My class load his huge this quarter with biology, chemistry, math and physics and the idea of doing "phone call" shops made sense until it took 30 minutes to perform one shop for $2.00! How can anyone perform shops to Honda auditing their prices, dealer "help desk" trying to unlock the car that demands shopper remain on phone until the Honda service pro unlocks my door or I pretend he does. The time phone calls take is 20 minutes is the lowest my call and report took.


How can you afford to work for $2.00 for twenty to thirty minutes of your time? I learned my lesson my dad was trying to teach by valuing money and time. Do you have any ideas how I can do phone shops during school days to make extra money to for coffee or food? It's humiliating telling someone I made $2 for 20 minutes of time, that's me going full blast trying to get jobs done quick. If you can't type fast, your going to spend 30 minutes for $2.00, any ideas which jobs pay higher than $2.00?

Lots of assignments pay more than $2.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2016 12:08AM by LisaSTL.

Read the job boards, read the forum. There are several lifetimes worth of experience written here, and it is all free for the taking. These people spend a lot of time offering their knowledge, tips and tricks on the good, the bad and, the ugly jobs. Read and learn from them.

Hi Akbar,

You definitely do not want to do phone shops if you are looking for easy or fast money. I do phone shops exclusively. I will not do shops under $5. This Christmas was slow and I did about 10 phone shops for between $3 to $4.50 just to have the work. With those lower paying shops I just make sure the work itself is not hard. I had a hard time in the beginning. It may take 6 months of trying to get better phone shops. I did in person shops to establish a reputation for a few months. If you are talking too long (and you are) you will not do well. I am like that. If you are talking so much you do not know how to end the call reasonably. I believe there are many people who do great with $2.25 to $4 shops. They know how to get off the phone quickly and do not type exactly what happened (they know how to summarize more easily). Although once you know these shops there is little if any preparation time.

To get higher paying shops will deplete your most valuable time. Either you want to work on commission or get an hourly student job that pays better. When I went to community college I was able to be a student worker and get $9 and hour. What was great is that I did not have to pay any Social Security taxes or income taxes. The money you earn is not only for tuition but for books, fees, travel, housing, food, clothes, cosmetics and entertainment. I did not even mention laptops, smartphones and tablets. You would need to network around school to find out more. The commission option is something I had seen other students do when I went to 4 year college over a decade ago. The students sold computers or something like that. The commission is decent. You need a social life and have many friends. If you are good on the web this could pump up the money a bit.

You could do in person shops. The old standbys are cell phone shops, new car shops and home improvement shops. These shops pay $9 to $17 per shop. I was able to easily make $43 to $60 weekly for doing 4-5 shops. The reports are not too hard. You do need a digital camera or phone with good photo capability. You basically schedule multiple shops in a busy area. It used to take me 4-6 hours. With mystery shopping companies it can take one to twelve weeks to get paid. Most companies I work with are around a month. While there are people who do routes and get large bonuses this is not the norm. Most of these people took years to build relationships within the business to make this a possibility.

I would suggest the student jobs. You also get good experience to put on your resume when you graduate. Good Luck!

I've seen those $2 phone shops and wonder who would do them. I've only done a couple phone shops, but both of them took over 25 minutes on the phone, plus prep time, plus the report after. And both required multiple calls before reaching the correct person for one reason or another. Neither turned out to be the "easy money" I expected.

On the plus side, a phone shop allows you to have notes in front of you so you remember everything, and also take notes during the shop so you don't forget anything.

Maybe it's because I'm not a fan of talking on the phone, or maybe it's because I've only done two, but I would much rather take in person shops over phone shops.

@sandrapdunne wrote:

Hi Akbar,

You definitely do not want to do phone shops if you are looking for easy or fast money. I do phone shops exclusively. I will not do shops under $5. This Christmas was slow and I did about 10 phone shops for between $3 to $4.50 just to have the work. With those lower paying shops I just make sure the work itself is not hard. I had a hard time in the beginning. It may take 6 months of trying to get better phone shops. I did in person shops to establish a reputation for a few months. If you are talking too long (and you are) you will not do well. I am like that. If you are talking so much you do not know how to end the call reasonably. I believe there are many people who do great with $2.25 to $4 shops. They know how to get off the phone quickly and do not type exactly what happened (they know how to summarize more easily). Although once you know these shops there is little if any preparation time.

To get higher paying shops will deplete your most valuable time. Either you want to work on commission or get an hourly student job that pays better. When I went to community college I was able to be a student worker and get $9 and hour. What was great is that I did not have to pay any Social Security taxes or income taxes. The money you earn is not only for tuition but for books, fees, travel, housing, food, clothes, cosmetics and entertainment. I did not even mention laptops, smartphones and tablets. You would need to network around school to find out more. The commission option is something I had seen other students do when I went to 4 year college over a decade ago. The students sold computers or something like that. The commission is decent. You need a social life and have many friends. If you are good on the web this could pump up the money a bit.

You could do in person shops. The old standbys are cell phone shops, new car shops and home improvement shops. These shops pay $9 to $17 per shop. I was able to easily make $43 to $60 weekly for doing 4-5 shops. The reports are not too hard. You do need a digital camera or phone with good photo capability. You basically schedule multiple shops in a busy area. It used to take me 4-6 hours. With mystery shopping companies it can take one to twelve weeks to get paid. Most companies I work with are around a month. While there are people who do routes and get large bonuses this is not the norm. Most of these people took years to build relationships within the business to make this a possibility.

