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- [00:00]
A
The side Hustle show is designed to help you make more money. But do you have a firm grasp on your overall financial picture? I was stuck in spreadsheets and logging into a dozen different accounts for far too long. Which is why I'm excited to partner with Monarch for this episode. Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything. Your accounts, your investments, your saving goals and your spending. And does it all in one place. Plus, you can get your first year of Monarch Core for half off. That's just 50 bucks with promo code sidehustle. Now, I probably check the Monarch app more often than I should should. But it's helped my wife and I celebrate certain net worth milestones. It's helped us visualize our spending and get honest about where it all goes. It's helped us reallocate funds in an intentional way and just be less stressed about little expenses when they pop up. Use promo code sidehustle@monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core for half off. At just $50, that's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with code Sidehustle. Here's a simple 500 a week side Hustle that almost anybody can do. We're talking mystery shopping today. Getting paid to go undercover for restaurants, retail stores, maybe even hotels. Side Hustle Nation's resident mystery shopping expert is here to help school me on how it all works and how much you can make. She's been doing mystery shops forever and over the last 10 years has helped 25,000 other mystery shoppers get their start with this low overhead site. Side hustle from ishopagp.com Mercedes Eckert. Welcome to the Side Hustle show.
- [01:40]
B
Hi Nick. Thank you for having me.
- [01:42]
A
I'm excited for this one. Start me off with maybe a recent win of yours or could be from a student of yours. What's possible in this realm of mystery shopping?
- [01:51]
B
I just had a shopper last week. She did several apartment mystery shops where she got paid to go into her apartments. She made $850 in less than two days.
- [02:05]
A
That sounds like a win. This is going around as a prospective tenant.
- [02:08]
B
Yes. Just pretending that she was looking for somewhere to lease and watch the leasing agent how they gave her a tour of the property. What they said if they really sold her on calling that place home and getting her to fill out an application. Yeah. That's all she had to do.
- [02:27]
A
Okay. And so my understanding is this is probably coming down from corporate. If this is a big commercial apartment company and they want to see how their employees on the ground are kind of like following the training manual, following the handbook, are they sticking to the script? Are they being personable and is there a way for them to get some boots on the ground? Experience or visualization on what's actually happening?
- [02:48]
B
Exactly. They want to know what's going on from a customer's point of view. And so as the mystery shopper, that's what we deliver. We deliver insight from a real customer's point of view and they're able to take that information and do what they will with it. Maybe it is update their training, maybe it is hiring more employees, maybe even terminating some that they have. There's so many things that they can do with the feedback that they get from mystery shoppers.
- [03:14]
A
Yeah, we don't want to get anybody fired, but a coaching opportunity like, hey, you know, why didn't you follow the guidelines here or something? Was it 850 bucks in two days, that's a big win. Does that come around, you know, consistently? I imagine you got to piece together a handful of gigs where on the plus side, maybe no two days are alike, but at the same same time, it's kind of. I never know what the next week is going to look like.
- [03:35]
B
Yeah. So with mystery shopping, people who do this more so like full time, they like to do what's called route shopping. They piece together multiple shops in one route and knock them out and make a lot of money in a short amount of time. But work is consistent. There are thousands and thousands of shops, especially across the U.S. could you do it full time?
- [03:59]
A
Could it be a full time thing?
- [04:00]
B
Heck yeah. I, I know a shopper, he makes six figures a year. Wow. For mystery shopping full time? I'm not kidding. One of our shoppers, she did 65,000 and some change in 2025. So yeah.
- [04:14]
A
Okay. Wow. All right, well, let's get into this. Where do I start? How do I start looking for these gigs that are nearby and trying to figure out what's legit, what's not.
- [04:23]
B
There's so many different options you have as far as provider companies that provide the mystery shopping jobs for you. So we always tell people, you can DIY it, do some research, or you can get started through a mystery shopping organization where you'll get your training and they'll connect you with legitimate partners and things like that. But once you're contracted with the providers, you're able to go out and start shopping the same day picking up different mystery shops. So it's very flexible. You can do it on your own time. It's really a great gig.
- [04:58]
A
Are there any favorites of yours of these 100, 150 plus different mystery shopping providers that are no brainers or does it kind of vary by location?
- [05:08]
B
I would say reality based group is a good one. But here's what I have found. I've been mystery shopping personally for over 13 years and that changes up. So every mystery shopping company has its own set of clients. So you could work with one company that they specialize in the auto industry. So they have like a lot of car dealerships and mechanic type shops. Whereas another company might have a lot of food shops, fast food, fine dining, casual dining. So really it just depends on the person. And once you get your feet wet you kind of understand like, okay, I really like to do these shops. This company has these shops. I like working for them. So for me personally it kind of changes just depending on the season of life I'm in and what I'm enjoying doing at that point.
