Mystery Shopping

We have been in our own home for almost one year now. The end of August will be a year. Right before we bought this house I had started doing some mystery shopping. That led to finding out about merchandising (which is an extension of a lot of mystery shopping companies) and something I have started doing more here recently.

When you sign up for a mystery shopping company...and I NEVER PAID TO SIGN UP AND YOU SHOULDN'T EITHER!!...you have choices of:

• mystery shopping
• auditing
• merchandising
• demos
• surveying people
• theater checks

I personally didn't want to survey people or be a demo person (give away food in grocery stores, etc) so I always chose mystery shopping, auditing and merchandising. Auditing is simply going into a business and checking to make sure they have everything in order according to the "plan" that I print off from the internet. With all these companies a printer is definitely required! I have to print so many reports!

Most Mystery Shopping requires you spend some money up front and then you'll be reimbursed. Some pay additional money besides your reimbursement; some don't. I never accept any jobs where I had to put out a lot of money upfront except one time at Christmas. It was for a trendy store in the mall where I could spend up to $50.00 and they would reimburse the whole amount...I knew I could find a Christmas present in that store for one of my kids so I accepted that job and I was reimbursed for that purchase.

These are examples of mystery shopping jobs I accept on a regular basis:

• spend $1.00 for a parking garage assignment and then get paid $10.00 plus reimbursement
• spend up to $2.00 at convenience store and get paid $7.00 plus reimbursement
• did this one time - acted like I needed a storage place from storage rental - spent no money out of pocket but got paid $15.00
• I do restaurants I like to eat at (not allowed to name them) but they have been some of my favorites and my total meal for my family has been reimbursed - no extra pay, just reimbursement.

Merchandising is the job I have enjoyed the most. There have been a wide range of jobs I've completed that fall under this category. I'm currently working for 5 different merchandising companies. Two of them I am an Independent Contractor and the other three I'm actually on the payroll as a W2 employee. But all of the companies have a job board or some way of notifying me of what jobs are available and I accept or deny them...I don't have to work any job that doesn't fit into my schedule or I'm not qualified for.

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Some of the merchandising jobs I've done lately are:

• Publix - and open up boxed candy bars and put them out for sale as single bars.
• Publix - keep up with a coffee display for the month of June (keep it clean and order the coffee that's needed)
• Sam's Club - count the Gatorade, Tropicana and Frito Lay pallets on display
• Publix - reset the entire chip row (worked with a team)
• Dollar General - reset the men's/boy's Fruit of the Loom displays
• Family Dollar - hung up new signs around the store; took down the old signs
• Shell gas station/Kangaroo Express - this is what I did this last week...Kangaroo Express bought out a bunch of Shell gas stations and for the last 5 days a team of us cleaned out all the old stuff in the store and brought in all new counters and merchandise and set it up in one day - 5 stores in 5 days.

This is just an example of the different types of Merchandising jobs available. There have been many more but you get the drift. It's a fun job because I interact with lots of different people and I have a flexible schedule and the pay is great!