I have searched this forum, but wasn't able to locate anything about this subject. If I missed it, feel free to let me know:

When is enough? I have most of next week nearly scheduled. On today's boards, there is more work that I'm not sure I can take. For example, I'm doing a mini-route about 30-45 minutes from home on Tuesday. I've already contacted two schedulers to make sure I get those assigned for that day - they're the ones where they give you a date range, and you have to commit to one of them. Now, there's 4-5 more in that same area that can only be done on Sat. or Wed. There's no way I can fit them in today - I'm going the complete opposite direction. These shops are easy, fun, and at places where I shop even without MS'g.

So, here's my question: Do I contact the other schedulers again and request that I change everything around on Tues. and Wed. so I can pick up these new ones? Do I just let the new ones go and hope for the best next month?

I've been MS's off-and-on very part-time for quite awhile. New year / new mission - now it's full-time, and I feel like I have to grab everything that comes along to build up relationships with the new MSCs I'm adding daily.

Well, I'm not that experienced as a route shopper, but if it was me and I wanted to take the shops, I would probably take the new ones on Wednesday or Saturday of next week and try to find more shops in that area to make the second trip worth it (unless those days are already spoken for).

Having said that, I have moved beyond the point of feeling I need to take every shop available in a given area on a given day. I find that although doing the shops themselves may be fine, taking the hours to complete the reports in the evenings contributes to my feeling of burnout, so I only want to do as many shops as I know I'll be comfortable reporting before midnight the same day (unless the shop guidelines give me 24 hours!).

It's a fine balance and some points in a month I'm okay with over scheduling, but then I always need to take a couple of days off to recover. I tend to shop 7 days per week, so it's important to me not to burn out. I try to keep a couple of very light days in my week to make up for the really heavy ones!

That's all probably not very helpful to you, but the reality is that one person's "too much" is another's "just right." I can never comfortably do more than 7 shops in a day, yet I see others who happily schedule 10-15 shops, day after day. That would kill me. To each his own!

As you said that you have done this on a part-time basis up until now, it may be best to stick with what you have scheduled for now. If you take too much on and cannot complete all of them, or become stressed for time and make errors, you may achieve the exact opposite of your goal to build relationships with MSCs.

That's great! Thank you both - I hadn't thought about sabotaging my efforts if I mess up. I already had to ask for a 24-hr extension on two shops from yesterday due to bad weather. I've worked with this scheduler before, so she was fine with it. I'll make sure it's done and submitted today, though! I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt somewhat intimidated by those who can do 10-15/day - I don't think I'll ever be able to do that. I'm going to stick with what I have for now and make sure I can get it all done and done well.

Lisa, it sounds like you just learned not to measure yourself and your efforts, using someone else's yardstick.

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I've done upwards of 50 in one day. I like high 4 figure days.
The only thing more important than money.....is more money.

Lisa, please know techman is just having fun and what he's saying is simply not realistic.

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It's realistic for a highly experienced and organized shopper
with careful planning around all traffic for the day. However,
I wouldn't recommend doing it on a regular basis. I generally
now do on average around 20 in a day. sometimes up to 25 to
maybe 30 depending on type of shop.

I repeat:

Lisa, please know techman is just having fun and what he's saying is simply not realistic.

"I generally now do on average around 20 in a day. sometimes up to 25 to maybe 30 depending on type of shop."

Doing 20 shops day is not impossible; inferring he usually does that many or more every day is, so please don't drink the Kool-Aid.

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If those 20 shops per day were the really quick ones... with super-quick, no-narrative reports... and you had the means to enter each report immediately after each shop...

Let's say each shop took 20 minutes counting shop and report. That would be 400 minutes, or a little over six and a half hours. That doesn't count driving to each of those 20 stops, though. Even if each shop + report was only 15 minutes, that's still 300 minutes or five hours ~ not counting driving. And it's unrealistic that *every* shop would be that quick, because @#$%& happens.

While I suppose that would be possible, at around six hours +/- not counting driving... if all the stops were really close together and you had lights on the roof of your car to get through traffic... I still don't see how that many of that type of shop would be available on a day-after-day basis, all month, every month.

And 50? Even if each shop *and* report only took ten minutes... that's still over eight hours not counting the driving.

So yeah. I think he's just having fun with us. Do the math.

All comes down to efficiency. Many people are not efficient or organized i've found. I just recently
listened in on a conference call an msc had with it's shoppers and the way
some shoppers go about doing a shop is mind boggling. The redundancy
and repeativeness and double walking is crazy. I'd be on to the 3rd shop
while a couple of them were finishing their first based on the way they were
doing it vs the way I would.

