The Mystery Shop Maven

At the start of each new year, many people around the globe spend a few minutes reflecting back on the year that has gone by. Now that New Years’ Day has come and gone, you may be one of the many mystery shoppers who has resolved to improve your financial situation in the coming year. While reducing your personal spending may help you to achieve this goal, you may also be ready to increase your mystery shopping income. Boosting your income in 2013 may actually be easier than you think. Here are a few ideas.

Find the Best Assignments

If you are serious about doubling your mystery shopping income in 2013, you may think that you will need to work twice as much. While you inevitably will need to pick up more assignments to double your income this year, you also will need to find the top assignments that will help you to earn more money for your time and effort. Consider signing up to work with a few different providers so that you can compare compensation levels between them. Some providers do offer slightly better rates than others, and some have slightly easier assignment requirements that enable you to complete the assignments in less time.

Ask for Bonuses

Sometimes, making more money on your assignments is as simple and easy as asking for more money. Of course, you should not ask for a bonus on every assignment that you do. However, if you are working on an assignment that a provider has specifically asked you to do because nobody else will work on it or if an assignment has been sitting on the job boards for a long time, why not consider asking for more compensation? You may be surprised at how easy it is to increase your income on some assignments.

Write Everything Off

When it comes to boosting your income, what you really may mean is that you want to put more money in your pocket. If you are handing over 20%, 30% or more of your mystery shopping income to Uncle Sam, you are paying more in taxes than you may need to. The fact is that the business mileage write-off alone may easily decrease your mystery shopping tax liability by half or more, and this ultimately equates to keeping more of your mystery shopping income in your pocket. You can also write off business-related expenses like office supplies and equipment. Take time to learn more about all of the expenses that you may write off, and start keeping your receipts, logging your miles in a journal and taking other steps to ensure that you don’t simply hand more of your money over to Uncle Sam than you need to.

You may feel like your mystery shopping income is limited by the amount of time you have available to work on your assignments. However, as you can see, there are a number of steps that you can take to double your income in 2013 without doubling your work hours.