Does anyone know anything about being a mystery shopper?

I have been Mystery Shopping for five years and have my gold certification from the Mystery Shopping Providers Association. There are literally hundreds of companies that you can register with to become an independent mystery shopper contractor. To start with, a legitimate company never charges you to apply for an independent contractor status or to perform shops. What most companies require is a personal profile and a sample of writting. You can provide these by filling out a questionaire and writting a paragraph or two on a given subject. After being accepted as an independent contractor for a company there are several ways in which you may obtain jobs. Some companies have a job board that you may go to and self assign or apply for available jobs in your area. Other companies prefer to notify you by email when a job is available for which they feel you qualify. Pay for these jobs will range from a simple reimbursement for a meal or merchandise which you purchased up to but not limted to $100.00 or $200.00 per job. The higher paying jobs usually involve pretending to want to purchase realestate, timeshares, investments, expensive automobiles etc. However, most jobs average $10 to $20 per job and take from 15 minuets to an hour to complete pluse your time to enter the report on line. Just like any other business some companies are better to work for than others. After you have performed a few shops for different companies you will soon learn which companies are the best for you. How much money you can earn depends on how many jobs you accept and what type of jobs you are willing to do. The more companies you sign up to contract for the better the selection of jobs and pay. If you live in or near a metropolitan area there will be a lot more jobs available than if you live in a rural area. However, there are jobs available in most of the areas of the country. There are many aspects of mystery shopping: The basic customer service evaluation, the revealed shop where you have a letter of introduction and evaluate whether or not a business is in compliance with the franchise requirements, apartment shops, real-estate shops etc. You might even be asked apply for a job to evaluate the human resource department of a business. If you think you missed your calling as an actor this is the job for you. Things are never boring and there's always something different to do. You enter your shop reports online. These reports might be as simple as a few short yes and no questions or as extensive as a four or five page detailed interaction report. The Mystery Shopping Providers Association offers two levels of certification. The silver certification is taken on line and the gold certification is offered in different areas of the country at different times of the year. There is a charge for certification. However, most of the best companies belong to this association and have a preference for silver and gold certified shoppers . Contact information is readily available by running an Internet search for mystery shopping companies. Two very important sites are Volition www.volition.com/mystery.html and MSPA www.mysteryshop.org. I love the fact that I am in control of when I work, who I worked for and how much I want to earn. I will be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Good luck and "Happy Shopping".

I have been doing some mystery shopping. You will have to do a lot of reading and filling in forms before and after you get started so if this is something you want to get involved in then you can start here on this site Shadow Shopper.com, speedmark.com. I'll look up some more for you. just go on and sign up as a new user.

Wow that sure is an interesting concept. I had never heard of it before but like you i would also love to find out all the details that I can get about it

Based on the recommendation of a friend, I just signed up with http://www.nationalshoppingservice.com. I've just completed my first assignment and it was great! As a mystery shopper you pose as an ordinary customer (it could be in a restaurant, financial institution, department store, etc.) and provide an evaluation of your experience (written report or questionnaire). The mystery shopping company then reimburses you for your purchase. Depending on the assignment, they will sometimes pay you a fee in addition to reimbursing you. Hope this helps.