Creating Your Dual, Flexible, Home-Based Career
Whether you do mystery shopping to supplement your income from your employer, self-employment or a pension, or you are a stay-at-home Mom or Dad or student looking to make some money on a flexible schedule, if you want to really maximize your income, you should consider creating what I call a dual, flexible, home-based career by combining the fields of mystery shopping and merchandising. Why? Because these two fields fit together very well for several reasons:
1. Both fields are flexible and home-based fields (until you go out on assignment of course). You can work as much or as little as you like with hours to fit your schedule.
2. Merchandising is more physical, mystery shopping is more mental.
3. Mystery shopping may pay more on an hourly basis when you divide the pay over the time for the assignment, but it can be more irregular. Merchandising's steadier work flow and hours make up for the lower hourly pay (in the $7 to $15 range depending on experience and the work involved, there are also flat rate assignments just like in mystery shopping that range from $9 to $20). Most companies you work with will give you many assignments.
4. Mystery shopping requires more writing and reporting, merchandising has minimal paperwork and reporting.
5. As you are not working anonymously like you do in mystery shopping, there are no "client rotations" that can keep you from doing your favorite assignment for awhile. As long as you are reliable and do a good job, you'll keep getting work.
6. Mystery shoppers also rarely get paid for mileage, while merchandisers often do. So you can piggyback that mystery shop onto the merchandising assignment location, and, in effect, get your mileage paid for!
7. If you work for a merchandising company on an employee basis (and many do hire you on in this way), even part-time, you will very likely be offered some form of medical benefits for yourself and possibly your family. Mystery shoppers almost always work as independent contractors, so it's never offered, and it's tough for them to get coverage. Your dual career might just provide a way for you to get healthcare coverage at a reasonable cost!
What's the downside? You normally can't take kids with you on merchandising assignments, so know that you will need to have someone to watch them, or be sure you can make enough money to offset any caretaker expenses. Most people can be merchandisers--male or female, young or old, fat or skinny, tall or short, any race or religion. However, since you are not sitting at a desk, you must be comfortable with working on your feet for anywhere from a half an hour to a few hours a day; be able to bend and kneel, and at times, lift some packages in the 15-25 pound range.
You need to know your limitations. But don't get the idea that there is often a lot of heavy lifting involved. When I worked on re-arranging the paper goods department in my local supermarket, those products were light as a feather! Many merchandising assignments are general tasks where you'll work with a box of promotional materials and that's it.
Trust me, the two fields of mystery shopping and merchandising go hand-in-hand. Or as they say in the movie "Grease"--they go together like...(fill in the rest for yourself as I have no idea how to spell what they sing). That's why I decided to combine them a couple of years ago to create a dual career for myself--sometimes I do one, sometimes the other, and sometimes both. You'll like the combo and the safety net of having, in effect, a "plan A" and a "plan B" at your disposal.
In a major area with the right connections, an experienced shopper can make $1,000 in a month's time (or if they also do the highest-paying shops such as audio and video mystery shopping, they can make double that). So by combining mystery shopping and merchandising, you could make as much $2,000 to $3,000 per month on a flexible schedule. And there are many opportunities to work in the field full-time, if you find that becomes the way you want to go. For most of us though, merchandising is simply "the other Perfect Work-At-Home Job".
For more information about merchandising, check out the new Merchandising section which includes FAQs.
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