If everyone would calculate the FULL time and expense of a shop before accepting it, you may not wish to take a job that pays $4 if all you have to do is click a button. Not speak Spanish to a funeral home. Simply clicking a button on a website and you could be loosing money. If you take a job for $5 and all you are doing is taking a single photo of the front of the store as you drive past it and it's a trip that is more than 4 miles round trip, you are loosing money.

Here is why:

THE TRUE COST OF A MYSTERY SHOP IN TIME


1. The time spent looking for the job. (Reading E-mail, checking the MSC site for new jobs, wasting time with the same MSC reading about jobs that are out of the area or not even capable to be performed due to age/other restrictions.)

2. Finally found a job that is close to you. (Time spent reading the job description to see if it is reasonable in the first place. This can be very misleading of what the report is going to be. That two page report will expand when you go to fill it in!)

3. Applying for the job. (Self assign is great and earned with many MSC's. Now your wasting time to check if your application is accepted.)

4. Keeping tract of the applied jobs that have not been assigned, and not applying for an overlapping assignment.

5. Printing the shop/audit forms. (Some low paying jobs have 20+ pages!)

6. Time driving to and from the location that is not around the corner. (Gas, and wear and tear on the vehicle.)

7. Time spent actually filling out the report. (We all love this part, so you might as well deduct the time for this from all of the above. )

8. The time spent scanning in receipts or proof of visit. (This is nothing when opening a bank account and getting that folder that they want every form/pamphlet/Business card scanned)

9. The time to add it to your spreadsheet to keep tract of the job. (Yeah, you need to do this.)

10. Calculating mileage. (You at the very least go to Google maps and ballpark it into the spreadsheet, right?)

11. Waiting for the payment. (Spending the time to update your spreadsheet and keep tract of when your paid, and if not paid, and the effort to attempt to get payment if they do not send it.)

12. The constant checking of email for several days after submitting the report. (To see if the editor has questions of your report sometimes a week after you needed to submit it within 12 hours or not get paid.)

13. If you did all the above and payment is received. (Updating your spreadsheet to reflect the payment. If you do many jobs that month for the same company, calculating the payment for each job to the payment amount received, as many companies don't itemize it for you. Yes, your doing accounting too.)

You can spend almost an hour to complete a one minute job, if there are any hiccups in the 13 step plan.

Of course, you can skip many of the steps above to make it easier. But you won't know if you don't get paid. You will be in real trouble if the IRS audits you, and you will end up flaking if a post-it note falls off your monitor.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/2015 06:42AM by scanman1.

Agree!

x



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/29/2015 11:56PM by MDavisnowell.

Or you could sit home and not spend any time clicking, prepping, photo-taking, recording, chasing, and you would have that hour to do nothing or watch TV or do as you please....and get "0" money coming in. If one has the time, why not use it constructively? If you want a guaranteed income and don't want the hassle of your own business, get a job with an employer.

How much were you earning while you wrote the above post? That took your time, didn't it? Everyone does what they do for various reasons and I'm sure most are aware of the real costs in time. Most of us have the time and organizational skills to plan our work well. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I actually enjoy making my spread sheet, searching for jobs and tracking my payments. I am making money which is very important to me. I have the time and I will use it well. I get to choose my work, stay home if it snows, sleep late if I choose, drive my car all over the place (which I love), enjoy a variety of different environments and circumstances that can be hilarious, get checks coming in galore, PayPal notices up the wazoo, direct deposits monthly and have some great stories to tell. And, no, I don't do $4 Spanish phone call jobs, but do enjoy the emails.

But thanks for the reminder. I think you need to re-evaluate your situation. If you're not happy or successful, find something else to do with your time.

Your thinking too much about this.

Get rid of stinking thinking.

Actually, reading and partaking the forum is part of the educational component recommended to successfully operate your MS business, so it's another time factor to take into consideration.

