I’ve been mystery shopping since I was 16 years old and to date, I’ve done more than 5,000 mystery shops!

I’ve mystery shopped local grocery stores, an Ikea, fast food establishments, restaurants, and liquor stores. I’ve even 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.

I’m usually paid $8-$25 per mystery shop, plus reimbursement for my purchases. There have been months where I earned more than $5,000, but most months I earn an extra $400-$500 a month for mystery shopping.

What is Mystery Shopping?

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.

Be Careful of Mystery Shopping Scams

If you’ve looked into mystery shopping before, you know that there are a lot of scammers that are trying to take advantage of this industry’s growing popularity.

A few rules: NEVER pay to join a mystery shopping company. The legitimate ones never ask for a payment for you. NEVER pay money to a company to see their list of jobs. Legitimate mystery shopping companies are always short of shoppers, so they never ask for you to pay to see a list of their jobs.

And lastly, check to see if they mystery shopping company is a member of the MSPA. They are the official organization that is in charge of regulating mystery shopping companies.

Trust me – there are a ton of real mystery shopping companies, so stay away from the scams.

My Favorite Mystery Shopping Companies

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.

Original source: “The Best Mystery Shopping Companies to Work For”