Hello--found this forum while googling to see if there were any complaints about ath power dropping a shopper without explanation--and refusing to communicate about it (that's how it appears to me right now).

In any case, have been browsing the forum and have found interesting and relevant info on all sorts of things. So...ath power who? lol!

I'm new to shopping...only been doing a little over a month and have done about 25 gigs so far. My goal is supplement income while I build up another business. I'm in an affordable living situation, so if I could earn a few hundred a week I'd be in good shape.

Welcome to the board. You'll learn much by reading the various forums. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. For most of us, we don't begin to make a "few hundred a week" but what you make depends largely on the rotations of shops and your geographic area.

Good luck!

First, congrats on 25 jobs in your first month. You are off to a great start.

A few hundred a week can be a lofty goal depending on the competition in your area and taking into consideration none of us have much that is consistent. You might make that as an average, but it could be working your tail off one week and making $500 to $700 and then having a slow week or two. In November and December I made as much and more than my last full-time job in less than 2 weeks each month, but it involved a lot of traveling and putting in a ton of hours for those days

Regardless, it is a great way to supplement your income. I cannot think of anything else that will give you the ability to name your own income and give you that flexibility to work on your new business.

Maeve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hello--found this forum while googling to see if
> there were any complaints about ath power dropping
> a shopper without explanation--and refusing to
> communicate about it (that's how it appears to me
> right now).
>
> In any case, have been browsing the forum and have
> found interesting and relevant info on all sorts
> of things. So...ath power who? lol!
>
> I'm new to shopping...only been doing a little
> over a month and have done about 25 gigs so far.
> My goal is supplement income while I build up
> another business. I'm in an affordable living
> situation, so if I could earn a few hundred a week
> I'd be in good shape.


A few hundred a week, yes that sounds pretty ambitious. I myself reckon I'm doing good if I can average $50 a week. But then, thanks to my full-time hours, I really only have a day and a half of normal business hours available. In just under 2 months, I reckon I've done about 20 gigs.

But, what was the problem with Ath Power, hmmm?

Thanks for your welcomes! Thanks for the realistic feedback. The idea of earning say, $300 a week came from an editor at one of the companies I shopped for. She called to give me some pointers on improving my very first shop reporting. Her strategy was to set aside 2 days a week and line up 10 shops on each of those days.

I can see how that would ebb and flow, of course, but was hoping it could be an average.

D'Agosto--I was doing a bunch of bank shops for Ath Power. I even went out of my way to rearrange my schedule when they wanted me to shop a different day than what I intended. Last week, however, the shops I signed up for sat in pending for days and then seemed to reappear on the job board. I wrote to the scheduler to find out if I was being penalized or something, and no response. That is a crappy business relationship.

Maeve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
Her strategy was to set aside 2 days a
> week and line up 10 shops on each of those days.
>
Yes, she would be looking at $15 shops for each of those days. I generally would suggest that new shoppers not attempt more than one 'new-to-me' shop per outing because you need to focus on precisely what that first time shop requires. Reporting time is almost always greater than shop time and a first time shop will also take a lot longer to report than it will take once it has become a habit.

Doing 10 $15 shops in a day would likely take you 2 1/2 to 6 hours in the stores plus travel time. You then would go home to at least that much or longer in report time. In my area drive time far exceeds in-store time. And $15 shops are not abundant enough in my area to try to make a route of them. Now $5 to $7 jobs would be abundant enough to perhaps schedule 10 two days a week, but that is not going to total $300 per week.

I have been shopping for a number of years and know that for me a lot of the value in a shop is the reimbursement. Any time I can substitute paying out of my household budget by using a shop reimbursement to cover an expense, I am ahead of the game. Thus an oil change, grocery shop or restaurant dinner to me has value because it is not a drain on my household budget. The oil change is more expensive than I would buy on my own, the grocery stores generally are at higher priced stores and usually with a purchase requirement I would not normally make and we do more restaurants and more expensive restaurants than we would do on our own. So reimbursement shops are not a direct dollar for dollar savings on the household budget, but they help.

In my market, for December, I have found about 40 shops that are worth the gas and time involved and the average fee + reimbursement is a little over $22.25. But the fee part of these jobs averages out to about $12.75. Your market may be very different and your interests may vary a lot, but I would be hard pressed to find 20 jobs per week that paid at least $15 each. I probably would need to be driving to a large city over 100 miles away to do that and picking up shops in every town along the way. But I can tell you that if you did 1283 $15 shops per week you could make a million dollars a year.

Thanks Flash---yes---she was doing $15 shops. One thing she suggested, that I'm definitely doing is lining up shops in the same area (e.g. 15 mile radius). I'm not willing to spend my time driving all over the place for such low pay. And I agree--the reports take more time than the actual shops.

That's food for thought with the reimbursements. Thank you. I wouldn't mind mixing it up--although I need to see some cash coming in first and foremost.

I'm working towards being signed up with 100-200 mystery shop companies so hopefully that will help my goal.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2011 05:43PM by Maeve.

Yes, route shopping makes a whole lot of sense if you can find adequate shops to fill a route.

Most shoppers find anywhere between 20 and 40 companies have work in their area on a regular and routine basis. Over time you will find that some have work but aren't worth working with due to fee or attitude or need to follow up to get paid. The others become your 'go to' companies to look for work and try to build routes, though you may need to dip into your ones that aren't worth working for for filler shops to make a route.

But build up to routes gradually as even if you are performing the same shop in multiple locations, when it is time to write the reports it is all to easy to confuse what actually happened at the different locations without excellent notes and those notes take a while to generate.

The challenge to doing 10 day day while you are still new, is burnout.
I'm not sure that is a realistic goal. There are retail jobs out there
(I do many), that pay 20.00 +, so four in a day for me works well. I do lower paying jobs in my area for the merchandise I get, so no gas, freebies and pay add up. You have to pace yourself and see what # of jobs is within
your comfort level...good luck and enjoy shopping.