I love to mystery shop. Well, I love to shop. So the fact that I get paid to shop makes it even better. For those of you who aren’t familiar with mystery shopping it is a job where a company pay you to pose like a regular customer and then provide feedback to the company on things like how clean the store was or how well the employees interacted with you. In exchange for your feedback they pay you a fee and in most cases they will ask you to make a purchase and will reimburse you up to a set dollar amount.
I’ve been mystery shopping since I was 16 and have done many types of shops. I’ve been asked to pretend like I’m shopping for a car – took a test drive and everything plus earned myself a cool $60 for each dealership I went to that day. More commonly I’m asked to shop local grocery stores, fast food establishments, and restaurants. I’m usually paid $8-$15 per location plus reimbursement for my purchases. Usually I can make an extra $400-$500 a month in mystery shopping. You can, of course, make more if you are willing to dedicate the time.
If you have seen articles out there about mystery shopping before you no doubt know that there are a lot of scammers that are trying to take advantage of the growing popularity in mystery shopping as a second job. NEVER pay money to a mystery shopping company to join. NEVER pay money to a company to see their list of jobs. There are real mystery shopping companies that are free to join and I’m going to share a few of my favorites.
I have shopped for all of these companies and I love them! All of these are free to join:
Best Mark
Sinclair Customer Metrics
Market Force
Intelli-shop
Experience Exchange
After your application is approved, you simply login in to their website and then select the jobs you want to do. They provide you with all of the instructions and then after you have completed the shop you will need to enter your feedback into their website. Some pay via direct deposit, but most will mail you a check at the end of the month. Pretty easy, huh?
I’d love for folks to post in the comments if you have mystery shopped before and if you have any other companies you have worked for successfully.
Good Luck Penny Hoarders!
Would you be a dear and Stumble this article?
I've done a couple shops for http://www.beyondhello.com They were clear on what they needed and prompt with their payments. Good luck!
Thanks for the tip!
I just checked it out and it looks like a good company. They have the online job board as well which I really like because you just click the jobs you want and it adds it to your assignment list.
Those are the best companies…
Thanks Kyle for the post… I've heard about this before and was wondering more about it. Your article answered a lot of questions for me about this. I've seen some of these on craigslist as well, but I was worried about scammers and stuff. Have you found that these companies pretty much have the mystery shopping industry nailed down in terms of coverage? Should I even bother with the craigslist listings?
Thanks for any help!
Tim D.
@Anonymous – Hmm…I have seen those Craigslist listings as well and in my opinion they are usually a scam. Scammers post those ads to collect email addresses or direct you to a program where you have to pay to get the name of the mystery shopping companies. My advice is always to sign up directly with the companies and never pay to sign up.
I've had really good luck with Jobslinger.com as a mystery shopping aggregater. I've done shops with Kern, Intelli-shop, and Beyond Hello, among others.
Great post! I have also tried mystery shopping, but it was a while ago, and now I am eager to get back to it, so this was very helpful, thanks!
Wow, thanks for this list. Up until now I though mystery shopping was just that…a mystery! I remember applying at a few companies some years ago and they all turned out with a catch. So good to know there's genuine ones out there, though I wonder how limited the jobs are for a given location….?
I appreciate your work on this info, this is certainly useful – thanks.
momsoffaith.com has legit lists of MS companies
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How can I get your images to show on my Blackberry?
Hi Selma,
We are working on developing a mobile version of The Penny Hoarder right now. The iPhone version debuted a couple of days ago and I hope to have it ready for Blackberry by the end of the week.
Thanks for being a reader!
Kyle