Mystery Shopping-Mystery shopping is a job where an average person goes into a place of business posing as a real customer, however he/she is secretly evaluating the establishment on a variety of factors such as cleanliness, customer service, procedures, management, location, etc. Many businesses use mystery shoppers (also known as secret shoppers) such as restaurants, department stores, casinos, hotels, college campuses, apartment complexes, banks, credit unions, and much more! In fact, there are some department stores that hire their own mystery shoppers. To get started you can go to www.volition.com and find the list of mystery shopping companies and begin applying. Volition also offers other tools to make extra money online such as reading e-mails, playing games and doing free trials. If you want to save yourself some time and find the companies that are directly recruiting for jobs in your area, you can go to the official MSPA website or take the paid route and do ShadowShopper (http://www.shadowshopper.com). If you go w/ the latter, for first time users, it's $4.95 for 30 days. Be sure to set the account to where it does NOT automatically renew because otherwise, you will be charged $100 for a year membership. I'd suggest paying w/ a money order to be sure that they do not have access do your bank card number. ShadowShopper also advertises merchandising jobs, product demonstration jobs, and interview/data collection jobs. SS is not a mystery shopping company in and of itself (remember mystery shopping is free), ShadowShopper is a middle man, that many mystery shopping companies use as a means of recruiting in a particular area. I personally recommend those living in smaller metropolitan areas take the ShadowShopper route and pay someone to find the companies for them so that they can just apply to those companies and leave the other ones alone. NOTE: Be on the lookout for scams! If you are ever sent an e-mail indicating that you will receive a check, and are asked to wire a portion of it via western union. DO NOT DO IT! That check will bounce and you will be held accountable for any used portion of the check.
Merchandising-Have you ever gone into a store and seen the magazines shelved at the checkout line? Those retailers have individuals called merchandisers come into the store and stock those magazines. Merchandisers are often hired by outside companies to service a particular store and often a particular product. In addition to stocking products, merchandising may also be involved in rearranging a shelf according to a plan-o-gram which is essential a blueprint of what the shelf should look like once the rearrangement is complete. They may also be required to take inventory of products and be sure that prices of the product match the price being advertised. Unlike mystery shopping, merchandising is generally more ongoing and often merchandisers are reimbursed for gas mileage. Assignments can be as short as 1 hour or as long as 8 hours. Sometimes assignments may last a few weeks w/ each day being about three hours. To get started one can look at sites such as NARMS, Choice Retail, Kelner Merchandising, National Merchandising, Pivotal Retail and Driveline retail.
Demonstrating-You ever gone to a grocery store and got a free sample? That was a payed demonstrator, (a well paid one at that). For a six hour demo, one can expect $60-$90 within two weeks. Grocery stores are not the only areas that need demonstrators, they are used at sporting events, pharmacies, and hardware stores! Check out Sunflower Staffing, Front Row Events and Production Management (Great company to work for by the way!), and MarketSource. Do you like to cook? Do you have a talent? Get one with some talent agencies and begin getting staffed to showcase!
Data Collection-If you know marketing research, you know about this, if you have every participated in marketing research (e.g. answering paid surveys), you know about it. There are some companies that will hire you to collect data on various things. Grocery stores sometimes have data collectors collecting information on inventory and sales. There are data collectors who travel and interact more with residents of an assigned area. Data can include spending habits, grocery preferences, phone usage, electronic preferences, etc. Some collect data from the courthouse by searching the public records. Some data collectors host focus groups (these collectors often work for a marketing firm) that include a select few individuals participating in a deep discussion of a particular product and often these participants are very well paid $75-$100 for two or three hours.
Out of these jobs, You will make them most money doing the demonstrations. Focus groups do not happen that often (though there are some that are online and include discussion with individuals from all over the world)
http://www.volition.com/
http://www.mysteryshop.org/
http://www.shadowshopper.com/new/index.cfm?
http://findfocusgroups.com/
