You’ve probably seen the banner ads all over the place—Earn Extra Cash Become a Mystery Shopper. But most of us don’t even know what mystery shopping is. In short—mystery shopping entities focus on assessing retail customer service by hiring people like you and me to “shop” and rate our interactions with the store’s customer service employees. Usually, retailers don’t hire mystery shoppers directly but instead contract a third-party vendor to handle the mystery shopping for them.
Mystery shopping vendors hire everyday people to go into stores, act like a shopper and report their findings. The retailer then assesses the data and can train their employees based on the feedback. Usually, when you’re hired by a mystery shopping vendor you get paid once you send them your report of your experience. Sometimes, they may ask you to take pictures of a certain display or store shelving set-up to help them see if products are being displayed properly.
The good news is: mystery shopping usually pays between $10 and $15 dollars per assignment and can provide easy income when you need extra cash. The bad new is: you need to be careful because there quite a few “scammers” out there who promise to pay and either never pay you or charge you a fee to become a member of their “service” promising big returns on your investment.
To steer you in the right direction here a few reputable mystery shopping companies that will pay you for your work:
BeyondHello.com
AboutFaceCorp.com
Also, check out mysteryshop.org—a very informative website dedicated to providing legitimate information about the mystery shopping industry.