At one time or another, every mystery shopper has wondered how many mystery shopping providers they should sign up to work for. What’s the magic number that will give you the most amount of money in the long run? The fact of the matter is that you can sign up for a dozen providers and not find many jobs at all. But on the other hand, you may find that two or three providers give you plenty of jobs to keep you busy. When you look at mystery shopping providers, it’s not quantity but rather quality that counts.
You’re Not Paid To Search Job Boards. The problem with working for a lot of mystery shopping providers is that you can spend literally hours every day perusing job boards. Sure, you need to do this to find jobs, but it’s not part of the job that you are getting paid to do. So to make the most money as a mystery shopper, you want to minimize your time searching the job boards and maximize your time working on assignments. And to do this, you need to find mystery shopping providers that offer a lot of jobs in your particular neck of the woods. How can you tell who has a lot of jobs in your area? Well, you can certainly ask your fellow mystery shoppers by posting a question on mystery shopping forums. Otherwise, you need to go off of trial and error. What this means is that you need to sign up for many providers, and then gradually whittle down the number of providers you work with regularly and whose job boards you search regularly based on which providers are keeping you the busiest.
Editing Your Reports. I hate to say it, but some mystery shoppers are just not born to do this job. And so it’s difficult for them to write objective reports that are free of grammatical errors. These mystery shoppers may find that most of their reports get bounced back to them and revisions are commonplace. Other mystery shoppers simply have this job in their blood, and they can churn out report after report without having an editor contact them for revisions or clarifications. Except, of course, everyone seems to have one or two providers who are a bit pickier about their reports. If you’ve noticed a trend with some of your mystery shopping providers who are almost consistently asking you to make revisions, this provider is not helping your bottom line. If you feel that you are doing a quality job – the same quality job you do on all of your reports – and one provider seems to have a problem with your work while the others don’t, it may be time to whittle that provider off to the side. You simply can’t know which providers are going to like your work or not until you try them out for yourself. And quite frankly, it doesn’t matter how many jobs that provider offers in your area if it takes twice as much work to get them to accept your report.
These are factors that must be taken into account in your search to find the magic number of providers that works for you. If you have a handful of providers who are easy to work with and who provide you with plenty of jobs in your area to choose from, you really don’t need to look for any more providers. Finding the right providers to work for may be a “work in progress”, and you may find that you are regularly adding or removing providers from your list of providers based on these criteria. But over time, you will find the perfect mix of providers for you!
I went with the trial and error when signing up and whittled down my list of companies. It was a good thing to do in the early months while I was still learning the ropes.
I’ve also found that certain clients are picky within a mystery shopping company. The company will bounce back reports for certain clients, while letting the same quality go with other clients. Sometimes it is good to just avoid those shops and see if the mystery shopping provider will be easier to work with if you pick up a job with another client. It’s best not to throw out the baby with the bath water.
I had a lot of problems with grammatical mistakes until I found a place online (free) that you can write your reports and then it will check spelling and grammar as well as giving you suggestions from the thesauras. Of course microsoft office does the same thing if you have it but, I have found the the online site works for me.
I have signed up for many shopping jobs and have not recieved one job. You say you have jobes in my area I apply and never get a job. I spend hours every day applying for jobs and have not gotten one joj. I dont know if this is a scam or legit I havent been able to get anything.
I live in Media, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Can anyone help me find mystery shop companies in my area?
Your article is great. That is what I have been doing. Because I am fairly new to mystery shopping, I am still adding to my list of providers. I had one experience after submitting my report I was called and asked different questions than on the report. I later recieved an email stating that because I gave new information I would be recieving a $3 deduction in my fee. I called them and said not everything that happens during the shop is every covered on any report. So if you ask more questions you will get more answers everytime. I have never had anyone complain about my reporting before or since. To top it off they had pleaded with me to do this shop because they had no one else in the area and it had to be done the next day. Needless to say, I will never work for Bestmark again.