What would one be qualified for? If I had to look for steadier and regular income at a greater level. But similar-ish? I def love the freedom of being an independent contractor. Am willing to weigh all options.

There are no easy or reasonable answers to that as each of us function differently and we are in many different locations and have many different preferences. My 'best' company is 'best' in my book because they have a relatively local client that we love to shop. My next 'best' company seems to be a PITA for many folks but it works well for me. My next 'best' company is one that my long term relationship with gets long term, very specific jobs dropped in my lap. So it is with a bit of surprise that as we approach the end of January I note that what I thought was a pretty lazy month has netted over $1000 in fees and useful reimbursements.

So as folks keep advising, if you aren't thrilled with the companies you are working with, keep registering with new companies. Some will let you build mutually beneficial relationships, some will just let you produce shops for them. Build your relationships. Show through your work that you are trustworthy, cooperative and reasonable.

Merchandising. I fill in the gaps with demos and random merchandising jobs here and there, as well as completing store resets as a part of a team. I really like doing store resets. I get to meet all kinds of cool people and the wages are much better than retail store jobs pay. Plus, the lightweight exercise keeps me moving, which is a good thing as well. Some companies hire you as an employee while others do the IC thing. There are often mileage fees and travel time paid after a certain amount of miles. It's okay as an employee because you have freedom to work for other companies and often can still pick your own hours and such. I do work for Advantage Sales & Marketing and Market Connect Group primarily. I actually made enough with wages as an employee to qualify for EIC the past few years, which is a nice offset from being an IC with MSing.

Oh, and the stock market. I made about $200 today buying and selling without ever having to leave home!

Maybe try your hand at some type of freelance writing. The bottom has kind of fallen out of freelance writing in a lot of sectors because they can hire people online who will do it for pennies, but there are gigs for copywriting and such. There are a bunch of sites to look for freelance writing gigs on. I have done a lot of freelance writing over the years and that's loosely how I categorize mystery shopping when I think about my portfolio, such as it is.

Another thing I have done a little here and there is search engine evaluation. It doesn't pay THAT great, but you do it from home as an independent contractor and kind of make your own schedule (although I think you get more work if you work more, if that makes sense). I didn't stick to search engine evaluation because I have a desk job as my day job, so I didn't really like being tethered to my computer for my part time gig as well. I feel like the skills you learn in mystery shopping in terms of making quick judgments/evaluations and paying close attention to detail would translate easily, and it would be a good complement to mystery shopping since you do it from home and it's not physically demanding at all. The firm I worked through was called Leapforce. You apply and then you have to take a test. Definitely study and pay close attention to the details before taking the test. I think the test was open book, but they will tell you.

Can you consider merchandising higher paying than mystery shopping? Most of the rates I've seen tend to be on the low side with a cap on the number of hours they will authorize.

@CeciliaM wrote:

Maybe try your hand at some type of freelance writing. The bottom has kind of fallen out of freelance writing in a lot of sectors because they can hire people online who will do it for pennies, but there are gigs for copywriting and such.

If you write, you're apt to make more money from book royalties than piecemeal. Awhile back on Volition, someone was advertising for a ghost writer to write mystery shopping articles for the whopping sum of $40 for 2000 words. That's insulting and I'm sure she got what she paid for. A book generates income long after it's written. There is also money to be made from magazine articles -- not as much as a writer deserves, but each piece helps to land the next one. What is your area of expertise? What sort of hobbies do you have? Those are your target markets.

Panhandling?

Just kidding. User experience testing can be good, but it isn't steady.

Quik Trip, which is a gas station in my area, has their own secret shopper program. I've seen help wanted ads for it. I've thought about applying. It would be less money overall, but nice not to have to hustle to find jobs any more.

Well, yes and no. Merchandising can be better at times if you are hard-scheduled for a store remodel, in which the pay can be anywhere from $11 per hour to $16 per hour depending on experience, but the great thing is that you will be in one place for 8 hours and there's just a few minutes of admin time (you can charge admin $ for most companies) when the gig is done each day. Which leaves more time for kicking one's feet up and drinking wine or other lovely libations, listening to music, cooking, or whatever you might fancy to do for the evening (such as lurking in this forum). The times where I am doing an hour or two here and there, I fill in the gaps with some mystery shops. Sometimes I do merchandising visits that pay by the visit, not by the hour, and I might get $10 or $15 for a visit that only took me 5-20 minutes to do. Other merchandising visits do pay by the hour and if you run a little over (for certain companies) they will pay for the additional time it took to do the job. Some companies pay drive time for in between locations and mileage, too, and if you go over a certain amount of miles on your way to the first and from the last store to home, you get paid for that, too. So one hand does wash the other one and between the two it can work out quite well if planned properly (like everything else in life and business). And I am still unfettered for the most part.

