I live 22 miles from one city that is the location for several on-site shops. My truck gets 15 mpg. When I decide whether or not a field trip is worth it, I look first at the pay versus what it would take to replace the gasoline and a little extra.

For example, if gasoline is $3.33 a gallon, my "replacement" costs for that trip are at least $12. I figure the gasoline, plus a little extra for wear and tire on my vehicle. I deduct the $12 from the shop fee to see what my profit/pay is before I do the shop. I usually try to do multiple shops that day or take care of personal business to help make the trip worthwhile.

I know that we can claim mileage on our taxes.

But when you are deciding to do a shop, based on your out of pocket expenses versus the fee, what dollar amount or calculation do you use to roughly cover your expenses?

I know that some will not do a shop for less than a certain amount on general principle. I understand that, but that is not my question.

Any feedback? A part-time mechanic told me that I was "shorting" myself by using that $12/$3.33 rule.

I don't usually venture out unless I have multiple shops scheduled. My routes are always significantly profitable, even with an old Ford F150 that gets about the same mileage as your truck. Doing a single shop isn't usually worth it, unless I'm already in the vicinity, or I really need the service (e.g. oil change).

I live in a rural area and hate leaving town for any reason unless there is at least one shop at the other end. (cheap bastard that I am. If, while taking the kids to the museum, I can pull off a few shops to pay for the gas, why not? Tossing in a "free" lunch or dinner makes it even better!)

Aside from that, if the point of leaving town is fora single shop itself, I need an extra $20/hour drive time. It something's an hour away, the minimum I will take is a $40 bonus. That is on top of whatever the fee would be. I start getting expensive if I can't bring the kids along, and if it's a business hours shop with no kids? It is pretty rare for MSCs to pay enough for my husband to take time off work for me to do a shop. It happens, though.

With route shopping I am not so expensive per shop.

I have a little spreadsheet that calculates whether a shop is worth it for me. I calculate how many miles I'm travelling and then add in my driving time, shopping time and time it takes to enter the report. It deducts the mileage from the fee and if I don't see at least $15 an hour at the end of all that, I'm not doing it. I've turned done many shops based on this.

I'm not going even a mile from home for less than $15, even for a very short shop with an easy report, unless it also pays for a meal that I would be eating out anyway, an oil change or groceries. For shops where fees and mileage are intertwined, I want a minimum of $20 per hour plus fuel and tolls and/or parking expenses. That amounts to multiple shops per trip and/or mostly video recirded shops.

Most newbies should plan to do only one to two shops a day in the very early days. Those may not pay at all (after expenses) except as a learning experience. But, that's still a good way to start at a pace that allows you to do a good job and make a good impression on the MSC and scheduler, so that you can begin to tackle enough shops per trip to make a profitable day.

I try to get $1/mile on any routes. Sometimes I get more and occasionally I'll take a lot less--as long as I have a good relationship with the scheduler and know that they will remember the favor and return it. Last month I did a 550 mile route for $195. I made money because of the economics of my vehicle and I did the trip in one day. This month the scheduler returned the favor to me and I had a 750 mile, two day route, for just under $1k.

I usually start with a number significantly higher
then I really need and work from there. Nothing
like getting a big bonus from 4 different msc's
to go to the same remote town.

I don't spend much time reading emails from MSCs or calculating if a shop is profitiable. What I do is I don't shop during the first week of the month. The remaining three weeks of the month I look for the bonuses being offerred. I'll take most jobs at $25. Then I build a route around that shop. On days I'm working I'm always looking for the bonus shops that appear usually by the 3rd week of the month. Usually I can pick the bonus shops up before other shoppers because I am online early a.m. and late p.m. During week 3 and 4 I'll do the fast food shops for the MSC that pays on the 10th, so I get reimbursed faster. Some of that MSCs shops have simple reports and by doing them so often I can be done in an hour from shop to finish. Come to the conclusion that right now video shopping is right for me because their is a shortage of video shoppers and only a few MSCs so they have to pay more. So it makes sense to build routes around $30+ video shops or other bonused shops.

$30 for a video shop? And on a route no less? If you are willing to do video for that low it will take you at least 23 or 24 shops just to pay off the equipment and start making a profit.

Never done a video shop for $30, never will.

if you are doing video shops for 30 dollars, you are doing something
wrong.

I have a simple formula. I have a pretty good idea of what it costs me to drive my car per mile (gas, w&t, etc). I figure how far I'm driving, multiply it that number and get a driving cost. I figure out how long it will take me to do the shop (travel+shop time+report time) and multiply that by my target income per hour. I add those two numbers together along with any other expenses (tolls, hotel room if it's an overnight trip, etc) to get the fee I need.