So is the time & $$ spent purchasing and maintaining computers, printers, scanners, voice recorders, and whatever other devices you may use in the operation of your business.

If you look at it more as an overall business that you run and focus less on the hourly per-job statics, you may find that you gain economy of time in performing, searching, accounting and prepping for multiple jobs at once, however. Those 40 hours you spend may actually be shared over 10-20 jobs.....

My recommendation is to look at your bottom-line at the end of each month and year, and how many hours you put in during that time to see what the true time vs. profit structure really is.

So much of what is listed are things I don't do anymore or the time is negligible. No scanning, no checking job boards, no going back to see apps were accepted. Time on my spreadsheet is negligible as is mapping and both are done while having my morning coffee and watching the local news. I track my time for shops/audits/reports on my calendar on the phone and don't include driving to the first stop or home from the last because I would have to drive somewhere for work. I combine personal errands with work as much as possible. I put off a ten minute drive to Target for a week until I had to go to a $50 video shop across the street. I also find a lot of time savings in being able to take care of so much personal business on weekdays rather than evenings and weekends when people who have office jobs have to be out. I tend to multi task so much it can be hard to separate what is for work and what isn't. Time on calls might also be spent loading/unloading the dishwasher or doing laundry.

Reading my own post, I did write it with a negative slant as I just finished going through the Paypal history, check stubs and direct deposits and did the accounting to add the payments into my spreadsheet for the last two months.

Not everything added up and I was frustrated when I wrote that.

I hate accounting and put it off and that put me in a foul mood. I think I'm going to stay on top of it and enter each check and Paypal and direct deposit notice as it arrives from now on, so I don't end up doing so much of something I hate at once.

This does not mean that I'm going to slow down or stop doing MS work.

In fact, I need to get going to an oil change shop this afternoon.

I just had the timing belt changed and finally got my oil leak fixed that was dripping 1/2 a quart of oil a day.

Time to get synthetic oil back in the car.

I'll probably start feeling better about driving all over town again without needing to check the oil every morning.

Let's face it - Women are much better at multi-tasking than men. I am woman; Hear me roar.

After inputting two months of data I'd be in a pissy mood too

@Sybil2 wrote:

Let's face it - Women are much better at multi-tasking than men. I am woman; Hear me roar.

My husband insists that multi-tasking is not possible. Meanwhile, I often do 3-4 things at a time. He makes me laugh!

I actually think this information is important for the new shopper. I would agree that the things listed above are correct. But there are many ways to decrease the amount of time these tasks take.

1. Frequently repeating the same type of job, i.e. gas station audits, dramatically reduces the amount of time the shop takes, the amount of type it takes to learn about the job and print reports, and the amount of time inputting the report.

2. Scanning receipts all at one time and adjusting photo sizes, if required, will reduce the amount of time this takes as opposed to completing this task several times each day. I submit most of my reports in the afternoon/evening. It never takes more than 10 minutes for this task, even for many shops.

3. Shopping a route will reduce the gasoline cost and the cost of vehicle wear and tear.

4. The more experience a shopper is, the less time they need to spend looking for work.

5. I create a new spreadsheet each month for that months work. It literally takes about 10 seconds to add any new jobs. This easily tracks schedule, expected payment, and payment dates.

6. I don't usually calculate mileage. I write the starting and ending mileage for each shop. There is nothing usually to calculate unless I am traveling a long distance.

7. I check my email probably 20 times each day. I spend about 20 minutes in the morning answering anything required. The rest of the day usually takes seconds to review the new emails unless something needs addressing.

For anyone who wants shopping and auditing to be a business, it does take a lot of work. Although the average shop may be easy, it is not always easy to handle all of the tasks involved in running a business. However, through experience all the tasks do get easier and quicker.

The more efficiency you can build in, the better. And unless you're totally clueless, the more you do this work, the more efficient you become.

