In our original Mystery Shopping Basics post I mentioned that Google is your friend when it comes to finding mystery shopping companies. Despite their name, most mystery shopping companies are not mysterious at all, and many have a very strong online presence. You can use their online tools to improve your ability to get good mystery shops.
Besides using the Volition Mystery Shopping Forums to find out about specific mystery shopping companies there is another website that I find extremely useful. This one is called Jobslinger and it specializes in connecting mystery shoppers with mystery shopping companies offering jobs in their geographical area. Only with certain mystery shopping companies though – those that are using a shopper interface called Sassie.
First you sign up with Jobslinger, and then you do a geographic search based on ZIP or Postal Code and see what kind of jobs show up within a reasonable geographic distance from your location. You can also search an entire Province or State, but unless you are planning to do some travelling, you’re likely best off to just search locally. The search result list will indicate the type of shop, the community where the shop is to take place, the mystery shopping company offering the shop, how many days it has been since the shop was posted and how much the shop is paying. The search result also provides a link that you can click on to apply for the shop. This link will take you to the mystery shopping company’s shopper login, where you can either register to become a shopper with that company or login, if you are already registered. A great thing about Jobslinger is that if you’ve already signed up with mystery shopping companies that use the Sassie software, it will do a search for you and permanent connect your Jobslinger account with your account at those mystery shopping companies.
Jobslinger also offers an automated Shop Notifier service, which you can download to your iOs or Android smartphone. This way, whenever a mystery shop from one of the companies you’ve linked to your Jobslinger account is posted, you’ll get a push notification on your smartphone that there is a new mystery shop available. Note that the Shop Notifier only delivers shop offers if you already have a SASSIE account and have set the “Get shop offer emails” option to Yes on your account. I find this very useful for keeping track of last-minute bonus shops which are likely to be snatched up quickly, so I can apply before they disappear. The bonus shops are always more lucrative, so I find them worth going a little more out of my way to do.
Yes, I’m looking at you Mystery Shoppers Canada. Scam alert!
Going back to the mystery shopping basics concept of mystery shopping scams, I recently ran across a company that posts a list of ‘recent shops’ they have offered to their shoppers. They ask you to join now so you won’t miss out. And you’ll get all these great offers simply by paying a one-time Administration fee of $39.00 for Lifetime Membership. Yes, I’m looking at you Mystery Shoppers Canada. Scam alert! Not only do they charge you a fee to become a shopper with them, which is the first sign of a scam, but they also make completely unrealistic promises of shoppers earning $28.00 an hour on average and being able to make up to $2500 a month through full-time mystery shopping. I would love to hear from any mystery shopper out there who has actually achieved either of those pay rates doing this sort of work.