Also you are shorting yourself on your driving cost formula. For my car I figure almost twice the gas costs.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I do not understand the $1/mile formula. There's a FF shop that is about 50 miles from me. They often pay me $65 to do this shop. At $.65 per mile it's significantly under the $1/mile "rule" yet it almost exactly works out to my target $ per hour after wear and tear. At the same time my last overnight route was about 1500 miles. I got within a few cents of $1/mile and I ended up making just about half of my target $$ per hour.

bgriffin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have a simple formula. I have a pretty good
> idea of what it costs me to drive my car per mile
> (gas, w&t, etc). I figure how far I'm driving,
> multiply it that number and get a driving cost. I
> figure out how long it will take me to do the shop
> (travel+shop time+report time) and multiply that
> by my target income per hour. I add those two
> numbers together along with any other expenses
> (tolls, hotel room if it's an overnight trip, etc)
> to get the fee I need.


What if you are renting a car to do it. Sometimes I
rent a car if hertz is offering one of their crazy sales
of 14-20 dollars a day with unlimited miles. It also
helps keep my hertz President's Circle status going
which is useful when traveling if they are short cars
which happens more then it should they will give it
to you over people among other benefits.

I've never been a fan of the $1 a mile because the time it takes can vary so much. With all interstate it takes me 38 minutes or less to drive 40 miles west. Because of bridges and never ending construction, it can take me an hour to drive less than 40 miles into Illinois.

The problem with assigning value to a number of different factors, it takes so long to calculate. I know the drive time to most areas within a 200 mile radius, how long most shops will take and what I want to clear an hour after expenses and report time. By setting an hourly rate above my desired net to offset expenses and report time it allows me to answer the question of "how much do you need" almost immediately.

Car rental gets a LOT trickier. I've only rented a car once for a route. I probably will again but haven't really figured out a good way to add that cost. Right now I just figured rental cost and gas costs but I know I need to figure out a formula for lost tax deduction too.

you can deduct the actual cost of the rental but obviously not miles.
Just add the miles you could of deducted to the amount you need
to do the trip. Don't forget the very important annoyance surcharge
if you are dealing with a scheduler or editor who is less then optimal.
Some msc's my annoyance surcharge is higher then what I would
do a shop for.

techman01 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> if you are doing video shops for 30 dollars, you are doing something wrong.

In the context of my post 30+ refers to per hour. Video shops pay approximately $30 per hour and up (which is what the + sign means after the 30).

As for the cost of the gear comment above, you'd be right if you meant it takes 23-25 hours @$30 hour to cover the cost of purchasing the equipment.

Where are you getting your numbers?

LisaSTL Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Where are you getting your numbers?


I personally prefer a dartboard. I've gotten better
at hitting the bullseye over the years.

LisaSTL Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Where are you getting your numbers?

Well, I'm not going to discuss it anymore since how you run your business is your affair and mine is mine. But since you want to know, a typical video shop that pays $60 and takes 2 hours to perform comes out to $30/hour. To break it down for you, $60 divided by 2hours = $30. If you are interested in video shopping, go to jobslinger and look for Clear Evaluations, which currently has a typical new home shop for $60 that they claim takes 1 to 1.5 hours but with all events factored in will usually take 2 hours to complete. So there are the numbers for you, along with the name of the company that pays $60 for a 2 hour video shop, but claims it takes only 1 to 1.5 hours. Now I am done with your real world math lesson. I don't know what you make where you are doing video shops, and I don't care anyway.

Looks like I am being tested by some "old hands" on the board, perhaps "older" and "wiser" with emphasis on old. Time they upgrade from the 500 to the 700.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2014 07:25PM by aggiejim72.

Aggiejim, I don't really think the "attitude" was necessary. It wasn't totally clear that you were talking a per hour rate. I had to read you post several times before I realized you were talking the rate per hour.

Video is one of the few high-paying shopping areas that are left...so we should all be caring. Caring enough to do a quality job so the rate doesn't fall through the floor.

After six years of mystery shopping and four of video shopping, calculating my hourly is easy by now. I also know the going rate for virtually every type of video shop out there and was just wondering why yours was so low.

James Bond 007.5 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Aggiejim, I don't really think the "attitude" was
> necessary.

Yes, it was necessary because the posters who called me out were testing me. Anyone can read what was posted after my post about $30+ and catch the drift of their attitude. When it comes to covert video technology I am an expert, with many years of experience using the equipment in non-video shopping capacities. Also, asking me an imperative question like "Where are you getting your numbers," is confrontational, and tells me that the poster is a passive/aggressive type. Anyone who disagrees that a typical video shop for the company I shop for (CE) pays more than approximately $30/hour should just go ahead and post where they get different numbers instead of posting in a passive/aggressive, confrontational way.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2014 07:37PM by aggiejim72.

LisaSTL Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Where are you getting your numbers?

So, now that I posted where I get my number of $30/hour for video shops with CE, I'd like to ask you:

Where are you getting your numbers? if different than mine.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2014 07:39PM by aggiejim72.

I shop a certain high performance sports car. The video shops pay $75-150 and average an hour, on the very rare occasion 1.5 hours.