I think it's important to remember that some people have too much free time (not by choice) and too little money (also not by choice), and that you can't pay bills or buy food or whatever you need with free time. In such cases, bringing in the cash any legal way they can is imperative. Mystery shopping can be a big help to people who may be struggling.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/29/2015 11:53PM by MDavisnowell.

But scanman: aren't some of your points just: "The Cost of doing Business?"

If you did not check the job boards, never read the emails about jobs, never answered your phone from schedulers who wanted you to do an assignment, you would NEVER get jobs. Hence, none of these = "no jobs would be given to you."
(unless you and a scheduler had an ongoing huge route and that's all you did, but even then, you would have had to talk to the scheduler, created a route, calculated the mileage, figured your cost..etc.

I just don't how you are going to find a tree, where money falls out of it?

To work, you need to get off your butt and FIND the jobs. That includes ALL the things you listed...or do none of it and not work.

No work = No money

Since I'm still an almost newbie, you forgot to mention the time spent filling out the forms when you apply to be a shopper.

So many of them are identical, is there anyway to just send in a copy?

AND I applied to one last week that wanted area codes, zip codes and actual town names. So, I had a detour to the post office site to look up every single zip code that I could conceivably see myself driving to. But, ...
... on the plus side, I now have a zip code list. THEN to make sure that I had added every possible town, I opened up a Google map to double check my area. I hate the ones who ask for this.

I'm semi at peace with all of this. I sell stuff online, do floral work and have a small cleaning service. I DO LIKE THE FACT that my money is coming in from multiple areas. If any one slot is dicey, I still have the others.

I also have my money coming in from multiple areas so I feel quite lucky, however, my car is 2 1/2 years old and has 72,000 miles which is a huge draw back to mystery shopping. Very, very expensive plus I am at a point where I worry a bit about my car breaking down on long trips as this has happened in the past. Irritating to be broken down in a neighboring state and does not allow me to complete my shops for the day or get reports in on time if I am stuck somewhere AND THAT opens a whole other can of worms! I have definitely become more aware of the travel and take only jobs with good bonuses and generally speaking cut waaaaaay back.

@Watching the Wheels wrote:

Since I'm still an almost newbie, you forgot to mention the time spent filling out the forms when you apply to be a shopper.

So many of them are identical, is there anyway to just send in a copy?

AND I applied to one last week that wanted area codes, zip codes and actual town names. So, I had a detour to the post office site to look up every single zip code that I could conceivably see myself driving to. But, ...
... on the plus side, I now have a zip code list. THEN to make sure that I had added every possible town, I opened up a Google map to double check my area. I hate the ones who ask for this.

I'm semi at peace with all of this. I sell stuff online, do floral work and have a small cleaning service. I DO LIKE THE FACT that my money is coming in from multiple areas. If any one slot is dicey, I still have the others.

I like your positive attitude There are times when we have to print out many pages, for say audits, and if we hang on to those, and they are similar to the next audit, we have just saved ourselves from printing all that again

@Watching the Wheels wrote:

..time spent filling out the forms when you apply to be a shopper. So many of them are identical, is there anyway to just send in a copy?

There are plenty of browser add-ons for auto-completing forms. The Google Toolbar has AutoFill built in. One click will usually complete 75% of an individual MSC registration form.

@Watching the Wheels wrote:

AND I applied to one last week that wanted area codes, zip codes and actual town names. So, I had a detour to the post office site to look up every single zip code that I could conceivably see myself driving to. But, on the plus side, I now have a zip code list. THEN to make sure that I had added every possible town, I opened up a Google map to double check my area. I hate the ones who ask for this.

I have not found that providing an exhaustive list of these increases in any way the number of jobs available to me. Whether I provide one zipcode or twenty, one area code or five, the jobs available are still determined by a radiant distance from my zipcode, and I can change both the zipcode and the distance to search in other areas.

