(Click on Book)
Video Mystery Shopping
as a Home Business
There are many of us out there that are seeking to find the perfect home based business for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the main one is to be able to work at home and generate income for oneself vs. for some other company and not having the 8 to 5 grind with a boss telling us what to do all day long etc.
I found that perfect home business in Video Mystery Shopping. Lots of folks confuse video shopping with mystery shopping. The latter is basically where you are hired as a mystery shopper by a mystery shopping company to buy a hamburger at a McDonalds or see a movie, or check out a restaurant for their customer service performance. Once you have done this, you complete a written report and turn it in.
I’m not saying there is anything wrong with being a mystery shopper since some of them can actually make $40,000 a year if they work for a lot of shopping companies at the same time. A lot of mystery shoppers do!
At least the mystery shopper can say he/she has their own business since they are for the most part hired by the shopping company as a sub contractor or 1099. This means that the shopper is not really an employee of the shopping company and he/she needs to keep records of all their expenses including gas mileage to turn in at the end of the year to get a tax write off for it. Note: If the shopper makes over $600.00 a year, the shopping company will send you a 1099.
The mystery shopper can dress casual, and choose shopping companies close to them and pick their own working hours. Since there are a lot of such companies who are seeking new faces to be a shopper, chances are you will be kept busy.
Now if the above scenario sounds like a good thing, you really need to zero in on an even more desirable home based business that is very similar to the one already talked about. The business I’m speaking about is Video Mystery Shopping.
With mystery shopping the shopper has to complete reports some are as long as six pages in length and can take some time to complete. One also has to have a good memory to remember to fill in the blanks on the report.
Not so with video mystery shopping since it doesn’t deal with reports but with video equipment. The entire shop is all recorded on tape you filmed which is simply handed to the video shopping company to edit for you. They in turn send it to the client either on tape or DVD form.
The video mystery shopper too is a 1099, but unlike the mystery shopper who may get paid anywhere from $5.00 to $10.00 per shop, the video shopper normally will be paid any where from $15.00 to $25.00 per shop. A huge difference & both shops can take the same length of time to do. The video shopper will make a whole lot more than his cousin shopper doing mystery shopping. Then too there is NO paperwork!! Since the shop is captured all on tape, the video shopper does not have to waste time filling out reports. He simply pops out the tape and hands in to the video company.
The video equipment is provided by the video company and they train the video shopper how to use it. The equipment is better known as; body worn surveillance equipment. It consist of a mini DVR (digital video recorder), a small microphone, and a camera called a button hole camera. It actually looks like a button on your shirt. This equipment is attached on your body and covered by your clothing so as not to be seen by anyone. Once you turn on the recorder or DVR, you are filming the shop you have been assigned to do. No one will be able to tell your recording them since the camera looks like a button on your shirt and the small mike is pinned and hidden behind your shirt. The recorder is usually placed on your waist in a type of fanny pack. With the wires tucked in, and the equipment concealed by your outer garments, you’re ready to record the shop. It’s that simple!!! and it’s easy!!!
A perfect example of a video shop would be an apartment shop. This is where the video shopper pretends to want to lease an apartment from a representative at the apartment complex. With the video recorder on, the shopper films the initial presentation which includes the drive to see the apartment (usually in a small cart). Next is the apartment showing and finally the closing of the presentation. That’s it!!
The best part is that the video mystery shopping company charged $400.00 to do this shop and the video shopper got $20.00 to film it. Now $20.00 a shop is not bad money to be making as a sub contractor folks! And they can do 3 to 4 shops a day.
I have done both mystery shopping and video mystery shopping and I find that there is nothing to compare with video shopping. Since mystery shopping has been around for over 50 years, it is a saturated market. All one need to do is click onto any search engine and you will see tons of mystery shopping companies that are out there. That’s OK if you simply want to be a mystery shopper. To be fair here however, mystery shopping is a 1.5 billion dollar international industry!!
Video mystery shopping has only been around for just under a decade. There are not so many companies doing this kind of shopping since the technology has only recently become available to use to do these kinds of shops. I find doing video shops easy and fun to do. I decided early on to have my own video mystery shopping company since the competition is not that bad yet and because I can make more money doing video shopping than any other kind of jobs I’ve done in the past. I still pay my video shoppers between $20.00 to $25.00 dollars a shop but I keep the lions share. Say you do 4 to 7 shops per day and charge the client $260.00 per shop. Multiply $260.00 by 7 and you get $1,820 for a days work. Minus what you pay your shoppers say $25.00 x 7 equals $175.00. You keep the rest!! Not bad for my own home based business and I don’t even have the hassles of dealing with employees.
I love it!! I can show you too how you can be a video shopper or have your own video shopping business. Ask me about my new book on Video Mystery Shopping. Or click on to this link to see how to order a copy of the BOOK/CD. Link
Copyright 2005 All rights reserved lindquistinvestigationservices.com