Some areas I've been covering so long that I know the left turn light takes an extra
45 seconds so I go a block before or after and come around as it saves time. UPS uses
a similar method. As few left turns as possible. Those minutes add up. Among many other
time saving ideas I've either come up with myself over the years or picked up from other
shoppers that do aggressive route shopping.

I'm not going to comment on 20 plus because it's something I've never tried. At one time I would regularly complete a route of 12 or more shops. Total time, including reports, was maybe 5 hours or less. That easily translates into 24 shops for only 10 hour day and I know hard core route shoppers who will work 16 plus hours. I've also completed a 27 shop route which involved driving over 600 miles in two 8 hour days.

Techman started out proclaiming, "I've done upwards of 50 in one day. I like high 4 figure days.
The only thing more important than money.....is more money" then backtracked to "I generally
now do on average around 20 in a day. sometimes up to 25 to maybe 30 depending on type of shop."

Lisa4984, my whole point in challenging techman's (who I generally admire) assertion is for you and other new shoppers to know this is not a realistic aspiration and to not feel THIS is what you (or I, an experienced shopper) should be doing.

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Why is saying you have done 50 shops in one day and then saying you generally average 30 a day backtracking.

I once had $960 in fees on one day. It's the very best day of shopping I have ever had. Generally I shoot for $300 in fees on a normal travel day. Am I backtracking by saying that? No. I simply had one supergreatcrazy day that normally would be highly improbable to replicate again.

BG, would you agree that I might be providing good advice for new shoppers when I said:

"Lisa4984, my whole point in challenging techman's (who I generally admire) assertion is for you and other new shoppers to know this is not a realistic aspiration and to not feel THIS is what you (or I, an experienced shopper) should be doing."

OR

Do you think techman's assertion is something a new shopper should be measuring themselves against?

(heart)

PS
Congrats on your "supergreatcrazy" day and thank you for characterizing it as such!

Stilllearning why should they not strive to reach the top?
Why settle for mediocrity? I go for the top everytime I
try something, may not always hit it but can't say I didnt
give it a shot. Shoppers should work toward hitting 20 shops
in a day. Doing 20 shops in one day to me is better than doing
7 shops a day over 3 days.

SL, I think Techman was pretty clear that 50 shops in a day was a rarity. From what I understood it was more of "I've done 50 in a day so most likely you can do more than you think" and less "I've done 50 in a day so you should always be doing that too."

I'd like Techman to name the client(s) he did 50 shops in one day for. He has not mentioned the MSC.

I'd speculate that they were the mall shop where you shop every location for less than 10 minutes and there is zero drive time other than walking into the next shop.

Why should he? And I can tell you that guess could not be more wrong.

techman01 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I've done upwards of 50 in one day. I like high 4
> figure days.
> The only thing more important than money.....is
> more money.

I heard a story about a man that worked all his life making mo money mo money and mo money. As long as there was money to be made, he was after it.
The man had a devoted wife and told his wife, when I die, I want us to have matching headstones and then I want you to bury the rest of my money with me. He loved his money.
The devoted wife outlived the man. At his funeral, she was seen placing an envelope into his casket before they lowered it into the ground. Her friend later asked her, "ARE YOU CRAZY! Tell me you didn't bury him with his money". The devoted wife, said "I made him a promise. First I bought him a stone to be placed at the head of his grave. Then I bought me a stone, the one I'm wearing on my finger. I wrote him a check for the rest.

Measuring yourself with techman's yardstick would actually require a tape measure.
Maybe even a measuring wheel.
But doggone if I haven't gone from giddy over a $100 day to not even venturing out any more for less than $100, and hitting my first two $400 days and my first $500 day this past year, due mainly from advice, tips and tricks shared on this Forum, at least a third of which I've appropriated from techman.
Nah, don't compare yourself against this guru, but do listen and learn.

OK, y'all - I can take a joke. Seriously, I LOL'd at the Kool-Aid and had to read that post to my other half! I don't live in a major metropolis, but it's not Podunk-ville, either. I am going out on a limb here, but if you can do 25-30 in a day, you 1. live in a way bigger city than I do; 2. you've done that shop more times than you can count, barely skim the instructions for any updates, and practically check off the report in your sleep (little to no narrative); and 3. you, unlike me, have a head for directions and don't rely on Google maps to navigate the same town you've lived in all your life - I still add a 10-20% "dummyhead" overage to my drive time.

I've been watching boards for months now and have a plan to propose a monthly route shop (with bonuses, of course!) to one scheduler who routinely has trouble filling the same 4 sites. I've done 15 shops for her so far, some in areas she has trouble filling, and scored 10s on all of them. I'm also working with my EPMS scheduler to do a route shop on the other side of the state - she loves me and is always willing to bonus them.