Scanman1, I think your post was excellent for someone just starting out or looking into this business to read. I've known too many people - and this applies to all self-employed, work from home jobs, not just mystery shopping - have this ridiculous belief that it's something extremely easy and they won't really have to do any work. Everyone who's ever expressed an interest to me about working from home never brings it up again when I detail what's involved - and I do it to be encouraging, not discouraging. Many people are just essentially lazy - they are turned off by the amount of work it takes to actually be your own boss. People seem to have this mistaken idea similar to old back of the magazine scam ads: "Make money from home stuffing envelopes". Reality is, you don't get something for nothin'!

SO - I had this GREAT idea that I would like to work at USPS as a letter carrier for $15/hour - NO TIME OFF, 7 DAYS A WEEK! IN A SNOWSTORM!


Helllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll NO!

No. no comparison!

I love all the info you provide. The zero work=zero money says it all. I figured out the saving instructions/manuals in my first month. I was going through tons of paper and at least two cartridges a month. Thanks all.

You can say mystery shoppers ARE their own business owners. We are the scheduler, admin, accountant and consultant for our business. Does it cost money? Sure does, because it takes time to do all this. But you can say this about any Independent Contractor positions out there.

Another question to consider is what have you done to become more efficient?

• I used to spend too much time organizing my records more than needed. After my first year, I figured out the important information I needed to track vs. what I could live without.

• Instead of "waiting" for payments, I programmed my spreadsheet tell ME when something's running past 90 days of non-payment.

• Instead of having to calculate and back check my payments to see if they are correct, I programmed my spreadsheet to tell ME when there's a discrepancy.

• Eventually, most shoppers figured out their bread and butter shops. Yes, scheduling takes time; but again, it's time we need to consider as independent contractors.

To save on my cost, I use both sides of the printer paper, I refill my own ink cartridges. I also group shops into areas. I look for shops, close to each other, from different sites.

@johnb974 wrote:

To save on my cost, I use both sides of the printer paper, I refill my own ink cartridges. I also group shops into areas. I look for shops, close to each other, from different sites.

I bought a brother laser printer for $100. It prints on both sides and the toner cartridge lasts for a very long time. I have used the initial cartidge they sent with the printer for 5 months. On the ink jet I ran out in a week with some assignments. I only use that now if there is a color award I have to give like Arby's.

@yawarakai wrote:

@johnb974 wrote:

To save on my cost, I use both sides of the printer paper, I refill my own ink cartridges. I also group shops into areas. I look for shops, close to each other, from different sites.

I bought a brother laser printer for $100. It prints on both sides and the toner cartridge lasts for a very long time. I have used the initial cartidge they sent with the printer for 5 months. On the ink jet I ran out in a week with some assignments. I only use that now if there is a color award I have to give like Arby's.

Don't forget to look into generic toner as well. It'll cut costs even more.

Personally, I avoid paper when I can, unless it's a guidelines that's detailed enough to warrant me to print out and I do the shop often.

Agreed with Tarantado above ^^^

As far as I'm concerned, technology can almost totally replace ink & paper (at least as far as what you need for MSing). I can honestly say that I have not printed a single piece of paper for shop purposes in the last 2 years, though I don't often take reward/reveal shops.

Almost everything that needs to be saved or viewed later can be printed to a PDF and stored in a web accessible folder. Signatures can now be added with most PDF readers, and I've had no problem having docs accepted where others signed off on docs that I had in my iPad. Digital signatures are now a standard business practice!

If you are printing more that 5 pages a month for your MS business, you should probably take a closer look at your document workflow...

I would still print the first page that shows the shop fees and the assignment id to staple the receipt to. It's easier than writing on the receipt and keeps them stacked neatly in the file folder.

I still print out many pages. As a beginning Mystery Shopper, I feel I have to. I need the reminders.

@scanman1 wrote:

I would still print the first page that shows the shop fees and the assignment id to staple the receipt to. It's easier than writing on the receipt and keeps them stacked neatly in the file folder.

Why not just scan the receipt, then throw the original copy in a shoe box somewhere?