@PasswordNotFound wrote:

If you write, you're apt to make more money from book royalties than piecemeal.

Sure.... but then you have to write a book and people need to buy the book. Not as easy as it sounds.

I haven't done a lot of freelance writing in recent years, but it's just like mystery shopping. There are a lot of really low paying gigs sitting out there for the public to see, and you can cut your teeth on a few of them, get to know some editors and try to get some better paying gigs. For a while I was doing a gig for an ecommerce site where I had to write articles about things (ETA: things they were selling, like beds, gloves etc) using keyword optimization. It was possibly the most boring thing I have ever done in my life, but I made about $1000 doing this before I decided I had to stop or I would jump off the roof of my building. That was because I had an editor that knew me from way back because I had done some restaurant reviews for a little paper she worked for. I did those basically for free. (will work for food lol) But it led to this other gig.

If mystery shopping is not steady and/or lucrative enough though, this type of writing might not be either. Just throwing it out there if you are trying to diversify a little. For me it's challenging to think about how one would make a living mystery shopping since you spend so much unpaid time looking for gigs and driving around so I gravitated toward suggesting things you can do from home/online.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/30/2016 01:54AM by CeciliaM.

We have different criteria for what qualifies as a great thing

@JASFLALMT wrote:

.....but the great thing is that you will be in one place for 8 hours.....

LOL, Lisa. It all depends on who you're working with. When I do grocery store resets for a certain small grocery chain in our area, it's absolutely a blast. The people on the teams are fun to be around and easy to work with, so the time passes by quickly. Plus, they usually provide a nice lunch from the store's deli. They are supposed to be 8 hour days and often times the reset leads will give us 8-hour pay for 5 or 6 hour days, so that's nice too. I have done some 8-hour electronic sets that were difficult because the people I worked with were ill-tempered and did their best to make sure everyone else around them were miserable too. I try to avoid doing those unless they are paying me top dollar.

LisaSTL,

You raise an interesting point. I merchandised since 2007 and basically retired last year (at least 98% retired!). The wage thing depends on a factor or two. I've had merch jobs that paid a flat rate of say, $20.00 for the job itself, with a limit of two hours. After a while, I could do the job in 45 min to an hour, take 10 min or less to report it online, and done...so that makes my pay near to $20.00/hr...not too bad and lots less reporting hassle than most MS reports. On the other hand, I've had merch jobs that I just really enjoyed, but paid little, like $9 or $10/hr, with a bit more reporting. So it just depends. But there ARE some merch jobs which really did make it worth my while!! Like the job with the company where you buy the soda, and send them a sample back each month. At first, it took me a LONG time to get it done. But after 6-7 months, I could do it in my sleep. And buy the time I got the job done each month, my per hour wage was in the $25/hr area. But those, unfortunately, didn't come around often enough!!

@PasswordNotFound wrote:

If you write, you're apt to make more money from book royalties than piecemeal...A book generates income long after it's written. There is also money to be made from magazine articles -- not as much as a writer deserves, but each piece helps to land the next one. What is your area of expertise? What sort of hobbies do you have? Those are your target markets.

I have a railroad dining car cookbook for sale on Amazon. In 2015, I received $788 in royalties, and that's without doing a lot of promoting of the book. On my next route shopping trip, I will be scheduling time to visit some museums that might be interested in carrying it as well. And I'm working on another railroad dining car cookbook that I hope to have on Amazon in the next 3-4 months.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2016 02:36PM by GMooneyhan MBSC.

@JASFLALMT wrote:

Oh, and the stock market. I made about $200 today buying and selling without ever having to leave home!

Shoot, you can lose $201 tomorrow doing the same, lol. I'm definitely not advocating you dont invest, my wife and I invest over 70% of our take home pay, but its not so easy to make money in the short term investing.

My son-in-law works for Charles Schwab and has been giving me some pretty good tips. I haven't lost money yet. Not saying it can't happen, though, but so far I have been increasing my capital on a weekly basis.

It all depends on your interests. There is a company called Street Delivery which hires people to take pictures of intersections. They also have other branches that take pictures of houses, people etc. for insurance companies. It is a full time job in my area, with lots of driving, but, if you are near a bigger city, it may pay better than average if things are really slow in your area.

Having a knowledgeable buddy would certainly help dealing with stocks. Hous is right though. I was a day trader for a little over a year and speak from experience. Yes, you can get a hot run for a while and this may work out great for you. I used to be a day trader and I made some money, but I've made more since I picked some solid respectable stocks and bought and held. I understand the fascination of day trading. For me it was like gambling and I think I got addicted. It was the most exciting work I've done.