- [05:54]
A
Yeah. How do I find the one that's going to pay me to go to Hawaii or pay me to go to sporting events something? On iShop, do you have a list or like a directory? Like just a centralized database or something for people listening?
- [06:07]
B
Yeah. We will connect our shoppers with our partner companies which obviously there's scams out there in the industry. So it's important to get your information from an organization that they're associated with so you know that they're legitimate. So we have a list that we will send shoppers so that they can get started with them.
- [06:25]
A
Yeah, the one that I had signed up for a few years ago maybe was MSP PA or it's like Mystery Shopper Provider Association. But it was not necessarily. I mean maybe you can break it down. I think that was just like the industry organization, not necessarily the companies that are sending out requests for mystery shoppers.
- [06:45]
B
Yes. So my company, iShop, it's the same thing as like the MSPA. Right. We're just a little newer on the block. So. But essentially we do the same things like we recruit, we train shoppers. Yes. So we are not the provider, but we are the recruiter. We are the people that you go to to kind of have a safe home base as a mystery shopper. So most mystery shoppers are either with the MSPA or they're with iShop.
- [07:11]
A
Okay. My understanding was maybe it was like an industry certification almost where we're going to say this is a legit provider of mystery shops. Is that not right?
- [07:22]
B
No, it's. Yeah, it's the Same thing. That's exactly what we do. We don't call our certifications. You get a certificate. But yeah, it's the same thing.
- [07:29]
A
Got it. So maybe step one is finding the mystery shop providers because it's not like you're going to roll up to Target and ask to speak to the manager, introduce yourself and be saying off a business card and say, hey, I'm a local mystery shopper, let me know what you need. It's almost always through these different providers.
- [07:44]
B
Yeah, no, you're not going, you're not going to target.com and sign up to be a mystery shopper. That's normally not how it works. So these companies, what they do is they outsource their mystery shopping programs to providers. And so you are working as a mystery shopper, you work directly for provider. Right. So you would contract out with them.
- [08:05]
A
Okay. And is it a best practice to just cast as wide a net as possible and sign up with 10, 20, 50, 100 of these just to kind of make sure you have a steady stream of opportunities coming across your desk?
- [08:17]
B
This is a question. We get a lot, a lot of new shoppers. They're like, oh my gosh, I want, you know, every, I want to see every shop that's out there. Realistically, yes, you can sign up with however many providers as you want, but I would suggest starting off with a few and then going from there because what happens, you, you can get overwhelmed. I mean it's like signing up for DoorDash 150 times, you know, like that, that would be a lot. So you want to start with, I'd say just like a handful to get in, get your feet wet and start learning the ropes and then expand your, like you say cash or net, just go at a good pace for you.
- [08:53]
A
Okay. Do you find it's app based like a doordash or web based where or email based where the opportunities kind of come in or do you have to sit in like hit refresh every Monday to see what new ones are available? How does it work mechanically?
- [09:06]
B
Yeah, so I don't send people to apps because it confuses people. There are a few mystery shopping apps, right. But they're third parties so they're not necessarily providers. But what you'll want to do is you want to work for the mystery shopping companies individually. Like you need to actually go to their website. That's where all their shops are going to be and you're going to be able to see that as opposed to going to an app. You're typically going to number one, you're not going to see everything that's available. Number two, it's going to be the lower paying shops that you're seeing on there.
- [09:40]
A
Okay, what's typical in terms of the rate of pay or what should I be have, have a little bit of a discerning taste for and say, yeah, that's not really worth it. Like what's in your mind? What qualifies as good?
- [09:52]
B
Well, here's the thing I've learned over the past decade that everybody's different. So you do have a personal preference as to what is worth it for you. But I like to go back to the actual data that my company has and I can say that on average people who do this as a side hustle, meaning they have their full time jobs or whatever they're doing for their main source of income and they're just doing this on the side, they average between two and $500 a week just doing this on the side. And that does not mean that they're trading, you know, 20 hours for $200. You're not paid by the hour as a mystery shopper, you're paid by the job. So $200 can be made in one day. You know, if you're route shopping, I think my personal best in one day, $600 in one day. So even if you're doing this as a side hustle, maybe just going out one or two days a week, you can still hit that two to $500 a week. And again, it is consistent and it
- [10:58]
A
would be feasible to do nights and weekends as a side hustle.
- [11:02]
B
Yeah. So most people, like I said, they do it on the side. So they're doing it after they get off work on their off days, like the weekend.
- [11:09]
A
Can you describe what you mean by route shopping?
- [11:11]
B
So route shopping is where you're piecing together multiple mystery shops in one route. This is how you make the big money. So what you'll do is, you know, pick a day, right? Okay, I'm going to pick a day and then I am going to string together, let's say five mystery shops. I leave my house, I go from one mystery shop to the next and get back home. So that is a route of shops and that is how you maximize your time and earning power.
- [11:38]
A
And this would be through the provider and they would say something like, we need you to go check out five neighborhood targets. And so you're going around from like something like that where it's the same task just at different locations.
