Hi there! I have been mystery shopping for about a month. I am signed up with BestMark, Coyle, intellishop, About face, and Insight a Closer look. Any feedback on those would be great or any others that you think I should join! I am wondering at what point will I start getting higher end shops such as high end restaurants or hotels even? Any insight would be fabulous !
Thank you!!

Generally access to higher end shops is something you earn by good performance on previous shops. Bring your 'A Game' to your shops and if they have something better to offer you will see it.

You have barely scratched the surface. Many of us are signed up with 100 or more MSCs. Start at the top (or the bottom of the middle) of the MSC list at the bottom of this page and sign up with a few everyday. On a slow day, sign up with more. I have personally not seen higher paying shops from BestMark, Intellishop, or About Face unless they are desperate to get a shop done and offer a bonus. From what I have read, Coyle seems to require that you "pay your dues" with low paying restaurant shops before they will consider you for higher paying hotel shops, which have the reputation of being a lot of work. I have not done any shops for them. A Closer Look rarely has shops in my area, and the ones which I have seen are reimbursement only with very specific food or drink ordering requirements.

I certainly do not have the experience of others who can chime in, but I was in your shoes early last year. I have been shopping part time for about 18 months. I have signed up with 80 companies so far and have performed fewer than 1000 assignments. I would say the most important assets to you are persistence and patience. I am only starting to get some interesting offers from certain companies. I imagine if you get more jobs under your belt quicker, the sooner you will get more opportunities. I am not overly ambitious with my MSing and have some limitations to the time I can dedicate to this endeavor, but I am usually willing to try a shop once or twice at the base rate with a new company just to get the experience, and get on their radar. If I can prove that I can consistently provide reports worth a 9 or 10, then I have a shot at being considered for the better gigs. That's how I see it, anyway.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2015 05:16AM by InPlainSight.

@hkoen2086 wrote:

Hi there! I have been mystery shopping for about a month. I am signed up with BestMark, Coyle, intellishop, About face, and Insight a Closer look. Any feedback on those would be great or any others that you think I should join! I am wondering at what point will I start getting higher end shops such as high end restaurants or hotels even? Any insight would be fabulous !
Thank you!!

I think that you should treat every shop as if it were a high end shop. Be careful with your punctuation and your sentence structure and take every criticism or hint from every editor as if it were gold.

If you are not yet doing a lot of bank shops, keep signing up with MSCs until you find 2-3 that consistantly have bank teller shops that you can do without having an account at that bank brand. Then, work your way up to doing bank platform shops (where you meet with a banker at a desk to discuss a loan or credit card.) You will find that banks are so thick on the ground that you can often do several shops in a day, with very short narratives for the teller shops and slightly longer narratives for the platform shops. Save Informa MSC for after you have gotten good marks for several platform shops. Their platform shops take more narrative, but pay much better than most. You can start making some good daily fees within 4-5 months by doing a lot of bank shops. You want to write such good narratives that the MSCs will start sending emails asking that you take particular shops and/or offering you a bonus for out-of-the-way locations.

Then, keep signing up with more MSCs and trying new kinds of shops. You will find other industry groups that you like to shops and which MSCs tend to serve them. Before you are ready to risk the outlay for higher end restaurant and hotel shops, be sure to try some small restaurant shops. As you find the MSCs (keep signing up!) that have cinnamon bun shops and yogurt shops and fast casual shops (order at the register, sit down and your meal will be delivered to you or your number will be called.) use those to get started at low ufront costs.

IF ACL has restaurant shops in your area, try a few, taking baby steps while you learn their narrative preferences and editing style. If they have yogurt shops near you, that's a good place to start, since the visits and the reports are short, and there is even a small fee in addition to reimbursement for lots of frozen yogurt for 2 people (but you can shop solo.) You will want to email your editor there to ask for specific recommendation to improve, since their comments are often pretty generic. Don't be discouraged; this is a stepping stone to higher end dining shops with other MSCs.

Above all, spend every free day that you do not have a shop scheduled, signing up with 5 more MSCs until you have exhausted the list of nearly 200 at the link at the bottom of this page.

Wow there is some valuable advice in this thread. Walesmaven is giving pointers that some shoppers worked years to figure out. I think I'll bookmark it.

Fabulous info here!

With no more than one night per week in some weeks for hotels and fine dining, and a 300-mile round trip between me and truly fine dining, my "best"shops often are the humble ones I can get to locally or on the way to something personal.

Occasionally, best is a timely bonus.

Sometimes, best is the unexpected odd, delightful, or wonderful moment that you could not anticipate for your shop.

Be open to all shops. Enjoy!

