A Week in the Life of a Mystery Shopper

April 4th - April 10th...

Last week was a slower week, but I still managed to earn $566 in mystery shopping fees and $234 in reimbursed purchases. I drove a total of 870 miles.

Sunday
I did not complete any shops on Easter Sunday. Since most people take two days off from work each week, I'm okay with the occasional off day, too.

Monday
I picked up the pace Monday, earning $175 in fees. In all I visited 20 businesses. It was a long day but none of the paperwork was too hard. I can handle being on the road 14 hours just fine as long as it does not take another 6 hours to enter paperwork (one of my biggest pet peeves is poorly designed data entry screens!).

Tuesday
I earned just over $70 today from 7 shops., plus $18 of reimbursed gas. Since it barely took me three hours to complete, I was happy with the day.

Wednesday
I don't have a close relationship with my mom, so we try to get together occasionally for lunch. We ate lunch and went to the dollar theatre, so most of my afternoon was spent with her. I still earned $54 in fees and $12 in gas, plus one of the shops was a gourmet chocolatier, so a good day.

Thursday
I did a lot of work for the $104 I earned today, but most of it was driving time. But I came home with a full tank of gas. Left the house at 6:30, home at 2:30, entered paperwork until after 5:00. That works out to about $10 an hour... about as low as I like to go.

Friday
No travel today. I completed three telephone shops and spent the rest of the day with my partner, who is usually off on Friday. I did spend a couple hours at home searching for work for the coming days.

Saturday
My second best day of the week, earning me $151 in fees and $60 in reimbursements, nearly all of which was gas. I did a lot of driving (more than 250 miles) but the day was fairly easy: I did two jobs close to home, came home to enter them, then headed out to do the other 13 jobs, which were further away.

This week is looking good. I'm doing a special retail project that is super easy (under 5 minutes per store). I have a few merchandising jobs scheduled and a handful of gas stations. I already have $250 worth of work on my calendar and will pick up more as the week progresses.