- [11:51]
B
You can do that or you can Piece together different types of shops. So a lot of times, like, when I would go out, I would do apartment mystery shops, and then I'd put in, like, a lunch, like a breakfast and a lunch mystery shop. So then my lunch and, you know, my food is taken care of.
- [12:07]
A
Nice. Nice.
- [12:08]
B
Yeah. Throw in a gas station mystery shop. So I've got gas. So it's not just, hey, we've got, like, a package. You actually, as a shopper, can piece this together from multiple companies.
- [12:20]
A
Okay. Yeah, I like it from that perspective. Maybe it's worth signing up just to get free meals out of the deal. Free gas out of the deal. That's cool.
- [12:27]
B
Yeah, for sure. And you got people that do it for that too. They're just like, this is my fun money.
- [12:32]
A
Yeah. Tell me about your $600 day. Like, what did that entail, work wise? And then you got to write up a report or kind of like a review of the employees you interacted with, taking pictures, like, sharing stuff like that. What was the actual work involved?
- [12:46]
B
Yeah, so one of my favorite routes that I used to do all the time was car washes, so I can just tell you. Every month, I would take one day a month, and I would go out and get my car washed about 20 times. I would not get out of the car. I did not have to get out of the car. And literally would make $600 and be back in time for dinner at my house with my kids. What that entailed was getting a car wash, getting the name of the employee who would greet, maybe getting a few shots of the inside of the car wash, and then the report usually would take me under 15 minutes to do.
- [13:26]
A
Okay, primarily from your phone. Or are you, like, writing it up on the laptop in your home?
- [13:30]
B
I am a laptop girly. So, yes, you can do this from a phone, but I 100% prefer to do it on a laptop. It's just cleaner. It's a wider space. My phone's not getting notifications while I'm trying to fill things out.
- [13:44]
A
Okay. I've got more with Mercedes in just a moment, including building up your reputation as a mystery shopper and a couple common scams to avoid coming up right after this. You know that feeling when you finally finish a cleanup project you've been putting off? That's what switching to our partner Gusto feels like. Payroll, hr, benefits. All that admin chaos that's been piling up, finally organized in one place. Gusto is the online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly and incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire onboard and support your team from anywhere. If you're like me and on a mission to simplify and automate as much as you can in your life and business, you're going to love Gusto because that's what it does for your payroll. Payroll tax filings, direct deposits, onboarding docs and more. Making the switch is quick and simple. Just transfer your existing data to get up and running fast. Plus you don't pay a cent until you run your first payroll. Try Gusto today at Gusto Sidehustle and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com sidehustle one more time it's Gusto. G-usto.com sidehustle you work hard for your money. Let's make sure it works just as hard for you. With Wealthfront, you earn more on every dollar with sophisticated, easy to use products. Their cash account provides up to 4.3% variable APY with instant no fee withdrawals. And when you're ready, you can easily transfer your cash into an expert built Wealthfront Investing account. On top of the 3.3% base APY from program banks. You also get a side hustle show exclusive three month 0.75% APY boost on up to $150,000 as a new cash account client. Then add another 0.25% APY increase by direct depositing $1,000 a month and maintaining a funded investing account. Claim your boost today@wealthfront.com Hustle terms and conditions apply. This is a paid Wealthfront non client endorsement, creating a conflict of interest. Client experiences vary. Wealthfront Brokerage is not a Bank Base APY as of January 30, 2026 and subject to change. Please see details in the episode description. And so that's kind of what thinking about what the companies would want to know or what kind of data that they're trying to collect. And you're probably not the only person that's sending them that data. They want a consensus across maybe multiple locations, multiple employees that people are interacting with, multiple shoppers and so kind of start to build a story of what's really happening on the ground. Is there anything that you're doing to market yourself or set yourself up for success or build, you know, a positive profile with any of these providers to kind of like have more gigs sent your way?
- [16:34]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So building a reputation is a big one. The mystery shopping industry is like a $2 billion industry, right. It's crazy because a lot people don't know about it, don't know how to get started and that's a whole nother conversation. But it's a big industry, but it's also very small. The key players, we all know each other, right? And everybody talks, oh, this shopper's, they've done really good work over here. Okay, well then we're sending them here and here. So word of mouth, oh man, it spreads very fast in this industry. So the key is to, number one, do good work, right. Don't flake out on shops that you have to do. Do what you need to do and do it on time. Right. And then what you need to do is really be associated with an organization because that's where you're going to be able to actually network with the company reps and company owners. There are conferences, mystery shopping conferences, and that's where you can actually get in front of them with your face in person. And it, I mean there are ways to market yourself to the provider and those are primarily it, it's just having, building a good reputation by good work and getting in front of them in person.
- [17:47]
A
Do you ever have to start to go in disguise if you're going to the same locations like month after month? Why is this lady always here? Why is she taking notes and taking all these pictures and stuff?
