that offer the most jobs in your own part of the world. You can take advantage of the mystery shopping forums online and ask other mystery shoppers for advice on which companies offer a lot of jobs in your area.
2.) Sign Up With Mystery Shopping Companies
Once you have found mystery shopping companies to work with, your next step is to actually sign up to work for them.
What Is Involved in Signing Up? Signing up to work for a mystery shopping company is a lot like a job interview. For some companies, the sign up process is very simple, and often just requires your name and personal information like your address, social security number, and other such details. This should include the same information you would give to any employer. For many people, it is often concerning to provide your social security number over the internet to a company you are unfamiliar with. However, if you have taken precautionary measures by checking out the company first through the Mystery Shopping Providers Association and the online mystery shopping forums, you can rest assured the company is legitimate and your personal information will be kept safe.
Other companies have a far more detailed sign up process. Their sign up process may include other information such as your income level, types of stores and restaurants you frequent, and more. You may also have to provide a writing sample, and for these providers, you want to make sure that your writing sample is error free. Writing error-free reports is a big part of mystery shopping, as it is the sole method of conveying your observations during your assignment site visit to the providers and the businesses who ordered the report (the clients). So it’s not surprising that many companies want to make sure you can write a coherent paragraph before you are permitted to work for them.
Getting Approved. Just as the sign up process varies between companies, so does the approval process. For some companies, you can begin looking for assignment on their online job boards within minutes of submitting your online application. For others, especially those that have a required writing sample or a more detailed application, you may have to wait a few days to hear back on your approval status. However, once you are approved, you can start looking for jobs immediately. You can see that in some cases you can start requesting assignments from the job boards within a very short period of time after locating a company to work with. If you’re having trouble getting approved, here’s some more tips for filling out a successful mystery shopping application.
After you are approved to work with a few companies, your next step in getting started working as a mystery shopper is to find your first job and complete it.
3.) Complete Your First Mystery Shopping Assignment
Once you have signed up to work with a few mystery shopping companies, you are ready to start looking for assignments. Most, if not all, companies list their open assignments online on job boards. Some will also email you as new jobs become available. So it’s usually pretty easy to find available jobs. However, the best jobs are usually snatched up right away. These top assignments are those that pay the most money, are easier to complete, or are at coveted locations.
Requesting Assignments. The first step to getting assignments is to simply request them. Some assignments are self-assign, meaning once you request them they become yours immediately. With other assignments, you must be approved by a scheduler to complete the assignment. So with these assignments, you will request the assignment and then wait to hear back if you got the assignment or not. Often, these requested assignments will be doled out to the most qualified mystery shopper who requests the job, so these often are not given to new mystery shoppers. However, you never know who else is requesting the assignment so it certainly doesn’t hurt to request the job.
The Site Visit. Once you have a scheduled assignment to complete, you will need to review the assignment instructions thoroughly. Pay attention to things like the date and time the assignment must be performed, if you need a stop watch or camera to complete the job, and so forth. These are things you will need to know before you arrive at the site visit.
You are not permitted to bring your instructions inside the site with you, so you will need to commit the requirements to memory. Be sure to note what kind of interaction you need to have with the employers, required purchases, if you need to check the bathrooms, and so forth. Then it is simply a matter of showing up for the site visit on time and fulfilling the requirements.
The Report. After the site visit, it’s often a good idea to jot down some notes once you are safely hidden away in your car. Not all mystery shoppers do this, but if you think you will have a hard time remembering the employees’ names, times you arrived and left the site, and so forth, it’s best to write them down before you forget this information. You will need to write these details down with accuracy in your report.
Your report is how you convey the observations of your site visit to your provider and the client. The report should be unbiased and fact-oriented. It should also be free of grammatical errors and written with a fair and professional tone. Usually a report must be submitted within a certain time frame. Each assignments varies a bit as to when the report should be submitted, but largely you will find that providers want the reports submitted either that same day, or within 24 hours. Reports are submitted online, and you may be asked to submit a business card or receipt of your required purchase along with your report. So you may need to have access to a scanner or fax machine to fulfill this requirement. (For more about report writing, here’s how to write a “perfect” mystery shopping report.
Getting Paid. Different companies have different payment policies. Some will pay you within a week or two of your report being approved. Others will pay you within four to six weeks. Some providers will still snail mail a check to you, but more and more companies are switching over to using PayPal. So many will require you to open a PayPal account if you don’t already have one. If you’re having trouble getting paid — read this.