A common question asked by both new and experienced mystery shoppers alike is how to find shops in their own little part of the world. With mystery shoppers’ travel costs going up as the cost of gas rises, many mystery shoppers want to remain fairly close to home when doing mystery shop assignments. Rural mystery shoppers often have difficulty locating shops in their own small town or nearby towns. Likewise, shoppers in major metropolitan areas may enjoy many mystery shop assignments in their town and surrounding suburbs. However, they may not want to fight traffic for assignments across town and may only want to complete assignments within a 10 or 15 mile radius of their home.
Is there an easy way to find mystery shop assignments in your area? Absolutely!
Use The Web! One of the favorite sites of experienced mystery shoppers is jobslinger.com. This website compiles mystery shop assignments from numerous mystery shop providers, providing you with one easy location to search for and find shop assignments. It’s easy to register for the site, and there are no fees associated with registering or obtaining jobs. There are jobs posted on this site for locations across the country, and you can easily search for jobs by location.
This site compiles jobs from volition.com, SASSIE, DemoZilla, and the MSPA, so there is no need to spend your valuable time searching through job postings on so many websites when you can do a quick search at just one website.
WAIT….There Are More! While jobslinger.com conveniently encompasses many of the mystery shop providers, it is not a catch-all. You may need to do some additional research into other shop providers out there in your neck of the woods, especially if your neck of the woods is off the beaten path. The number of shop providers you should register for has been suggested at anywhere from 10 to 75 or more. However, if you use some common sense and devote some time into researching providers before you register for them, you may save yourself quite a bit of time. Registering for a handful of providers who you know have assignments in your area is far better than registering for twenty or more providers who rarely or never have assignments near you.
The Power of the People. Mystery shoppers are a very open and supportive group of individuals. Most shoppers are more than happy to help out a fellow shopper in need. Use online forums and discussion groups to post specific questions you have about a mystery shop provider or about assignments in the specific location you are in. While it may seem counter-intuitive for a mystery shopper who is busy in their own part of the world to share his or her secrets of success with other shoppers, there are usually more than enough shop assignments to go around from the hundreds of shop providers across the nation. So use your (human) resources to get the information you need to find more and better shops.
The bottom line is to do some research into shop providers. While it may be tempting to put all of your eggs in one basket like jobslinger.com, it may be worth your while to branch out and find some less trafficked shop providers who aren’t associated with jobslinger.com yet. Use the web and your fellow mystery shoppers to get the insight and knowledge you need to find more and better mystery shop assignments near you.
While jobslinger is a good base to discover which companies usually have shops in your area by the time the shop is listed on jobslinger it has already been filled. On another note I have registered with some companies because they had a shop near me and after I have done that shop they never have anything else. I don’t understand how a company gets a client for only one shop and never has any repeat business.
When I lived in PA. I shopped Amegy Banks in PA and DE. Now that I am back in TX I am looking for who assigns those shops here. Does anyone have a tip they will pass on?
I believe that Jobslinger is a great starter site. But, if you want crack at first pick its best to choose your top 10 companies and check them frequently 2-3 times a week. That has worked the best for me and I usually get pick of the best shops first. If you wait for the email alerts someone is always going to beat you to it. So be proactive and check the sites directly.
Good article, along with the comments appended to! I will give Jobslinger a looksee, but more importantly, I will make better use of the shopper forum I belong to!! Thanx for the “heads~up!”
i live in the small town of Bowmanville. so, my question is does anyone know the company(s) to contact to do mysteryshopping? I would really appreciate it. I used to do alot with a company in Alberta when I lived in Scarborough, but I somehow lost touch. Please help. I also worked for another one that changed names and I cannot find them again. I would do stores in Pickering Town Centre for them, I love, love, loved it! and was great at it too!
thanks
I have used Jobslinger and had some success with it. The big thing I found which mmakes it along with some others is keeping track of what companies are new. I add them to my list after I register with them. It makes for a great list builder.
The one site that I gotten jobs with is Shadowshopper.com. They email me of shops in my profiled area. I go to their site do a search for that shop number and apply. They sometimes will have a telephone number and contact person to call. I can also search by my area on their site. It does cost to register with them, but I have made my money back and more. Hope this helps.
Speaking of the Forums they are wonderful and so very helpful I love to read them and one of my favourites persons on, there is ” sneakers” and quite a few others they know the deal, and they help you a lot I think most of them are God shoppers’s, I am not sure but they give excellent advice on shopping jobs and if you have a problem they can tell you just what to do about it. It is wonderful I love reading their thoughts and advice on the Mystery Shop Forum. They do not down you in any way they help you, and I thank god for them because when I did have work, I always kept in mind what they tell you about these jobs. I hope all of them never stop writing on the Forum.
Thanks on all the info on Forums, I had never thought about looking there. I have learned alot from these articles and all your feedbacks and I definetly will keep reading them. I think anyone that wants to Mystery Shop should read all your inputs to get a better perspective of what a good Mystery Shopper consists of. Thanks again to all of you that take their time to respond to these articles.
Hello, Believe it or not my Fiancee’ and I are both in the middle of disability claims and we can do a little secret shopping, etc. but I was wondering if there is anyway we could get into scheduling or auditing jobs so we could do it from home. Since we both have disabilities it would really help and we could do it while we go through the disability process. Please let us know where we can find this option and thanks.
RE: Checking a bunch of sites easily. I finally remembered that both IE and Mozilla are set up so that you can save, therefore open, a group of tabs on one main tab.
So if I open 8 sites, then “add tab group to favorites,” naming it of course, I can click one tab and check them all easily.
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