- [17:56]
B
That's hilarious. Some of the mystery shops, they do want you to like dress the part. So if it's at a luxury facility or something like that, you need to dress, you know, dress pretty nice. Some of them maybe rarely, but some might have like a dress code as far as like they want you to wear khaki pants and you know, a button up shirt or something like that. But for the most part you can just be yourself.
- [18:19]
A
Okay, there's enough employee turnover or switching. You're not drawing suspicion to yourself, like, why are they here all the time?
- [18:25]
B
Exactly. So one of the things that they do is called rotation. So mystery shoppers, they're not going to send in the same mystery shopper every week to the same location. Because, because eventually the, the employees are going to figure that out. Like, oh, you know, that's the mystery shopper. I think employees, they pride themselves on trying to figure out who the shopper is. So they have a rotation. So as a shopper, you know, there might be a shop that you do this month that they say, okay, you can't do this for another 30 days. So that is a, that is one way to protect, you know, your Identity so you don't have to dress up and all the things. Another reason for the rotation is just to keep fresh faces coming in. So with this industry, people ask me all the time, you know, is it going to get saturated? You're recruiting new shoppers? No, they need fresh faces. I mean, I just had a meeting with a company, a vice president, one of the companies last week. He's like, man, we, we release 35, 40,000 shops a month, we need fresh faces. Yeah. So there's so much to go around and there's a lot more room in this industry.
- [19:37]
A
Okay. So doing the jobs that you said you were going to do, being on time, being thorough in your write ups, in your reports, kind of following the instructions or the guidelines there, I imagine they're going to have like the questionnaire to fill out after the fact where it's not like a blank page here. Write us a five paragraph essay about your experience, anything else that you're doing to kind of bolster your reputation and get more jobs flowing your way.
- [20:02]
B
Honestly, that's it. Doing good work, getting in front of the company rep, they talk. And so whenever there is a good shopper, somebody that does good work, they turn in their reports on time. They're sharing that with the other companies. It's not a competition. You know, everybody knows everybody and their friends and you know, hey, if you know somebody that can help with this shop, we want to know about them. And so they kind of just spread your name for you.
- [20:28]
A
Yeah. Well, it's interesting you mentioned showing up at industry conferences and it's like it shouldn't surprise me at this point that of course there's a mystery shopper conference and you even run one yourself, right?
- [20:40]
B
Yeah. So there's only two. It's ours and the other organization. So yeah, like this year we'll be in Vegas. Shoppers come in from all over North America. The companies are there and so it's a great time and way to learn to uplevel and to market yourself.
- [20:55]
A
How many people do you expect to show up?
- [20:57]
B
Last year we had over 100. Our first conference was in 22, so we've been growing every year. So hopefully this year, you know, we have closer to 200, so. So we're excited about it.
- [21:08]
A
Very cool. You mentioned earlier that there are some scams in the industry and was hoping you could speak to one or two common scams or what to be on the lookout for there.
- [21:18]
B
Unfortunately there's so many scams out there today, but when it comes to mystery shopping, it's just got a bad rep because of scams. The good thing is scams are usually easy to spot. Your red flag should go off because usually it just sounds too good to be true. So if you get, like a check in the mail, and the check is like, hey, here's a. It's a $2,000 check. We want you to go cash this. And it just doesn't make sense. Okay. But usually it's a check in the mail, and they ask you to cash it in exchange for whatever they're going to ask you to do. Common sense tells us jobs and companies don't typically pay you before you go and do your work, so that's an easy one to spot. But there have been people that I think like, oh, my gosh, I really need this money. They want to believe it, and they'll go cash that check, and bam, their whole bank account's hacked. So you just want to be careful. Things like that, that don't necessarily make sense. Don't try to make it make sense, because it's probably a scam.
- [22:23]
A
Yeah. So what's the scam? The check bounces and you get an overdraft. How does that benefit the scammer, though?
- [22:29]
B
Listen, so I think what happens is once they cash that check, like, they're able to. I don't know how they do it, but hack into your account. So what you have to do. I had this happen to one girl a few years ago, and I told her immediately, like, call your bank. You have to, like, close down the account. It's a nightmare. So I don't know the ins and outs of the scamming part because I'm not well versed on how they do all that. I just know how they present it to you.
- [22:57]
A
Yeah, my wife had one of these as a photographer, and it was. Somebody reached out. We're having a reunion. This is the date. This is the venue. Are you available? Check the calendar. Yeah, that's fine. And then it was, well, my bank won't let me do electronic transfer, so is it okay to pay by check? And it was like, we haven't talked about contracts or rates or really anything yet. It was a weird thing to say up front. And then it was kind of like, I think this is a scam. I don't understand really what the scam is, but it's one that we've come across. Anything else aside from this check cashing one?
- [23:30]
B
The other one is gift cards. So if they tell you, hey, we want you to go buy 10 gift cards at you know, Walgreens, and then scratch off the back and send us the code. No, don't do that.
