Article Surfing Archive

Whether it's the crammed cubicle, aggravating boss, annoying co-workers or maybe just your desire for more freedom, both financially and hourly, you*ve come across a mystery shopping job and thought to yourself wouldn*t it be nice to get paid to shop, eat, go to the movies, or even play golf. I mean those things are fun, and we know work isn*t fun, so does that mean it's time to quit work and search the internet for mystery shopping jobs? Is it even possible to make money from mystery shopping, let alone a living doing it?

The answer is yes. It is possible to make a living doing mystery shopping. You would need to sell your home and your vehicle, because you will need to spend all your time driving in a car covered with advertisements, and spend every waking minute reviewing products and places. Yes it is quite possible to make a living with mystery shopping. However if you like your home, car, and current life style, I would not expect mystery shopping to primary source of income.

I don*t know how much you already know about mystery shopping, but basically it works like this; a company pays you to go into their store or business and act like a normal customer and then write a detailed report about you*re experience. Ok, so it sounds easy enough, but there are some things that you might not know and you probably should know before signing up.

What you might not know is that you need to write many sample reviews before a company will even consider hiring you. If a company hires you, you will generally have one job to do, so no matter how well they are paying or what you get to keep you*re only going to be doing it once. This is why it's important that you sign up to an agency that will help you build your profile and can also tell you where the mystery shopping jobs are.

However, these agencies are where the *mystery shopping scam* is revealed. Sure, there are reputable agencies out there, but there are way more fraudulent companies so you need to be carefully when you see those fancy advertisements or read those fun-sounding emails.

You don*t get paid a great deal, and you also don*t get reimbursed for everything, so how much you get paid is based on how you choose to manage the money. Basically you can*t go crazy and buy whatever you want and think you*re not going to have to pay for it. Generally a company will agree to giving you a certain amount and it's really your choice whether to spend it all there or stand to profit most of it. Sometimes you will have specific instructions on what to get so you have to take that into account too. A few companies will even pay you only after you turn in a detailed report and receipt, so that's your money you*re spending first.

Now that we have all the negatives out of the way, we can talk about some positives. It is truly a lot of fun to go out and shop the hottest stores and review the latest products. My wife and I just don*t consider it a source of payment, but more like a big discount or rebate on the things we like to buy anyway! We also go out to some extremely nice restaurants at least once a month, and pay nothing in the end! Even if we would have only used the database for one dinner out it would have paid for it's self the first time, not to mention every single time we go out to shop, eat dinner, watch a movie, or several other sources of entertainment.

So there are many perks to mystery shopping jobs if you have the right mindset. We use mystery shopping jobs as a source of fun and entertainment and not as a source of livelihood like the advertisements would have you believe.