Mystery Shopping and other scams

This blog entry I just read inspired me to blog about my experiences before I started my business.

I was absolutely desperate for income when I'd been home a few years and we hit rough times. But I didn't want to compromise on being with my little ones. I would not consider daycare. That is not for us. My children will be with me. Otherwise, I just don't see the point. If I was a single mom, that might be different.

So anyway, after a brief stint doing some transcription of focus groups and finding I could not make any money at that, I decided to sign up as a mystery shopper. I found an ad in Mothering Magazine and stupidly thought that made it legit so I started off foolishly - I spend money for who knows what. You can actually sign up for free.

Whatever. Never mind I was beyond broke and we were living off our credit cards. Those scum suckers were happy to steal $50 or so from us.

So that didn't pan out. I then just spent days and days going to mystery shopping websites and signing up. It took forever; some of the applications were quite involved. After all that, many of them had no offices or work in my area. They probably just sold my information.

Whatever.

Finally, work started to come in! Yay! But boo. The work was hard. Very hard. And I was trying to do it with two kids. In the end, I made about $5/hour and was only able to ever make about $40/week. It just wasn't worth it.

They say people can make a six figure income mystery shopping. I doubt that. I suppose if you work your way through some special secret ranking system and start to get better paid jobs, you could. We got a couple of really awful free meals out of it and a bit of cash but the stress just wasn't worth it.

Start a business selling something you love and feel passionate about. So much more rewarding! Or do anything that moves you. But not mystery shopping. Unless you really love it and have a knack for it.