- [23:44]
A
You're never getting reimbursed for that.
- [23:45]
B
Yeah, you're not getting re. And they'll promise you, like, we'll reimburse you. No, like, when it comes to legitimate mystery shopping, you're not getting paid ahead of time. I mean, that would just not work. So anytime somebody promises you money ahead of time, it's usually a scam.
- [24:02]
A
Now, some of the stuff you are going to have to, like in your example, pay for the car washes as you go through, swipe your card or pay cash or buy the meal at the restaurant, and then kind of trust that you're going to get reimbursed. Right?
- [24:14]
B
Yeah. So there are shops that do require you to buy something, and there are shops that do not require you to buy something. So for instance, if I am doing a mystery shop at a place like a car wash or a movie theater or a restaurant, those are places you really can't evaluate without actually being a customer and buying something. Right. So you would pay up front and then you would get reimbursed. But as long as you're with a legitimate company, is nothing to be scared about. They're going to pay you back on. On their payday. But then there are shops that don't require purchases. And I like to tell people that because I think that's one of the biggest questions that we get is do I have to pay for things up front? And so if a shop requires a purchase, yes, you pay up front. But again, going back to my favorite types of mystery shops, the apartment mystery shops, I'm not buying anything. I'm literally getting paid to tour an apartment and evaluate the leasing professional. I'm not asked to put down a deposit on an apartment. I don't have to do any of that. So there's shops for everybody. Really. It's very flexible as far as paste drop structure and the types of shops that you can do. There's something for everybody.
- [25:25]
A
If you had to guess an hourly rate based on what you put in, what would be a range?
- [25:31]
B
I'll give you a lower average, 25 to 40. But again, you're not paid by the hour. So it's like, I mean, one of my biggest wins was I did a mystery shop one time literally in my pajamas on my couch. It took me 30 minutes. All I had to do was go onto a website and take screenshots of, like, walking through the process of this website. 30 minutes, $300.
- [25:57]
A
That was a nice one.
- [25:58]
B
Yeah, it was a really nice one.
- [26:00]
A
The one that I was testing recently was this app called Heddle. And so it's not a true mystery shopping app, but it was like, go to Target and scan, you know, these 10 aisles. And it was kind of a slow, tedious process. I couldn't fit it all in the frames. It was like this, this awkward slow pan up and down. And occasionally there'd be workers or other customers in the aisle and they'd be like, what is this guy doing? So I just told them, I'm on a mystery shopping assignment. And they ended up paying, probably worked out to about 20 bucks an hour. So it's probably similar or maybe better than some of the other gig apps out there and certainly higher than minimum wage. It's just a matter of could you piece enough of these together in your spare time to hit your side hustle goals? And then on the mechanics of getting paid. So the company, the apartment company at the top is paying the provider, and then they're passing a portion of their payment on to you, the mystery shopper. And is that every week? Is that like, you know, within 10 days of submitting your report? Is it. You know, they aggregate it once a month. You have to invoice them. How does this work?
- [27:02]
B
It depends on the company. Every provider has a different pay method and a different pay schedule. So you hit up several of them. There's no one straight answer because all of them are different.
- [27:14]
A
Okay, what's most common?
- [27:15]
B
PayPal. I will say that the Hedl app. I don't know if they're calling it mystery shopping assignment, but it actually, technically, that's merchandising, which we tell shoppers when you become a mystery shopper. A lot of the mystery shopping companies offer merchandising shops, so they're a little different from mystery shopping because mystery shopping, you're evaluating the customer service. Merchandising, it's all about the merch. It's taking pictures, it's putting stickers on products and things like that. So it's not technically mystery shopping, but it is. It just kind of goes in the family. So you will see that when you are a mystery shopper.
- [27:54]
A
Okay. And they probably pay a little bit less because I didn't have to interact with any employees. I didn't have to write a report afterwards.
- [28:00]
B
How long did you say it took you? An hour.
- [28:03]
A
One of them was like 65 aisles. That probably took an hour 45, but it worked out to about 20 bucks an hour.
- [28:09]
B
Okay. Okay, yeah, I feel like merchandising. Those shops, I don't see them pay as much as mystery shops. And I do see a lot more of the merchandising shops actually pay by hour. So what we found is some people hate them, some people love them. When you compare it to a true mystery shop, where you're actually getting paid to do something you're already going to do, a lot of people would rather do an actual true mystery shop.
- [28:33]
A
Is there a rule of thumb to discern a legit mystery shopping provider from a more shady operator?
- [28:42]
B
Honestly, when it comes down to it, just making sure like and this is for any scam, have you ever gotten an email and you look at the domain after the symbol and it's like some jumbled up weird stuff. Like I've gotten stuff like that from Facebook. Well, if it's not facebook.com and it's something weird or@gmail.com like I've seen one that said like Facebook support at Gmail automatically. No, this is not real. So that's one way to check for scams. So if, if the email is domain is not matching the actual domain of that company, that's a red flag that could be a scam. But really the best way is honestly just getting with a mystery shopping organization that actually has partnerships with the provider so that you're guaranteed this is a legitimate company.