One thing I do NOT miss - the 5:30 alarm to go somewhere I don't want to be, doing something I don't want to do, and being told when I can go on break/to lunch, what to wear, when to be there, what to do, when I can leave, and how much I'll get paid.

techman01 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> The only thing more important than money.....is
> more money.

Favorite Kevin O Leary quotes (Shark Tank)

1. "Here's how I think of my money - as soldiers - I send them out to war everyday. I want them to take prisoners and come home, so there's more of them."

2. "Working 24 hours a day isn't enough anymore. You have to be willing to sacrifice everything to be successful, including your personal life, your family life, maybe more. If people think it's any less, they're wrong, and they will fail."

3. "You may lose your wife, you may lose your dog, your mother may hate you. None of those things matter. What matters is that you achieve success and become free. Then you can do whatever you like."

4. "I want to go to bed richer than when I woke up. The pursuit of wealth is a wonderful thing, but the thing is you have to be honest about it, you have to tell the truth."

5, "I don't mind rude people. I want people that I can make money with, so if their executional abilities are good, and they're arrogant and rude, I don't care."

I cannot fathom making $7,000 - $9,999 in one day MSing. I'm doing something waaaaaaay wrong.

I don't think techman's claims are too far-fetched. I took it to read he did an average of 20 shops a day on the days he shops, not every day. I'm fairly new to mystery shopping - I've been doing it for less that a year - but it's not unusual for my one-day routes to include 20-25 shops. It's something I had to build up to, and it may not be the best approach for everyone, but it works for me in my area.

I don't particularly like doing this many -- it's stressful and exhausting -- but I find it hard to resist bonus offers that pop up along the route at the last minute. (I also find it impossible to pass a dairy treat location without stopping for an easy $10 or so.) When all is said and done, I end up spending about three days on these routes: one day for planning, one looong day for doing the shops, and another day for finishing the debriefing and resting.

As far as 50 shops in a day ... well, that's harder to believe. But six months ago I wouldn't have believed I would be doing 25 shops in a day, so what do I know? I suppose if the windows for several types of easy shops aligned just right, it is conceivable.

PS: I too would like to find the secret of those "high 4 figure days." $7,000 - $9,999? Wow! (jk)

I've read enough of Techman's posts to believe what he says. First thing, who says he's working only 8 hours a day? That was inferred in one of the posts. I believe [may be wrong] that one of Techman's clients that he regularly shops is open 7AM until 11PM, so there is a much broader window. Also, IIRC, he has proven his reliability to the client to the point that the client has specifically requested the MSC only have him do their shops (I believe that is a deli department in a major grocery store chain). Additionally, because of his reliability, he gets a higher fee per shop than most shoppers. I also seem to recall that he has someone drive him on his routes, so he is actually entering reports on the fly.

I don't know how long Techman has been shopping, and I've never met him, but I can tell you that he earned his reputation through the school of hard knocks, probably on the 8-10 year PhD program.

I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but Techman is a special case. He developed a system that works for him. We are fortunate that he does choose to share his knowledge with us.

Something I noticed was people always assuming the hard core route shopper is completing all those shops and the reports on the same day. There is also the assumption it is always a mix of shops.

Start with imagining you are completing routes you have done month after month for several years. Do you think your efficiency would increase by leaps and bounds? How many times would you need to reread those guidelines? Imagine the day is filled with several of the same type of shops or audits. Don't you think it's possible you could perform an assignment in five to ten minutes that might take a new shopper 20 minutes or more? Take the reports out of the equation and how many shops would you be able to get done in one day? Take out any long scenario shops, new homes, senior living, new car with test drive, now how many could you complete?

Life is different when you are either a hard core route shopper or involved with ongoing projects. Changes to programs are communicated directly eliminating the need to study 10, 20 or 50 pages of guidelines looking for one minor update. There are no requirements to take tests every single month. Published report deadlines may be 6 or 12 hours while the established route shopper may have 48 to 72 hours to turn in reports.

So true Lisa. When I did my bank routes, I always had until the end of the month to get the reports in...but they were so easy that, unless something went really wrong, I had the reports finished in the hotel room that night, usually with enough time to relax with Food Network.

OK, then - next time I try for 10 shops in one day (banks, hopefully!), I'll be sure to check all the "route shop" threads. I know there are a few.

Tomorrow may be a challenge - we got another 6 inches of snow today turning to freezing rain tonight. Instead of shopping, I may be e-mailing schedulers begging for extensions!

Thanks again, all!

This thread is mind boggling! I'm a new shopper and I only do one per day. Most of mine are high paying, narrative shops and I don't want to screw up!