Hourly rate

When you are calculating an hourly rate, is this for time spent at the shop, or time driving to the shop, time at the shop, and time writing the report?

This weekend, I went to a store that paid $17 with a $5 reimbursement. It took about ten minutes each way to get there, and about 20 minutes at the store. The report took about 20 minutes. So, would this be $22/hr if we were counting the reimbursement?

We were at Costco and I took a picture of cereal for $4.50. The whole thing took two minutes. Is that $135/hr?

How are you calculating your hourly rates?

Create an Account or Log In

Membership is free. Simply choose your username, type in your email address, and choose a password. You immediately get full access to the forum.

I include the total amount of time spent on a shop (transportation, onsite, and report). I include the fee. I only add the reimbursement it if is for something I needed to purchase anyhow.

Note that I don't calculate my hourly rate for each shop. Rather, I calculate it for my entire route.

Hard work builds character and homework is good for your soul.

I also calculate it for the whole route if I'm doing more than one shop (usually am). I used to just go by the shop fee minus the gas cost. Now I still subtract gas cost (and any other expenses) but also include driving, actual shop, and report times in the calculation. I don't personally include the reimbursement in my rate, just the fee. But you do you

Happily shopping the Pacific Northwest. Shopping since 2013

@Niner wrote:

We were at Costco and I took a picture of cereal for $4.50. The whole thing took two minutes. Is that $135/hr?

How are you calculating your hourly rates?

Yes. Yes it is. Because you were already there.

I'll be honest, I rarely calculate my hourly rate. I've done this long enough that I don't really need to figure it. What I do calculate is the effective hourly rate of a shop that I am adding. Much like your Costco example. I'm at the point now where I rarely make a route from scratch. Usually I'm offered a prepackaged route of 20-50 shops. I know that on their own they are profitable enough to do. So then I start adding. And that's where I use your example.

For instance, there is a particular shop that I will do every single one I pass if possible. I won't go out of my way. At all. But if I'm literally passing it, I'm getting it. The reason is it pays me $13, takes no planning (I pick it up on my phone when I'm close), takes 10 minutes to do on a bad day, and I normally do the report on my phone while I'm driving. So 10 total minutes for $13 is $78 an hour. So if I pick up 6 of them in a week long route I've added 1 hour and $78 to my profit. That's where per hour rates are important to me.

There are reasons that a body stays in motion
At the moment only demons come to mind

You do reports on your phone while you are driving?????

@bgriffin wrote:

@Niner wrote:

.... and I normally do the report on my phone while I'm driving....

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. - Lao-Tzu

@Shop-et-al wrote:

You do reports on your phone while you are driving?????

@bgriffin wrote:

@Niner wrote:

.... and I normally do the report on my phone while I'm driving....

I UPLOAD reports while I'm driving, mostly because of the photos and it just takes too long to sit and wait for them. It's one way in which I use efficiency to increase my hourly wage and why I'm not too broke.

______________________________________________________________________
Seriously, nobody cares that you're offended.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2019 11:58PM by Hoju.

Mkay.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. - Lao-Tzu

Traffic lights.

I aim for $25 an hour. Which includes the hours I spend on the computer and phone, prepping, driving, reporting -- the whole thing.

Sometimes I make more, sometimes less. But that's what I aim for.

I don't aim for an hourly rate as a factor. I look to see if we will be at the store or near it, will it help save me money for something I would need to buy anyway, or is it a restaurant we would enjoy? For car shops, I like getting $50, I have done them for $35 if it's for a car I am interested in looking at anyway. From what I have seen, getting any consistent hourly rate would be hard. I was off last week and made maybe $200, if that. Over the summer, the most I made was 2k for the month. We'll see what happens this summer. The more you learn, the more you make. We went from hamburgers to $350 dining shops in the span of a few months, so I can't complain.

It's illogical to try and calculate an hourly rate for lifestyle enhancement shops. There are times where I focus on those and I am not trying to make money, really. When I do a nice hotel shop out of town and treat my husband to a luxury hotel with meals and bar, any fees generally just offset gas expenses. Same with fine dining, since I live in a large city but there are few fine dining shops actually in my city and I have to drive to a larger city 40 miles away. I do a lot of shops close to home where I focus on making money, such as when I do rounds of local convenience stores--I can do 4-5 of those in an hour and report them on an app, making about $30 an hour including drive time and report submission.

But lifestyle enhancement shops are great, at least one of us gets to relax and have a nice time (my husband). JK. I have gotten better at making the observations second nature so that I can enjoy myself a bit as well. What is it they say about all work and no play? I can't remember...

Since I try to focus on reimbursement shops I rarely calculate my fees per hour. For instance I like the post office shops where I can send care packages to my kids. There are several post offices nearby and even though outside of their birthdays and holidays I really do not need to send anything, the mom satisfaction I get plus free postage and $12 to boot is enough to make it worthwhile for me. I like parking jobs because I chose them near areas I like to go anyway so I can write off my mileage and drop by the stores I like while waiting. And I get my fees to boot for an easy report. Often I combine a parking job with another so I can get two shop fees for the awful drive in my city. If I did ever try to reconcile my fees with the hours spent reporting and looking for jobs and reading or brushing up on guidelines I would probably never do any shops in this high cost city. I generally do not consider time at a decent restaurant I do as I am there to enjoy the meal and would have spent that much time anyway.

I was thinking about this topic and wanted to add that my above post referred to shops I am doing purely for profit, especially when making routes. At this point, I do different shops for different reasons. I do some as I described above. I treat others as coupons of sorts. For example, I do the weekend grocery shops. Since I live by myself, coupon during the shops, and live near a lot of them, I am able to easily cover my monthly food expenses with these. I maybe spend $10 per month out of pocket, and I DO count my reimbursement and fee together for those since I would need the groceries anyway.

I also combine the two methods sometimes. Recently, I took an eyeglass shop three hours away (closest location) to get prescription sunglasses, which I have wanted for years. I counted the fee and reimbursement together, and calculating it that way, I only paid $15 out of pocket for them! However, to make the trip worth it, I made a route of several other shops. For the other shops, I calculated them as a normal route with an approximate hourly rate. I do something similar when I need oil changes, since the closest oil change shops are an hour or so away.

Happily shopping the Pacific Northwest. Shopping since 2013

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2019 09:33PM by RedRose22.

Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.

Click here to login

Hourly rate

Create an Account or Log In

Official List of Mystery Shopping Companies

Mystery Shopper Magazine