How To Become A Mystery Shopping WAHM

If you’re looking for an unconventional WAHM job, then mystery shopping might be just right for you. The concept of mystery shopping or secret shopping is simple. You get assignments to visit a business place, make a purchase and then fill out a form to evaluate the customer service, quality of your purchase and other things about your experience.
Secret shopping is done by ordinary people just like you, who provide a company with feedback about their service. Companies hire mystery shopping for a wide variety of reasons. Some want to investigate the quality of their employees. Others may want to find out how their locations do with stocking items. There are many different reasons that a company looks to hire mystery shoppers.

Although companies can hire mystery shoppers directly, most of your mystery shopping jobs as a WAHM will come through a secret shopping company or agency. As a mystery shopper, you’ll be asked to visit a wide variety of stores and businesses in your area. Sometimes you’ll be assigned to purchase clothing from a store in your local mall. Other times you’ll have to visit a coffee shop and rate the friendliness of the wait staff. After you gain experience with mystery shopping, you can receive assignments to eat at restaurants and stay at hotels.

As a secret shopper, you will not only get the chance to try out products and services for fr*ee, but you will also get paid for doing it. You can get paid in several different ways depending on the mystery shopping company or agency. You can get paid at a flat fee for completing the job, or sometimes you are just paid with the fr*ee product or service. Obviously the jobs that are paid a flat fee are more desirable. But when you are first starting out, you may need to take some of the other type of jobs just for the experience. If you are on a very tight budget at home, the eating in cafe's and resturaunt's can prove very valuable in helping your family food budget, and could easily be worked into other work at home opportunities. Remember as a WAHM you are not restricted to doing just one 9 to 5 job for a single employer. You can easily combine many smaller work at home projects so that the smaller income streams accumulate into a good stready monthly income. These smaller income streams and the various hours you work can be manipulated around your own home and family effortlessly, leaving you plenty of prime time with your growing family without the constrictions that normally accompany a normal regular job.

Most mystery shopping companies pay by check on a monthly or biweekly basis. You’ll get paid for a shopping assignment when you complete the necessary paperwork on your shopping experience. Your paperwork can normally be filed electronically, although some companies require you to mail in your reviews. This can make the payment process slower.

To get started with mystery shopping, you’ll need to find a mystery shopping company to work for. Unfortunately, many of the companies that offer mystery shoppers assignments are frauds. Many will ask you to pay them for a list of mystery shopping opportunities. You should never, ever have to pay for someone to hire you and this is no different for mystery shopping. Becoming a mystery shopper is totally free when you find a reputable company.

When you start doing assignments, you will be asked to pay for the services or products that you will be trying. Although this may sound like a bad deal, the mystery shopping company will reimburse you for your purchase. The reason that they require you to pay upfront for your purchase is because the mystery shopping company doesn’t want to take the chance of your getting a product for fr*ee and then not turning in a review.

Although being a secret shopper can be rewarding, it’s not something that can be relied on for consistent monthly income. You’ll never make enough money as a mystery shopper to live on each month. However, you may get enough to pay your phone bill or electricity bill. When you add the perks of getting free meals, products and services, mystery shopping is a nice stream of income for any WAHM looking to make extra money in their area.

Here's to your being a "Work At Home Mom" success

John

John Elliott aka Oaky Wood together with Luella May co-founded http://thecorner4women.com and highly recomends http://thecorner4women.com/WAHM.htm "Motivating & Empowering Women, in the Home for Business, Health and Leisure"
   By John Elliott
Published: 5/4/2007
 
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