A Free List of Mystery Shopping Companies

A list of mystery shopping companies is included at the end of this article!

Every one has seen the pop up ads saying "you can get free meals, merchandise, blah blah blah just pay $29.95 for a list of mystery shopping companies." Well, you can make extra cash mystery shopping and have fun doing it, but you don't have to pay for lists or membership sites. Actually, no mystery shopping company I have encountered, and I currently shop for three, has ever asked for any kind of fee to join or become a shopper.

You do have to apply and not everyone gets accepted depending on how stringent the application process is, but becoming a mystery shopper is relatively easy if you can demonstrated that you are objective, can pay strong attention to detail, use correct grammar and spelling, and can input results in a timely manner. Some companies let you assign yourself "shops" after you are accepted as a shopper, some let you request a shop and pick who gets to do it based on who requested it, and some companies send you shops via email only that you can accept or decline.

Mystery Shopping can be fun, getting paid to eat and shop or conduct an audit is cool, especially since your doing things you already do and enjoy. You can get free meals at nice restaurants, and get reimbursed for purchases you make as well as get paid for the trip. The earnings potential can be pretty good but you have to invest a lot of time to make a lot of money. Unlike some sites and advertisements would have you believe you won't get rich or probably even replace a full time income. In order to make decent money you have to shop for more than one company since the number of assignments you can do per day per company is usually limited or a company might not always have an assignment available.

To illustrate the reality of mystery shopping, in the month of May 2007, I did approximately two shops a week and made close to $200. Not to shabby for ten hours of work or so total between shopping and inputting my results online on the shopping websites, but as you can see realistically you only make a little extra money. The shops I did ranged from $9.00 to $30.00 and took from 15 minutes to two hours to complete each. If you devoted more time to shopping, or made it a full time job and did 3 or 4 shops a day, you could probably make a decent living.

If you want to become a mystery shopper, it can be fun and rewarding so check out these real mystery shopping companies before paying for those mystery shopping ads.

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