Category: Uncategorized

The New Year is fast approaching or, for some of you, it has just past and now it is the time to assess the financial damages made after those holiday purchases and find ways to make extra money to pay some of those bills.

Mystery shopping jobs are good options for those who need to make extra money.  Most mystery company shops are flexible throughout an individuals’ regular week and can be done before or after a regular job, school, or after you send the children to school.  Many shops only take a couple of hours and you can earn hundreds of dollars.  With just a little effort and time, you can easily catch up on bills incurred over the holidays or start saving for a new nest egg.

There are numerous types of mystery shops that will work with your area of interest and schedule.  You can perform apartment or residential evaluation shops, banking and financial reviews, restaurants jobs, car reviews, shopping at clothing and high-end shops, demonstrating jobs, grocery and auditing shops, and numerous other shops which can be done to make extra money.   Most mystery shopping companies only require you to sign up on their website and you can apply to jobs that fit your skills and schedule.

Most shops are posted on a daily basis and you generally do not have to submit an application.  You only have to sign up and agree to the company’s terms and policies, and the same day, you can find and assign a shop and earn a hundred dollars.  Or sign up for several assignments, and earn money and catch up on all those bills!

I am a Ferguson Missouri resident. Ferguson is normally a quiet community. It is racially mixed and a good place to raise a family. We have a community newspaper and events for children, teens and elderly alike. We like our neighbors and also our police department. I moved here when I was 13. I moved into my own apartment after college, but then moved back and have bought two homes as an adult, so I am a true Ferguson resident. However, when chaos hits home, these things are not displayed.

Ferguson is a place that has many businesses. That also gives opportunity for many mystery shopping opportunities. From fast food restaurants, to sit down restaurants, department stores, discount stores, apartments and cell phone shops. The day after the first looting hit, (in which looters from outside of my community, looted), I had a mystery shop scheduled at a cell phone store. I went to the store and unbeknownst to me, it had been looted. Cell phone displays were knocked down and missing, and the store was boarded up. I was extremely disheartened and hurt. Two days later, I had a fast food shop. I went there and they had closed early because they were located where most of the looting had occurred.

I saw a mystery shopping opportunity on a board for a department store, that store had been looted, and it was closed. As I drove down a street that I drive down daily, I just felt like crying. I then began to think…some of the stores that were temporarily boarded were just mystery shops to me. However, these were places that people had full time jobs that they now could not go to, at least for a while. This was money out of their pockets and days of work that they could not go to. How sad is that?

Mystery shopping during chaos was difficult or basically impossible to do, but going to a full time job when there was not one to go to was even worse. Things are a little back to normal now. We are trying to get our loving community back together, and everyone throughout St. Louis city and county, has signs on their yards that say, “I Love Ferguson”.

I see mystery shopping opportunities that I can take now that the stores are back open and at full speed, but there is still work to do.

Khalli B.

Be sure you broaden your mystery shopping jobs and not just sign up for apartment evaluations. If you like to be outside and talk to people, then performing apartment, car, and restaurant mystery shops might be just the right area for you.  In addition to home inspections, there are clothing, and grocery mystery shops too.  There are other mystery shops that offer services for money, like free massages and dental visits. If you want a free massage or dental visit, there are some shops that allow you to obtain a free massage or dentist visit in exchange for doing an evaluation. The downsides of these shops are that most companies require you to pay the upfront costs and then reimburse you at a later time.

However, do not limit yourself in mystery shopping. There are also demonstration jobs, telephone shops, cash for filling out surveys, and modeling type jobs.  Demonstration jobs usually require a four to six hour day and normally one has to stand the entire time when serving samples to the public. If you like to interact with people, a demonstrator job offers the latest products as samples to the public and the plus side is that they usually pay cash on the spot or soon thereafter.   If you would rather sit at your computer, then you can earn money by filling out surveys online.  This can be a little time-consuming, but you do not have to leave your home, so this might work for stay at home family members.Telephone shops also can be done at home and only requires a phone and computer.

There are still other mystery shops that look for people to represent them for a product and look for a certain type of person.  You usually need to send in a head shot with measurements and the company will contact you if you fit the product they want to endorse. These companies usually pay at the end of the job so you get paid cash immediately. Therefore, before you sign up, think about which job might fit your lifestyle and pocketbook the best and make that extra cash.

Elisa E.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you will the next time you log in to your Ellis mystery shopper account. We’ve made a few changes to the design of the shopper site. And we’ve fully implemented our formerly BETA option for locating available shop contracts near you.

To highlight some of the changes (and offer a little navigation advice to the user who’s accustomed to our old shopper interface)…

First, there’s no longer a laundry list of notes and memos at the top of your page. There are just simple icons and a list of things you can do from your mystery shopper page. The notes have all been incorporated into a new slide-in Tip box at the top of the page.

We’ve also fully released our Map-based application for Finding Shops Near You.

You can see all types of available shop contracts at once. The buttons on the page allow our msytery shoppers to hide/show the different kinds of shops at their choosing.

Plus the map layout can help you make decisions about doing multiple shop contracts based on the location of the properties.

So where are the phone shops? Well, click on the “Location Independent Tab” of the “I Want to See Shops Near Me” page.

How do I see shops in a different area? Enter whatever zip code you desire in the “Zip:” field of that same page.

Want to see available shop contracts closer to you? Slide the box on the grey bar right above to the “Zip:” to the LEFT. As you slide it, you will see the distance change.

(Of course if you want to see shops farther away, you can slide it to the RIGHT!)

You can click on the different types of shops (Backup, Video, etc.) to remove them from the map.

All of the types listed show up on the default view. To add them back, just click on the type again.

Backup shops are labeled with a “B” in the list AND on the map for easy reference.

What if you don’t like the map on the new Find a Shop page? Just click on the vertical divider line and drag it all the way to the RIGHT of the page. Voila!!

We’ve still got a few things up our sleeve to make the new site even easier for our mystery shoppers to navigate and use, and we really would love to hear what you think.

Visit our Mystery Shopper Facebook page and post your questions and comments!

While the mainstay of any mystery shop is the factual, objective feedback provided by Yes/No questions on a report, sometimes mystery shoppers are asked about their customer experience. If that is the case, then they should lend their opinion and perspective to the mystery shop.

This graphic pretty much sums up what the mystery shopper’s perspective might be in contrast to that of the person being mystery shopped. Always remember, each of us has our own point of view. That’s why it’s important on any mystery shop contract you conduct to only give your opinion when you are asked for it. Otherwise, your job is to be objective in your report and only give the facts.

Lately I have been keeping an eye on the different ways in which property management companies are using social media.

When first introduced, there was some obvious confusion as companies struggled to use  Facebook and Twitter for marketing purposes in hopes of attracting new prospective renters.

Continue reading “Social Media Is On the Rise and I “Like” It!”