I would say, sign up for a lot of companies. You are more likely to find work that way. When you do good work, you may be contacted by another division of the company for other types of work or contacted when a new program is started. That is how I got into more lucrative types of work. Also, some schedulers schedule for multiple companies. If they see you do good work, they will contact you for projects at other companies that you might not yet be signed up with. You are now running your own business, and it takes time to build it. But, you can expect your business to expand if you sign up with more companies, are willing to try new things and are reliable to do a good job.

CoffeeQueen,
I will also be doing a workshop on exactly this topic at the IMSC Las Vegas Conference Nov 9-10.

I haven't been doing this long either (just hit my 3-month mark) but I have been very happy with the shops I have been offered to date. I am currently only registered with 12 companies, but have done at least one from each. The higher end companies I tend to take more shops with them first because it continued to add to my resume with them. Find out which MSCs do what so you know where to focus your energy. I don't know your background but two things I am sure helped me were getting ICPRO with a 100 score, and getting Gold Certified with MSPA. I have no idea how much weight or if any at all are taken into account, but from day one I never had issues getting shops and although I haven't done any hotel overnight stays (by choice) I have done shops paying $50 - $100+ for audits, child care/senior center tours, bar audits, etc. Just keep pumping out those top rated scores, and treat this like its your career and you will get those in no time.

@CoffeeQueen wrote:

Wow there is some valuable advice in this thread. Walesmaven is giving pointers that some shoppers worked years to figure out. I think I'll bookmark it.

I'm right there with you!

Watch out for Intelli-shop. Their proofreaders will write you purposely to have you write more nonesense about their shop and then mark you down because they had to contact you for unnecessary work. They never show a name, just proof-reader 1 or 2. They are notorius for doing this every time. Doing the shop and the report and then re-doing it again to get paid less because then they create new shops which will pay more several days later. Watch out for working with them.

Yes, Intelli-shop editors are frequently a royal pain. Their editing is so subjective (I do the same basic report and get a 10 and then the next one prompts a bunch of follow up questions, asking for things that they deem necessary but are not specifically asked for in the guidelines or report. Then they lower your score because "we had to contact you." [No, actually you didn't need to contact me, you chose to.]) I don't think it is conspiratorial as you imply, gbarnes (i.e. so they can lower the fees). I just think that some editors need some fresh air and a good massage. They are way too high strung. And of course they are insulated from the shoppers. Try to contact the editor so you can say, "Help me understand..." They are sheltered and it is intolerable. Intelli-shop has some good shops and mostly lousy ones. But even the ones that are reasonable have given me pause. (NOTE: Avoid the $30 senior living ones unless they are mega-bonused [up to $100] and you are ready to deal with very picky editors who are unreachable, but love to say "we had to contact you."

@walesmaven wrote:

If you are not yet doing a lot of bank shops, keep signing up with MSCs until you find 2-3 that consistently have bank teller shops that you can do without having an account at that bank brand. Then, work your way up to doing bank platform shops (where you meet with a banker at a desk to discuss a loan or credit card.) You will find that banks are so thick on the ground that you can often do several shops in a day, with very short narratives for the teller shops and slightly longer narratives for the platform shops. Save Informa MSC for after you have gotten good marks for several platform shops. Their platform shops take more narrative, but pay much better than most. You can start making some good daily fees within 4-5 months by doing a lot of bank shops. You want to write such good narratives that the MSCs will start sending emails asking that you take particular shops and/or offering you a bonus for out-of-the-way locations.

Above all, spend every free day that you do not have a shop scheduled, signing up with 5 more MSCs until you have exhausted the list of nearly 200 at the link at the bottom of this page.

Based on my experience, all of walesmaven's advice is quality.

The first paragraph summarizes much of my mystery shopping experience. However, I don't think I waited very long to delve into Informa shops. I'm a good writer and attentive to details (having a journalism background helps), so when I found Informa offering a slew of bank shops in my area with very good pay I jumped all over them. I didn't have a lot of mystery shopping experience at that point, and certainly none with banks, but I didn't hesitate to grab the shops. I met the quota allowed for the particular bank (three) they were offering fairly quickly, but when I contacted the scheduler to ask for more he gave me all I wanted. Getting a bunch of high-paying shops from a scheduler so soon in one's relationship with a MSC isn't typical, but never discount your possibility of making it happen

The bottom line - if it feels right, go for it.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2015 04:19PM by retrodaddy.

You just getting wet behind the ears. You got anlong way to go. The competition is fiery. So, be patience and do a good job on every shops. I've been doing it for 10 years. Those high end shops may pay more, but they as much headache as those low end shops.

