Good Gracious. . .I commend those of you who have stepped up and tried to give advice and managed to keep your patience about you. I am tense just reading this thread.
bmttinman: I am responding to your post solely because I, too, am a new-ish shopper and hopefully, you will find something in my progression as a shopper that will help you IF you choose to continue with shopping. And to be perfectly blunt, after what I've seen in this thread, I would strongly think about whether shopping is the right business for you to be in. If you truly want to give this a shot, you need a writing class and a major attitude adjustment. Sorry, but sugar coating it isn't going to help you at this point.
I started with mystery shopping as a way to make some extra $$ in order to help pay for a trip to Disney for my family. That's it. It was supposed to be a short-time thing and I didn't have any plans on continuing any shopping assignments after we had managed to save enough for our trip. My first shopping assignment I was paid $6 and reimbursed for a hamburger. Honestly, at the time, I went for the burger because I saw it as a free lunch. In my mind, $6 wasn't going to buy me a bottle of water at Disney so it certainly didn't seem worth it. But, I happen to love the client's burgers so I did it. My husband was jealous that I had gotten to shop his favorite burger joint so he signed up to shop too. Between the two of us, we completed quite a few of those burger shops. All the while, pocketing the $6 (by this time, I had realized that $6 and not having to pay for lunch would eventually add up and help with our Disney savings fund -- even if it meant not going until we were 90 and weighed 800lbs from all those burgers!) and eating a bunch of burgers all at $6/shop.
I'll admit that I would get a bit frustrated (or jealous) when I'd read about other shoppers who were getting big bonuses or getting to do really exciting shops. I wanted to know where they were finding all of these shops and how they were getting all of these great bonuses. Afterall, I was a shopper too. Wasn't I entitled to those same shops? The simple answer is No. These folks have been shopping for a long time, they have established and credible histories with their MSC's and the schedulers that they work with. No amount of education, professional qualifications, or the size of my network was going to substitute for plain and simple experience and relationship. I had to accept this and come to terms with the fact that the only way I was going to get those exciting shops and high bonuses was to work for it. And even better if I didn't piss any companies or schedulers off along the way!
An interesting thing happened a few months after I started shopping. The MSC that I shopped with the most frequently (at this point, I was signed up with maybe 5 companies) started calling me and offering me shops at higher rates than what I was seeing on the shopper board. Were these the bonuses that other (more experienced) shoppers were referring to? Most of the pay rates that they were offering me weren't that high but they were still higher than the $6 I was getting online. A couple of months later, I had a major breakthrough. The same MSC called me and offered me $60 to shop a location which was about 90 miles from me each way. I was overjoyed. Now, I look back and realize that some more experienced shoppers wouldn't even get out of bed for that but, to me at the time, that was a major step up. I enthusiastically accepted and did several of those shops before they started calling and offering me higher bonuses on that same shop.
When I got laid off from my full-time professional gig in April of this year, I was able to fall back on the relationship that I had already built with a few MSC's and used the lay off as an opportunity to establish more relationships with more companies. I'm still not signed up with 100 MSC's just yet but I'm close. They don't ALL have work in my area but I can't tell you how many times I've been sent and email or received a call from a company that I had never done any work for, but was signed up for, that had a job in my area that they needed me to complete. So, for 5 minutes of your time to sign up with a company even if they don't have anything in your area, you may find that it pays off big down the road. Now that I'm back working a full-time gig again, I don't accept nearly as many shops as I did when I was relying on it for income but I've built relationships with more companies and now get offered more shops/bonuses.
The point is what has already been stated to you: you have to work your way "up". If you are looking at mystery shopping to replace your current income or be your sole source of income, it may be very tight times for awhile until you've established yourself and the credibility of your work with MSC's. That takes time, patience, good work, and lots & lots of shops. If you aren't willing to wait it out and work your tail off to get to those higher paying shops, then stop now. In addition, if you're looking at the fee on your shops and grumbling because the person working minimum wage that you are evaluating behind the register is "making more than me", then I would suggest you get the job working behind the register making minimum wage. That shop will be taken by someone eventually and you won't have to complete it. Albeit, the person who gladly takes that shop (even though it doesn't make minimum wage) may eventually work their way up to those bonuses and high profile shops that you're after now and you'll still be making minimum wage behind the counter. Keep that in mind.