Hello!

Where is the best way to find shoppers? What job board? What Title attracts? What pay makes it worth it?

We are really needing more in these locations! HELP : )

Paynesville, MN
Spirit Lake, IA
Estherville, IA
Shreveport, LA
Hancock, MI
Red Oak, IA
Winnie, TX
North Branch, MN
Park Rapids, MN
Tyler, TX
Marlin, TX


Sincerely,
A Hardworking Scheduler!

Let me answer your question, in part, by first offering some of the things which cause shoppers to run away, in no particular order:

1. Sub-par fees. Shopping is a business, not a charity.
2. Requirements to shop places where one would not want to be caught dead.
3. Describing a shop as "fun." This is a profession, not a game.
4. Schedulers who do not respond to communications.
5. Editors who don't know English, who haven't read the guidelines, and who invent requirements or lambast one for proper English
6. MSCs which do not pay on time.
7. Repeated, redundant, e-mail blasts.
8. Schedulers who beg the "urgency" of a ship only to not assign it.
9. Pitiful bonuses. If it is important, put money on the line. Bonuses of $1 are insulting.
10. Schedulers who have no idea of geography. If a shop is 100s of miles away, don't even ask unless you offer a fantastic fee.

IMO, the best boards to be on are Jobslinger and MSJobboard. The former is tightly connected to Sassie. The latter is exclusive to Shopmetrics. Faith Perceptions is on Prophet which puts you at a disadvantage as there is no consolidated job board connected with Prophet. However, you could backdoor onto Jobslinger by posting on Volition. One can also post openings on this board, but not this forum,

Titles should be straight forward. Type of shop, location, pay. Fancy titles don't attract; they patronize.

Fees should be reasonable. Consider the amount of time to travel, round trip to the shop, the amount of time one must spend at the shop, the time it takes to produce a report. And then consider the quality of report desired and the fact that the shopper invests her/his time and travel not knowing if the MSC will pay on time, pay at all, or nit-pick with multiple editing requests. If the MSC cannot offer a fee that allows the shopper to perform the shop at a profit, not many shoppers & especially not many good shoppers will take the assignment.

Given that the locations you need to fill are away from major population centers and the type of shop is one that not every shopper would feel comfortable completing, it is good that you are hard working. Good luck!

You're really working from a hard place as you have several strikes against you. I would guess your market is 50% or less of the total shopper pool. Not as bad as say, adult entertainment clubs on the opposite end of the spectrum, but much worse than say, fast food. Your second strike is the locations are tough even for more traditional clients. I would also guess (although I really don't know) that you might need to look hard at your fee structure. People will do restaurants and hotels for fees that are low per hour, but I can't imagine even regular church goers would be interested in a similar arrangement for something they could do free anyway. Most church services are an hour, I would imagine the report would be fairly lengthy for such a report. For me, I would need $100+ to do one of those shops, and that's only if it were local to me anyway.

I can't speak for the majority of shoppers or to the geographic locations you need shoppers for, but your company has been discussed on this board before. Your shopper pay is reasonable, and there are many of us who would like to perform your church-visit shops. I applied to do them, and others here have done so, too. If I recall correctly, we all had the same problem: We were told that you already had enough of the demographic we are in and need shoppers with a different profile. Maybe the problem is that in some areas, there is not the demographic mix you're looking for, so shoppers who would like to do the shops are excluded It might have nothing to do with shoppers not finding your shops desirable, but that there isn't a large enough pool of the shoppers you need. You may be looking at two different, but related, problems: The overall population in the areas you have a need may not feature enough of a demographic mix, and the current shopper pools in those areas are limited in their demographic profiles. If that makes sense..... Or I may be all wet, too, especially if you've changed your shopper requirements.

Have you tried Facebook jobs posts? You can target geographic areas. You could also join job seeker Facebook groups in those areas.

Like Birdy said, if you’re trying to match very specific target demographics, it’s going to be extremely difficult. You might look into online surveys to screen and invite qualified participants. Amazon Mechanical Turk has many surveys like that where you can target states.

If the shoppers don’t have to be local, you could look into the cost effectiveness of pay current shoppers to travel.

As for Pay, give shoppers an option to have their fee donated to charity. People who are inclined to do these shops would be more swayed by a higher purpose and may actually feel guilt at profiting from attending a church service.

As myself I have definite ideas formed from real-life church experiences. At this stage of life, I need certain things from church. I need music that does not jangle my nerves. Silence that facilitates centering or focusing is an excellent alternative to some of the church music that has driven me away from church. Back in the day, I participated in church music and I even directed a church choir. But all the way back in the last century, we had music that was good for soul, spirit, and central nervous system.

So there it is. I do not care about visiting a church for the purpose of reporting on it. I only want to find out from reliable sources whether various churches will provide health-giving music and not make me want to run, screaming, from a sanctuary.

Obviously, I am an old fuddy-duddy. Even if I were eligible, available, and close to a shopped church, I would not visit the church as a mystery shopper because I have a variety of previous church experiences and strong personal biases regarding worship. I would not hesitate to leave a service early if the noise, I mean "music", were a distraction.

Job board on the local craigslist, in the area you are trying to cover. You will find people there. If you are looking for more professional shoppers, the Facebook pages work, especially the imsc. Get to know schedulers from other companies! Trade shopper referrals.

Great, we are working on all of these areas and then we understand there are things we cannot control. That is life Thanks again! @JerseyGirlShopper @Shop-et-al @TroyHawkins @BirdyC and @Rousseau Thanks! That is helpful and we are on Shopmetrcis actually not Prophet so we automatically post on MSJob Board and GigSpot. I will look into Jobslinger, I feel we have before but I will check it out again. Have a great weekend Y'all!

You are really hard to work in multiple locations. Nice. I am dealing with men's and women's beauty products in Arizona Location.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2018 02:19PM by sunsoutbeauty.

@sunsoutbeauty wrote:

You are really hard to work in multiple locations. Nice. I am dealing with men's and women's beauty products in Arizona Location.

SPAM. Reported, along with the other post by this poster.