- [29:37]
A
More with Mercedes in just a moment. Including some of the tax benefits of mystery shopping, the resort gigs that might pay you to fly to Cabo and where some shoppers run into trouble and frustration. All that and more coming up right after this. Starting a business is a big deal, but our partner Shopify makes it simpler with all the tools you need to launch included and ready from day one. When you're setting up your site, you don't need to start from scratch or reinvent the wheel here. Just use Shopify's proven templates and AI tools to get a great looking site up and running fast with no coding needed. Plus, Shopify's best in class checkout means more customers actually convert and buy and returning ones can do it in a single click. And every side. Hustle Hero needs a sidekick, right? Well with Shopify, yours is built right in. Their AI assistant Sidekick is ready to help you build, troubleshoot and keep moving your business forward. Shopify already powers millions of businesses worldwide, including brand name powerhouses like Mattel and Gymshark. But also dozens of guests you've heard on the side Hustle show. I'd love for you to be Next and you can get started for free@shopify.com Sidehustle. All you need is the idea. Shopify handles the rest. Start your free trial@shopify.com Sidehustle Once again, start your free trial today at shopify.com Sidehustle. Hear that? That's the sound of your marketing working. And as an entrepreneur, you know that every call is an opportunity. But if you miss it, potential customers don't wait. They'll just call the next business on their list. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q U O. It's the business phone system built so you never miss a call. You can set it up in minutes on any device. You can keep your existing phone number, and you can add teammates as you grow. No it. No hassle. Once you do, all your calls, texts and voicemails live in one place. So anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history and respond fast. Plus Quo integrates with the tools you're already using. HubSpot, Zapier, Claude and tons more. So you can save time and stay organized. Money is on the line. Always say hello with quo. Try quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com hustle that's quoq u o.com hustle are there any tools in your tool belt or tech that you swear by to help keep keep these different gigs organized or maybe organize your route as you're going out? What's going on in the tools and tech world?
- [32:15]
B
There's a lot of different apps. I mean, you've got Mileiq that shoppers love to use.
- [32:20]
A
This is like. Like a mileage tracker deduction app.
- [32:23]
B
Yep, that's right.
- [32:23]
A
You're an independent contractor. Yeah. Write off your miles for sure.
- [32:26]
B
Exactly. There's a lot. I mean, there's so many things that you can write off, which makes it really interesting when you're a mystery shopper. But as far as like a specific mystery shopping app, app for routes and things like that, we are building that. So there hasn't been one that's really existed until now. So we're building that and hope to get those features out very soon.
- [32:47]
A
Okay, yeah, maybe there's an opportunity there. And I'm seeing, I feel like there's an opportunity to build that aggregator database directory of all of these different providers and have some kind of filtering for location or. I don't know, it's kind of rotating, so you wouldn't be able to have necessarily all the gigs up at once? Maybe there would be a little bit of a technical challenge there, but that's got my gears turned in a little bit.
- [33:14]
B
We've actually built that. We launched it three months ago. That is going well. And we're still adding features and things like that because shoppers want it. They want a place to be able to do that.
- [33:23]
A
Yeah. Is there a world where you see through ishop or somebody else, where you're like, can I just fill out my profile once and have all of these companies, like a cross registration or something, where just, why do I got to sign up for a hundred different sites?
- [33:38]
B
That's what we're working towards. It's a big thing. Right. Most people, you know, when they do get in the industry and they figure out, oh, you got to sign up for each, a lot of people don't want to do it. But then people are excited and they're like, hey, we're. I want all the companies. And we're like, slow your horse. This is down just a little bit. I've been mystery shopping for 13 years, and already the landscape has changed quite a bit since 2013. And so the future of it, I know, is even bigger and better and more advanced because for a long time when you were mystery shopping, you were filling out paper reports and literally mailing them in. Okay. So it recently went to digital to where you could do it online. But now we're going past that and you've got AI and so it's kind of a race to get the newest tech out there to shoppers. And so that's something that we've kind of joined in on and are working towards.
- [34:33]
A
Are there any travel gigs? Like, I'm. I'm going back to this idea of getting paid to go to Hawaii or even getting, you know, having that trip subsidized in some way. Is that a thing?
- [34:43]
B
Heck, yeah, it's a thing. I can tell you. Personally, I have gotten paid to fly on airplanes to different states. I have gotten paid to stay at resorts out of state. I have a girlfriend of mine, she mystery shops all over the world. She's been to Dubai, China, the uk, Hawaii. So she. I have her come to our conferences to talk to shoppers about traveling as a mystery shopper. So, yes, there are shops that you can do in other countries and places like Hawaii. I actually had a phone call about three weeks ago with one of our partner companies, and the owner was telling me, hey, we've got shops right now where we need people to do resort mystery shops in Cabo San Lucas.
