For the month of August, Claudia and I had the goal of making an extra $800 from mystery shopping. It was to be put towards our Outer Banks vacation. While we didn’t quite reach our goal, we made a bunch of extra money in a way that was creative and flexible.
On the Outer Banks, NC
What is mystery shopping?
Mystery shopping is a tool used by market research companies and other organizations to audit product and service quality.
Basically, you go into a store unannounced as a regular customer and critique customer service, cleanliness, and compliance. Part of the “shop” is to make a small purchase (usually $1-5 ). Then later, you scan your receipt and submit it with an online report.
Marking our progress
Our Results
Total Made: $699
Free Gas: $90
Expenses: $35
Grand Total: $754
Average pay per hour: $16/hr (includes travel time)
Average pay per shop: $15
Highest paying shop: $32
Lowest paying shop: $8
Jobs completed by Michael: 24
Jobs completed by Claudia: 22
Total time spent: 43 hours
Time spent completing one shop: 7-25 min
Time spent uploading one report: 10-30 min
Explanation of Results
“Total made” was what we actually got paid to do the jobs. The “free gas” was from jobs at various gas stations. Part of the job was to make a small gas purchase which we were reimbursed for.
The $35 dollar expense was for date/time stamp software to put a date/time stamp on photos required for different jobs. Some cameras have this built-in, ours did not.
We could have increased our “pay per hour” by being more selective with the jobs we signed up for. However, we were willing to take lower paying jobs in order to get closer to our goal of $800.
There is a lot of flexibility with doing mystery shopping. Since I am already on the road for our business, I was able to pick jobs up on my way. Claudia, on the other hand, did have to make special trips for many of her shops. We factored this into our figures including “total time spent” and “pay per hour.”
One of the reasons we didn’t quite reach our goal was the jobs became sparce in our area towards the end of the month with the main mystery shopping company we were using, Corporate Research International. This is normal, but didn’t help with reaching our goal.
Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to Chris Peek who first told us about mystery shopping. He has answered so many of our questions and gave us valuable pointers! Be on the lookout for a site he is creating to help others get started with this creative, flexible way to make extra money.
All in all, we had a blast doing mystery shopping. With the flexibility it offers, it fit very well into our current situation. We plan to continue to bring in extra money this way, but perhaps with a little less focused intensity for the time being. We’ll see about next month!
Question: Do you have any creative ways to make extra money? What are they?
Michael and Claudia – I still have the information you were gracious enough to share with me and I will certainly be on the lookout for that website – I just have so much going on now I don’t seem to be able to absorb the information and move forward – but I think I will and not too far from now!
Ann, I think Chris plans to get it up soon, so be on the lookout!
Michael and Claudia, I’d love to know more about the mystery shopping and how to get started. I’ve done so many things through the years to make extra cash such as I did ironing for two ladies at one time and got paid per piece. Both their husbands wore only all cotton clothes and they needed ironing. I could do this at night when I was watching tv. I’ve sold on craigslist. I’ve built small pieces of furniture or decorative pieces and sold on craigslist or through local paper. I sold real estate for a time-probably the least profitable. Of course now, I’m selling on etsy with my two shops. I’m always on the look out for a new profit center!
Donna,
It sounds like you’re quite the entrepreneur! I love your creativity.
This has worked out well for us, especially with its flexibility. There is a bit of a learning curve to it so you have to be patient and stick with it. Be on the lookout for the site from Chris Peek. I’m sure it’ll be super helpful.
Thanks Michael. I’ll keep my eyes open.
Love it! You’ve done an awesome job with the data and research here! Must be your high “C” coming out, Michael! Thanks for the mention as well. I can’t wait to get this site up in the next two weeks so hopefully more people can learn how to make some extra $$.
I’m just thrilled that you all have taken the ball and run with it rather than just sitting on the info. Way to go! I’ll be out later today shopping, as usual.
Chris, thanks again for all your help! We’ve had a number of people asking about getting started, so I’m sure people would find it helpful.
You guys really rock on the data…it helps to see real numbers. I am registered now with CRI, but haven’t jumped out there yet. Your numbers are promising! Do you have any “favorites” (Fast food, retail shops, gas stations, etc) that you’d recommend as ideal combination of time spent and pay?
I imagine you kept up with mileage for tax purposes for deductions as well?
Chris recommended setting up a “route” as being an efficient way to knock out several in a day. Looking forward to seeing his website. Since I’ve been in Engineering jobs for the past 16 years, I haven’t made any “side” money except on some Saturday’s when the Queen was grooming dogs, they asked me sometimes to bathe dogs all day for $100. Everytime I’d float the idea of getting a 2nd job when we were heavily in debt those early years, I’d get the speech about how we needed to spend time together, since I had a fulltime job. We’ll I can say I’m still married and we paid off the debt too. Just took longer!
Michael,
Sounds like your wife was reminding you that we need balance in life. 😉
Gas stations have worked well as well as certain retail stores. With CRI, we focused primarily on about 4-5 different stores.
You know, we haven’t been keep too close track of mileage. That’s something we could do better on. I do know from our business that mileage write offs really adds up! It’s something like 52 cents a mile.
One summer during college, Steve and I were paid to dispose of groundhogs that were killed in traps on a guy’s property. We’d set the traps then check them each evening. I think we got $8/groundhog. That’s been my most creative odd job to date.
Noooo!!!!!
What a crazy job!!! Did he really have that many groundhogs??? Where did you ‘dispose’ them? ewe!
Love it!
How can we get information on mystery shopping? I am a Single Mom that works FT and cant make ends meet on my FT income alone but have no sitter to watch my daughter either so I thought this would be a great idea for me to do that she can still be with me while I do it. Thanks for any help on where to look.
Heather,
I’m sorry to hear that about your situation. Claudia does a number of these with our 1 year old, so it can be done with kids.
We signed up with 3 different companies (each mystery shopping company works with many stores). It works best to group shops together and this is done most easily when you combine more than one company.
The one we got started with and still use most frequently is http://www.mysteryshops.com/
The second is http://www.ritterassociates.co… which we’ve only done a few, but they’ve been going well.
The third is http://mventix.com/ Haven’t actually gone all the way through the signup/tests yet.
Also check out http://www.mysteryshopcoach.com/ This site is put together by a friend of mine who got us started.