There are so many reasons why you may want to earn more money as a mystery shopper. From practical reasons such as trying to keep pace with inflation or trying to save more money for a European cruise, each mystery shopper may have some specific goals in mind when it comes to earning money from assignments. Of course, even those without defined income goals may still want to earn extra cash. After all, who would turn down the opportunity to have more greenbacks lining their wallet? There are many steps that you can take to bump up your mystery shopping income, but some ways are smarter than other. For example, you could try to increase the number of assignments that you complete each week. This, however, would have you spinning your wheels and working yourself into the ground. There is a better option.
The Goal
Clearly, working more hours or working on more assignments isn’t really the ideal solution. If you rule those two options out, you are left with the goal of earning more money on the assignments that you do work on. By accomplishing this goal, you may be able to bump up your mystery shopping paychecks without having to work any harder or any longer during the day. You will simply work on roughly the same number of assignments each week, and you start to enjoy more income rolling in.
Accomplishing Your Goal
Of course, if it was so easy to accomplish this goal, you may have done it years ago. You need to develop a sound strategy to accomplish this goal, and there are several different steps that you can take to get where you want to be. First, you need to understand that working smarter does not mean working harder. It means getting more money out of each assignment that you do. To accomplish this, you need to understand that “money” comes from different components of an assignment. For example, base pay, bonus pay and expense reimbursements put money or goods into your pocket. Tax deductions associated with an assignment allow you to keep more of your money in your hands and out of the hands of the tax man. Therefore, if you want to worker smarter and boost your income, you need to find a way to maximize each of these aspects of mystery shopping income. To benefit most fully, you want to target each one individually. Base pay could be increased by switching to a better provider. Bonus pay could be earned simply by asking for it in certain situations. Expense reimbursements could be used more wisely on items that you truly need rather than on wasteful items that you don’t need. You can also take time to more fully educate yourself about business tax deductions to ensure that you are maximizing the benefit these can provide to you.
The fact is that many mystery shoppers are unfortunately leaving money on the table by failing to maximize the full benefits that their assignments provide. When you spend time reviewing each of these income components of an assignment, you may discover new, smart ways to bump up your mystery shopping paychecks.