Do you love to shop? Do you feel a sudden rush of adrenaline when a friend invites you to go shopping? Are you someone who pays careful attention to the quality of customer service that retailers provide their valued customers?

Then ask yourself this question … what if you could earn extra money simply by shopping at your favorite restaurants and stores - and then get to keep most of the things you’ve just bought or consumed for free?

There is a legitimate way to earn a comfortable living simply by shopping at your favorite stores and restaurants … become a professional Mystery Shopper!

While many people are skeptical of “mystery shopping” and “getting paid to shop” and find the concept of being a ’secret shopper’ to be just too good to be true (and many times it is), consider the following argument from a business point of view:

Companies are becoming increasingly more aware of the importance of customer feedback for their continued success. In fact, there are now many businesses and organizations that have been formed to provide their business clients not only with market research information about customer preferences and product choices, but real feedback on the way their client’s employees treat consumers. These agencies require trained researchers to visit shops, stores, offices and anywhere that their clients’ staff come into contact with their customers, then observe and report back their findings. The need for these “secret” evaluation services (i.e. checking out a business to see how customers are really being treated) has even been extended now to corporate web sites, where much of a company’s business is conducted over the internet.

Companies want to know how their customers view their business and more of them are now hiring marketing companies to recruit, train and send out mystery shoppers to secretly evaluate their staff. The information reported back is priceless to these companies, as it can be used to identify problem areas in operational aspects of the business, or on a more positive note, to reward and acknowledge top-performing employees by giving them the recognition they deserve.

In the United States alone, companies are spending over $1.5 billion dollars each year on mystery shopping and using this information to better understand their customers and refine their businesses. Mystery shopping has been around since the 1960’s and today is a very legitimate and necessary aspect of doing business. Business owners and management need to know how to improve their businesses and better serve their customers. The very best way for businesses to discover exactly what they need to do to improve their customer service is to hire mystery shoppers to tell them exactly what the average customer experiences when shopping at their store.

As a secret shopper, sometimes you will be required to make a purchase, while other times you may simply be required to evaluate a specific type of service or the information provided by employees to prospective buyers. You don’t get to keep everything you shop for for free, though. For example, if you are assigned to visit an auto dealer, don’t expect to get a free automobile, but you will be paid for the time you spent asking questions about the vehicles, financing options, deals for trade-ins, etc., then compiling a detailed report about your experience as a potential customer of that store.

Hopefully now that you understand that mystery shopping is a $1.5 billion dollar business and growing, you can see how it is possible to make up to $40 an hour or more as a professional mystery shopper, getting paid to eat at your favorite restaurants, shop at your local mall and grocery store, watch a movie at your local cinema, or hundreds of other exciting mystery shopping assignments … plus get to keep many of the things you purchase for free!

To read the complete article, including how to get started as a mystery shopper, go here: What Is Mystery Shopping

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