I've been mystery shopping for 3 1/2 weeks. I've done banking,museums,bars,fancy restaurants,fast food,casual dining,bowling alleys,cell phone shops,furniture stores,and 5 bowling alley shops that paid $70 each.
My favorite shop so far was the banking shop,it was $90 to open up a savings account. Next week I'm starting my first apartment and hotel shops.
I haven't gotten any certifications yet,but I do receive 9-10 scores each time. I also try my best to take ANY last minute assignments. I believe that accepting the last minute assignments ALL the time really helped.

You are off toa great start and clearly on the right track. Welcome!

I agree, Intellishop are a pain to fill out. And they do not pay good either. I have not done a shop for them lately due to the lengthy comments needed. And then correcting them !
Can any one give me some tips on what companies are good paying hotel and restaurant shops ?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/03/2015 03:12PM by elainerp.

If you have not yet done so, sign up at isecretshop.com/agent as it is a job board for many different mystery shopping companies and you can access all of their shops with just one log in.

Best of luck, you have gotten some very good tips and advice here. This forum is invaluable!

All of us are interested in getting connected to the better jobs and I agree that is vitally important to the serious shoppers. The best way to increase income is to become more efficient at the shops that are available to us. We can always organize and do better. Better management of our shopping time will result in more increases in income than hoping for better shops. Not that we shouldn't continue searching for those little niche companies with the sweetie pie jobs, but doing good work will bring rewards in the long run.
The high paying jobs are great, but a quick job and a quick report paying $10 may be more of a money maker than a job that pays $75 complete with posterior pain.

@MDavisnowell wrote:

All of us are interested in getting connected to the better jobs and I agree that is vitally important to the serious shoppers. The best way to increase income is to become more efficient at the shops that are available to us. We can always organize and do better. Better management of our shopping time will result in more increases in income than hoping for better shops. Not that we shouldn't continue searching for those little niche companies with the sweetie pie jobs, but doing good work will bring rewards in the long run.
The high paying jobs are great, but a quick job and a quick report paying $10 may be more of a money maker than a job that pays $75 complete with posterior pain.

Those fast easy $10 jobs are the sweetie pie jobs as far as I am concerned. I can do 8-10 in a day without breaking a sweat or writing an epic novel about it.

There is one trait that some shoppers have in common. Some of us love variety! This business has variety every day. We can add more variety by mixing it up with whatever else we want to do. I surmise that some shoppers need to have a large number of msc's and job offerings just to remain engaged and alert. If you are this type of shopper, keep fresh and on your game by trying new jobs.

P.S. There are ways to get into hotel shops directly. Search the forum for threads about hotel shops. Starting with certain companies may help you on your way up the hotel ladder to the 'best' in hospitality.

I agree, sometimes, and more ofen than not, the $10 shops with yes/no is much less stress than the $75 one that takes hours. Plus, one will have seven chances of getting the $10 ones correct as opposed to one $75. That is my observation.

Shoppers have different opinions about which shops are the better shops. Many of us shop to enhance lifestyle and love the fine dining, hotels, and cruises. You couldn't pour those shops on me if you tied me down. I'll never know if I like them because I'll never do them. I want some supplemental money and I want to sleep in my own bed every night.

For those of you not yet able to access those shops, keep shopping, keep doing a good job, and keep signing up with companies. I don't have personal experience on that but the Big Girls say that's the way it's done.

In the meantime, know that you can do reasonably well with the base rate shops. My September was over $2,000 and I averaged $16.20 per shop including reimbursements (mostly gas). My average shop fee alone was $13.19. That's definitely working the bottom of the barrel. The best thing about the bottom of the barrel is it's always full.

Sometimes its about the location and not the amount of evaluations you have done. Cities are best as there are more choices for MS so you can get a high end hotel or dining evaluation immediately. If you travel outside of the U.S. or Canada to another major city, there are less MS so MSCs usually assign high end hotels and dining evaluations quickly. Obviously, this is only cost effective if you live in, or are traveling to, a major city.

Is there a way to find out the best one per State you live in ? I live in Florida but travel to PA and NJ often. Thanks Elaine

What would you say are your expenses for this month -- to earn that $2,000. Was there a lot of gas expenses, meal expenses? It's not always so much about what you earn but what you get to keep. Then, of course, there is the IRS.

I'm also a part time mystery shopper. I mainly work with Trend Source. If you get certified via their website, it opens you up to higher paying shops. The certifications are for on site inspections and medical and don't cost you anything.

Trend Source has a variety of shops from fast food to cell phone to office supply and more. Sometimes, I'm able to "double dip" the shops: same location, same sales rep, one purchase receipt for two shops.

I've been shopping for a little over a year. In the past month I've had two new-to-me MSCs reach out and ask me to apply. I know schedulers and editors talk to each other, so I hope it's because I have a good reputation with someone.