- [35:28]
A
Oh, sign me up.
- [35:30]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it is a wonderful world.
- [35:33]
A
And so it's a matter of finding those providers that specialize in the travel niche. If you want to go down that path.
- [35:40]
B
Absolutely.
- [35:41]
A
The pushback on some Internet forums around ishop is, why do I need to pay for this if I could sign up for all these different providers for free? So what's your response? What's your take on that?
- [35:53]
B
We get that a lot. Right. So it's industry standard to pay for training. If you look at any mystery shopping organization, they all charge for training. We didn't create anything new there.
- [36:04]
A
Can I pause and ask what kind of training is required here?
- [36:07]
B
We have multitudes of training. So you can do beginner classes, you can do intermediate, you can do advanced. It just depends on where you are in your journey. If you talk to somebody who has never gotten training, you're going to probably get one of two responses. Number one is, I couldn't figure it out. Number two is it wasn't a lot of money. I didn't make a lot of money. I can't tell you how much. I hear that online, like, well, I did mystery shopping and it was paying six and seven dollars. And my first question is, did you start through an organization? And 100% of the time it is no. And that right there is why they're making no money and they quit because they don't know how big the industry is. They don't know about building your reputation, they don't know about networking. They don't even know that mystery shopping conference exist. So I can say that confidently. When you're actually investing into yourself to learn from other people who have already done it, been there, you're going to cut out a lot of wasted time that you're going to spend researching that you're going to spend trying to figure out and avoid scams that you're going to try to figure out, okay, how do I build this route? How do I get in touch with this person? Because at the end of the day, the mystery shopping providers, they don't train. Right. They're not there to train. They're there to get a job done. So if you have questions and things like that, you can send a question to your provider, but they've got thousands of emails from shoppers all over. They don't get back to you very quickly. So that's what your organization is for. So you can get that support from your organization a lot faster than you can from the actual provider. So there's a Lot of different benefits, but at the end of the day, you're just cutting out a lot of extra, or I should say wasted time spent on trying to figure it out yourself.
- [38:00]
A
Okay, I can be about that. Accelerate your learning curve. And maybe my confidence in being able to write up a report is misplaced by, like, I don't know. What? I don't know.
- [38:10]
B
It's funny because. So at the mystery shopping companies, it's very easy to get a bad reputation. And you would be surprised at how many grown adults thoughts, like, are terrible with grammar. And so when they're filling out these reports, because sometimes there are narratives where you have to write in full, complete sentences chronologically what happened. And, I mean, it'll be a nightmare. And they're like, what? What is this? And so they have to send it back and it just gets muddied. But you'd be surprised at how many people struggle with that as well as, like, the tech side of it, too. So this industry is. It's full of a lot of different people, and most of them benefit from having training and being well versed on all the aspects of mystery shopping.
- [39:00]
A
Okay, what else is behind the paywall for you, aside from the training?
- [39:04]
B
So we have a free training, we have a paid training, and then we have continued support. We walk you through every. All the ins and outs of mystery shopping, how to actually complete a shop and get paid for it. Because if you go to do a shop and you actually, like, don't do it right, you will have wasted your time and they will not pay you. So we walk you through how to, like, start to finish, how to actually mystery shop.
- [39:33]
A
And what about the aggregator tool? Is that open to the public?
- [39:36]
B
Yes, that is open to the public. And you're able to kind of see shops in your area and start browsing. It's pretty cool. We're really excited about it. There's thousands of shops on there right now.
- [39:48]
A
What's the URL for that? I'm not finding it at ishop agp.
- [39:52]
B
It's a separate company. It is ishopquest.com so the name of it is Shopquest. And then it has a subtle Nod to ishop. Ishopquest.com There it is.
- [40:04]
A
Unlock secret shopper jobs in your city. 100% free to join. Very cool. We'll plug that up in, in the show notes. That's great. Thank you. Well, Mercedes, what's. What's next? You got the conference coming up. You've got this new platform that you just built. What else has got you excited?
- [40:20]
B
This year, honestly, those are the biggest things right now that we're really excited about. Just met with my team this morning. Man, I'm excited because people are making money. And so listening to all the testimonials, that's the best part of my job, is being able to see people come in skeptical, right? They're coming in like, is this real? Is it a scam? Why am I paying for training? Who are you? And then from them coming to that, then to saying, oh, my gosh, I just got paid to test drive a luxury car or, oh, my gosh, I was able to pay off debt. I was able to pay for my wedding. We had one girl. She used her mystery shopping money to do IVF treatments, got pregnant for the first time, did it again. She's pregnant with her second baby, and she credits all that to her mystery shopping money and getting started through Eyeshop. That's the best part of this, is seeing lives transformed by a side hustle that people didn't know about or they counted out. And so I. I love the difference that it makes in people's lives.
