When you work for someone else, your work schedule is largely decided for you. Your employer tells you when to come to work, when to leave, and if you need to work over-time. As a mystery shopper, you are an independent contractor working for yourself. As your own boss, many mystery shoppers delight in being able to work when they want to, setting their own hours and working around their personal lives. Yet this freedom and flexibility can also create problems for some mystery shoppers.
Set A Schedule. While mystery shopping allows you to enjoy the flexibility of working around your personal life, this flexibility can create problems for you as well. As you look at your busy personal schedule, it’s easy to think to yourself that you can squeeze in an extra assignment here or there and pick up a few extra bucks. While this sometimes can be the perfect way to pad your wallet with some extra cash every now and then, if it becomes a habit you can end up leading a very stressful life as you constantly juggle work and personal activities.
To avoid stressing yourself out, set a work schedule to live by. Look at your schedule on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis – depending on what is best for your lifestyle. Add in your regular activities such as your book club, babysitting the grand-kids on weekends, date night with your spouse, the schedule of your “other” job, and so on. Then consider how many hours a week you would like to work as a mystery shopper. In your tentative schedule, include plans for both working as well as free time that you can spend running errands, enjoying downtime with the family, and so on. Try to avoid booking up every minute with personal activities and mystery shopping jobs to allow time for life to simply happen.
Make Ends Meet, Don’t Over-Commit. In your tentative work schedule, consider how much money you “need” to make as a mystery shopper and how much money you’d like to earn. With these two figures in mind, determine how many assignments you need to commit to in order to make ends meet. This number of assignments should be a priority for you over meeting with friends and other fun activities. If you take on assignments above and beyond this figure, be sure to allow plenty of time to spend with family and friends so you don’t over-commit yourself and to avoid getting burnt out.
Note, since the compensation on assignments varies quite a bit, the “number of assignments” you need to work on a weekly or monthly basis may vary. This will just give you a good starting point in your scheduling.
Make Your Time Count. Life has a way of just happening, with circumstances, minor issues, drama, and more happening all around you. When “life happens” while you are trying to work on a mystery shopping assignment, what initially should take about 45 minutes to an hour ends up taking far longer. Make a concerted effort to block out everything that is not critical and urgent, and devote your attention to your assignment when you are working. You can get back to untying the kids’ shoelaces and putting new batteries in the remote control after you’ve completed your assignment. When you do this, you will find that what once took you several hours to complete really could take half that long. This will free up your time to enjoy your personal life (or to take on additional assignments) in the long run.
With these tips in mind, you can become a more efficient mystery shopper, successfully balancing your work time and personal time.
You should always over commit your self if you want to make $100,000 per year. Or you wouldbe able to pay health insurance if you had look at the obama health care
wouldlike to start secret shoping and would appreciate the names of good orgs to work for aand which ones to avoid – senior citizen with plenty of energy – thanks and BR – Tom
I find it hard to plan on a set amount of income when I have to take into account travel, submitting reports and “life happening”. I live in a rural area so jobs can be limited. It takes more careful planning to make it work but overcommitting yourself is definitely not an option.
This article as usual states something that many mystery shoppers get caught up on and that is over scheduling and committing more time than they actually have. I can speak for myself when it comes to time management. I sometimes don’t take into consideration the emergencies that crop up in everyday life,something outside of the box that I didn’t see coming and schedulers don’t take it well when you have to e-mail back and decline assignments that are time stamped. If you don’t complete the assignments then the clients or businesses that have the shops done don’t pay!That in effect is a no win situation that could have been avoided by just managing your time better!
My concern is: I have received checks for shopping and the work detail but when I try to deposit the checks they bounce! How do I get into a business that is really honest and not wasting my time and money? Any helpful tips would be welcomed.
One piece of advice for all the new shoppers is don’t overschedule yourselves. Take things very slow at first one assignment a day or every few days. Each assignment has specific guidelines that you have to follow to get paid. You’ll find a lot of your time is taken up with learning what to do before hand, doing it, and then entering it afterwards. Once you’ve done that assignment once the next time will go much easier, because all you have to do is basically the same as what you did last time with any changes in the paperwork. After you’ve been shopping for a while you’ll find the assigments that are easy for you and which ones are easier to pass on. Remember if it is a new assignment to you, don’t try and take on much else that same day- or you’ll create stress. At the same time if you’ve done the shops you can complete multiple shops in the same day- just plan enough time for all the paperwork afterwards and your drive times. I’ve never had any checks bounce with the companies I found on Volition.com. Also in over 150 assignments completed, I’ve only had 2 rejected because I didn’t complete the directions properly, which after re-reading I realized my error. Feel comfortable calling the schedulers with questions.
I am trying to break into Mystery Shopping and I have found some good tips on this site. Keep on giving these tips .