I've been mystery shopping for over a year. I'm still signing up with new companies but have a problem. I used the Sassie list and signed up for about 20 additional companies. After I signed up, I checked the sites and they either have no shops in the US or they have shops in one state. Is there a way to determine if a company has shops in my area (KY and MO) before I sign up? Unless there is a clue in the name of the company, I have no idea. It makes me very uncomfortable to give my social security number and then find the company doesn't even have shops in the US!

Other than signing up and then looking at their job board, there's really no way to know. On other forums, many people have their approx location shown by their screen name. By looking at their posts about different MSPs, you'll get an idea of which ones have jobs where. Also check the job postings here. Schedulers post available jobs and the cities they're located in. I never hurts to stay signed up with a company even though there are no current jobs in your area. Some may pop up at some point in time.

On the SS#. If you stick with companies that are known to be reputable (like those in the list here and on other forums like Volition and MSF), there should no problem giving your SS#.
Hope this helps a bit.

Sign up with Jobslinger.com and you will be able to see shops offered in your area by your zip code and distance you are willing to travel. This is a compilation list from SASSIE, MSPA, Volition.com and a few other websites. Go through the list even with jobs that are too old to still be available and sign up with the companies that have posted because at least they have or have recently had shops in your specific area.

Great idea, Flash. I hadn't thought of that. I think too many brain cells got flushed last week

What part of Ky are you from?

Louisville

I like the Jobslinger idea! I normally don't look at the postings because most shops are not really available. I took a brief look and found two aditional companies. Good idea!

Welcome back, Flash!!

That's how I started, at Jobslinger. I still find a new company or 2 there now and then.

You can do the same at mystshopsol.com. The shop board has zip codes for each shop. First make a list of zip codes where you can work, then pick the ones in your area.

The third general job board is at [jobs.volition.com].

I sign up with all of them. I may not get a call right away but sooner or later they call me. The companies may not have a job in my area at the time but they may later on. You never know until you try.

When you say you sign up with all of the companies, do you actually check their sites every day? I get all of my shops off the job board at the sites. I've had a few calls with shop offers in the last year, but not many. Most of the offers required me to drive 30+ miles one way. With the price of gas, I just can't justify it. If the companies called me with shops, I wouldn't mind registering. However, I'm constantly going from website to website looking for shops. I'm at the point where I check only about 10 sites every day at different times. If I checked all of the sites each time, I'd never get any shops done! How do you get the companies to call you?

SAKS, It does not happen right away. It takes time. When there are shops in your area they will notify you. After you have completed shops for a company they will let you know when something is available in your area. You have to build a relationship with them. Just check the sites that you know are in your area daily. Because of rotation the companies do not always have the same clients. You may do store zxy this week for 1 company and next month another company will be doing them. It is much like the lottery, but eventually you do get hits.

If you get stores out of your way, you will eventually get enough jobs to make it worth your while. Driving 30 miles for $10.00 or $20.00 is not profitable but if you get 3 $20.00 shops it is. After you have done a few shops for a company and they like your work, they will call you. Remember you are building a business and with any new business it takes time.

So you recommend signing up with all of the sites and waiting for them to contact me in lieu of monitoring their website. I do sign up for shops out of my way, but only if I can get several together. I've been doing this for about 15 months and I do get some notification emails from the sites that I use on a regular basis. I shop in four states on a regular basis so I have quite a few areas to check. Thanks for the input.

I have actually lost track of how many companies I am signed up with, but by now it is well over 200. Most of them are useless for my particular area or have become useless either because of the kinds of shops, their notions of an appropriate fee or they have lost their client(s) in my area. You will not know that they are useless to you until you have monitored them for a while.

There is a group of 30 companies that are my "useful" companies at this point. I try to check their job boards at least every couple of days and with time you will figure out when they are most likely to post the jobs you are interested in. I keep them all in one bookmark folder with my Firefox browser. Then I have a bookmark folder of "new" companies, these being places I have signed up with during the past few months. These also I check every few days. If, over several months, I see nothing on their sites, their link will just be moved to one of the "MSP" bookmark folders so I can access them every couple of months to see if anything seems to have changed but I am not checking them often.

Once you have done several jobs with a company they are more likely to email you jobs that are posted--some of them send the emails ad nauseum--but many of these emails are to all possible shoppers and need to be acted on quickly or the reasonable jobs will be gone. More selective emails come after you have worked with a company more. My experience is that job boards are more useful to find who is shopping your area that you are not signed up with than for actual jobs because there are too many shoppers watching the boards.

So true Flash. Good luck Saks.