- [41:24]
A
Well, it's really interesting for you, starting out as a mystery shopper and then side hustles on side hustles is the turning this I shop. It's a pretty serious business at this point with thousands and thousands of members.
- [41:34]
B
It's been a wild journey. I never expected. I was just looking to make extra money like most people are. But one thing kind of turned into another with just people being interested in mystery shopping. And there's a point where it's like, okay, this is a lot of people. Back then, there were no webinars. I didn't even know what a webinar was 13 years ago. So it was like phone calls, calls you. I don't know if you remember, like 18 the 1, 800 free conference call.com and so, I mean, how much time do I have to spend on the phone? It just kind of snowballed, and it's been a blessing. And now to be able to work with the actual mystery shopping companies because they need shoppers and they want shoppers that actually are going to show up. So we don't want to just send any shoppers to them. We want to send trained mystery shoppers to them so that they already are well prepared on what they. They're expected to do. And so being able to work with the mystery shopping companies and help bring new faces in. We had one company reach out and she's like, oh, my gosh. I was able to fill four of our hard to, to reach areas with your shoppers. And I'm like, yes, that's the kind of feedback that, that we want. We want to be able to help the companies as well, because they don't get paid if the shops don't get done right. So they need the shoppers. The shoppers need them.
- [42:51]
A
Yeah. It starts to become a virtuous circle once you have that kind of cornerstone position in the industry. We've had examples of people providing, like a virtual assistant training type of business where we'll help you set up your VA service and then, well, if you have now thousands of thousands of trained VAs, all of a sudden people wanting to hire those people come to you, and now you can kind of be the matchmaker. Becomes even more valuable. Now, aside from doing podcast interviews like this, what else drives traffic for you on the shopper acquisition side?
- [43:21]
B
So a lot of word of mouth. Because once shoppers find out, this is. You know what I mean? Oh, my God, this is real. They're telling everybody social media is a big one. Ads. I mean, we, we try it all, and you have to do that. I mean, you never want to not be trying new marketing strategies. So we're always looking for new and exciting ways to spread the opportunity.
- [43:43]
A
All right, well, we'll link it up. Ishopagp.com and ishopquest.com you can check Mercedes and her services out over there.
- [43:51]
B
There.
- [43:52]
A
Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side Hustle Nation.
- [43:55]
B
Just show up. If you decide on a side Hustle, show up for it. Give it a good try before you make a permanent decision. You never know where that could lead. I mean, something as small as, you know, mystery shopping might be like, holy cow, I didn't know. I always think to myself, if I would have not, not accepted the opportunity that I got on that random double date, I would not be here today. So show up.
- [44:26]
A
What's the double date story?
- [44:28]
B
Oh, the double date story. I actually was on a double date with my husband. We were dating, and his best friend and his girlfriend. It was a double date. She worked for a mystery shopping company. And she was like, hey, we need mystery shoppers. Is there any way you could do a mystery shop for me at this gas station down the street? And I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's real, you know, so that's how I got my foot in the door. And I was, I was hungry. I showed up, right? And so I'm so glad that I didn't just write it off when she asked me that. I mean it's just a random situation. But that's, that's my point. It and we teach this, we've got an 18 and a 20 year old and we are constantly telling them one decision as as simple as you are going to go to the movies with your friends tonight, one decision could change your life. You never know who you're going to meet, what opportunities are going to show up for you. So show up for them.
- [45:30]
A
Yeah, I like that. It's kind of what I wrote down here as takeaways is test the waters. This is so low risk, so low overhead that you know you almost have nothing to lose. Go try out this shop at the gas station. Like okay, worst case, it's half an hour of your life. That seems like a no brainer to kind of sign up with a handful of these different companies nearby. You can look@ishopquest.com and see which ones of those there are and see what comes across your desk. See if it's like, yeah, I'll go, I'll go give that a shot. See if I can make 30, 40 bucks. Absolutely. And then as you're doing it, put your best foot forward. Take the time to do it right, to do it well, to take it seriously because that reputation matters and you're more likely to have a better acceptance rate going forward, it sounds like. Now if you're wondering what to listen to next, first of all, thank you for tuning in to this episode. There are 750 other episodes in the side Hustle show archives. Would love to have you binge on the whole catalog, but if you are pressed for time, Hustle show will build you a little bit personalized playlist. If you answer a few short questions over there, multiple choice, a couple minutes, you can do it from your phone. Again, Hustle show and it'll build you a customized playlist based on your answers of 8 to 10 of our greatest hits episodes and you can add those to your device and start working towards your income goals this year. Again, Hustle show for that. Big thanks to Mercedes for sharing her insight. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping and make this content free for everyone. Side hustlenation.com deals is where you can go to find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. Fire off that text message, let them know. Hey, you ought to check this out. Until next time. Let's go out there and make something happen, and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle show. Hustle on.