Aggiejim,
CE is a great video company. But it is not the only game in town. Becasue citing what a particular MSC pays for a particular kind of shop is probably a violation of our ICAs, I will not attach fees to particular companies. However, I can testify that most of CE's video assignments never make it to the job board. Regardless of the company, I routinely get a minimum of $60 for an apartment video shop, more for new homes. I do video shops for about 10 different MSCs in a year. My new car shops pay $100-$150, plus travel bonus in some cases. Those run 35-50 minutes, with about 15 minutes reporting time. On Tuesday I will travel a total of 110 miles on fast Intersate routes, and do 2 short new home shops for a total of $210. Once a year I do a 2 day route of 10- 15 furniture store videos at $90 each, average time in the store 15 minutes. Assiated living: $90 and up, depending on the amount of time on site. (My car, bought used so having little depreciation, gets 37-39mpg on the road, so I shelter a heck of a lot of fee income at the IRS write-off of about $0.56 per mile.)

If you are only looking at video MSC's job boards, you are not seeing a lot more than half of the video shops.

Aggiejim, this is a lightly moderated forum but one thing that will get a poster sanctioned is aggressive behavior. None of the folks who have posted on this thread is a moderator, so perhaps you should consider their advice before you have to hear from the mods. Accusing posters who give freely and generously of their time to reply to multiple posts, of ulterior motives just doesn't cut it around here. Since shop fees are almost universally referred to on the forums as flat fees, there is no reason to think that anyone was pulling your chain by asking for clarification. And, yes, there are newcomers to the forum who actually are doing $30 flat fee videos that take more than an hour when the complicated written report is included. The fees that I am quoting are per job, not including any travel bonus, and for jobs that have minimal reports, along the line of what you see from CE.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2014 08:23PM by walesmaven.

The beginning of this thread was so beautiful. I actually heard the birds singing and saw the sun shining. I found myself quietly humming kumbaya. Then, when I was least expecting it, things suddenly turned ugly, guns were drawn and shots were fired. I was shocked, "WTH was that all about?".

More importantly, don't you sometimes wonder, as I, why this keeps happening? What is it that causes us to we turn on each other?

(heart)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2014 09:25PM by stilllearning.

We watch too much pro wrestling?

aggiejim72 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don't spend much time reading emails from MSCs
> or calculating if a shop is profitiable. What I do
> is I don't shop during the first week of the
> month. The remaining three weeks of the month I
> look for the bonuses being offerred. I'll take
> most jobs at $25. Then I build a route around that
> shop. On days I'm working I'm always looking for
> the bonus shops that appear usually by the 3rd
> week of the month. Usually I can pick the bonus
> shops up before other shoppers because I am online
> early a.m. and late p.m. During week 3 and 4 I'll
> do the fast food shops for the MSC that pays on
> the 10th, so I get reimbursed faster. Some of that
> MSCs shops have simple reports and by doing them
> so often I can be done in an hour from shop to
> finish. Come to the conclusion that right now
> video shopping is right for me because their is a
> shortage of video shoppers and only a few MSCs so
> they have to pay more. So it makes sense to build
> routes around $30+ video shops or other bonused
> shops.


The word "hour" appears in your post exactly one time and not in the context of a rate "per" hour. There was absolutely no reason why anyone with any grasp of the English language would think you were referring to $30 per hour. Please get the chip off your shoulder. These are highly experienced video shoppers who were questioning that $30+ figure. I myself won't even do local audio shops for less than $30, let alone a route video shop for that price.

Nobody's being passive-aggressive here. "Incredulous" would be more like it. Don't blame them for your own lack of clarity in your post. A "Sorry, I meant $30+ per hour not per shop" would have been a better response.


As for OP's long-forgotten question, I will accept a single remote shop if the fee at least covers my gas plus $15 per hour for the shop. Then I build other shops onto the route to try to yield at least 40 cents per mile plus $15 per hour for the time I will spend on the road door to door, plus doing the reports (for most routes I'm looking at a 14 hour day from departure until finishing the reports and usually 250-350 miles). I make sure my gas is covered by the first shop I accept so that I don't end up out of pocket if for some reason I just can't get any other shops on the route. At least I won't have to flake, even if I don't end up with my desired per-hour return. So far I've never had to do a route with only one shop where my mileage and total time wasn't covered by the single shop fee.

stilllearning Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The beginning of this thread was so beautiful. I
> actually heard the birds singing and saw the sun
> shining. I found myself quietly humming kumbaya.
> Then, when I was least expecting it, things
> suddenly turned ugly, guns were drawn and shots
> were fired. I was shocked, "WTH was that all
> about?".
>
> More importantly, don't you sometimes wonder, as
> I, why this keeps happening? What is it that
> causes us to we turn on each other?
>
> (heart)


There is no such thing as everyone holding hands
and singing kumbaya!