I would suggest the student jobs. You also get good experience to put on your resume when you graduate. Good Luck!

I signed up for tutoring they allow us to work 19 hours a week, if we exceed that amount the rest of the hours are added to the following week. The Federal Government allows us to work on campus free of income taxes and state taxes for $12.50 per hour. Not many students show up for tutoring lessons out of pride and this provides a great time to do my homework. I thought phone jobs would polish language skills better and practice people skills for job interviews. If you know any other phone jobs that pay $4 or $5 they help me with English skills and add cash to my pocket. Grateful to you!

@katioard wrote:

I've seen those $2 phone shops and wonder who would do them. I've only done a couple phone shops, but both of them took over 25 minutes on the phone, plus prep time, plus the report after. And both required multiple calls before reaching the correct person for one reason or another. Neither turned out to be the "easy money" I expected.

On the plus side, a phone shop allows you to have notes in front of you so you remember everything, and also take notes during the shop so you don't forget anything.

Maybe it's because I'm not a fan of talking on the phone, or maybe it's because I've only done two, but I would much rather take in person shops over phone shops.

I thought I was being slow and shamed by taking thirty minutes to perform these shops, my language skills are not stupid. I feel better because I thought it was me, I studied the scenario, practiced the phone calls that take long time to get done. The information to fill out was long, 35 questions to finish and eighteen minutes to thirty minutes for the phone part, 35 questions for answers. My math homework is not as long as the projects required to make $2.00. The math probles are fun Suduko puzzles for Linear Algebra, if I can get a A in my science classes why am I so slow. You said it took you as long, its not us, it is the companies lying to us about the "quick job for $2.00 answer few questions and your done!". There was nothing quick about the phone call and questions, why do they lie about the jobs? Its not ethical is it?

I saw a phone shop for $1.50 ...

I remember doing that online school shop for $10 but I hated every minute of it and (boring) promised myself I would never do that one again.

Hate to break it to a greenhorn, but $2 MS are well pennies on the dollars. Usually pay is $15-$25, but it depends on the company, some pay ALOT more than even those numbers.

I did a phone shop on Monday that paid $100. Very easy report, too. I would say total time was about half an hour (13 minutes of that was the phone call itself). I wish those came by way more often.

For a phone shop, I usually make $5; the reports are easy and usually spend less than five minutes on the call. I have found that the $1.75/$2/$2.25 shops I've done for a certain MSC were more work and had very picky editors. I've never had more rejected shops than those low-fee phone shops. I haven't done them in a few years because of that.

Yeah, like I said the two phone shops I did were not worth the money. One paid $12, the other paid $30. The $30 one required me to come up with believable occupations and employers for myself and my "spouse," that fit the area and income level they gave me for each, (easier said than done even if you already know general salaries for occupations), watching an instruction video (that did nothing more than read the guidelines out loud but was required) then once I finally was able to make the call, I was only allowed to attempt the call only once per day. Had to get permission from the scheduler to call the contacts cell because they float between multiple locations. Had to ask the scheduler for an extension every day I didn't get through,m.

On the fourth day they changed the location I was supposed to call. Then it was 1/2 hour on the phone, followed by writing up the paper copy of the report, then the electronic copy of the report, and then uploading all 20 pages of the paper report. It was very time consuming. Hardest part was that I really didn't expect it to drag on for 4 days. Making myself available for 30-60 minutes each day during the specific hours (since I had to be prepared for the call to go through each time), while juggling classes, other shops already scheduled, and mom duties was a chore.

But, I learned a lot about what to do and what not to do next time. I've completed 100+ in person shops since then and have a better understanding of how the reports often work so I don't need to re-read as many times before feeling confident I can complete the shop. And ms has defiantly improved my memory and attention to detail, which makes studying for classes at least a little bit easier.

If you've got down time while you're at your tutoring job anyways, you've got nothing to lose with any of the phone shops. It'll get quicker and easier over time I'm sure. If you're not feeling the phone shops, study your course work during that time. That way you'll be left with more free time elsewhere and may be able to allow yourself more time for in person shops.

I have learned to value my skills at a higher level, there was a car shop where they would not show me the report before taking the shop. I emailed the scheduler and told them I was qualified for the shop and had done high end cars before but that 150.00 was no enough given the unknown report factor. They came back and upped the offer but they are going to see if other people take the shop at 150.00. For my part I will be honest and if the report is not that bad I will tell the scheduler that 150 is fine since they raised the backup offer to 175.00.

Cities are all different and I use MS as a way to add to my income so if I have nothing for a month it is not the end of the world right now, my day job is paying OT and that is more $$ than most any shop pays.

All the $3 jobs for another company are gone by someone who took ten of them the scheduler said. I did not wish to do them, trying to understand who is so fast at talking for $3. The $2 phone calls are sitting with the $1.50 all alone, people get smarter or emails with bonus? The good company I will find, I know not all are terrible paying low per hour jobs, you are wise because of experience and I was dumb.

Phone shops are not created equal. Shortly after starting MS in 2008 I was regularly doing some for $1.75. Each time I would take the max of six shops for $10.50. The calls were not recorded and all six, including reports, could be done in under 30 minutes.