Mystery shopping
After reading Crystal’s blog at Money Saving Mom, I felt inspired to rack my brain and think of another way that I’ve made money from home, and then it hit me- I’ve never mentioned mystery shopping!
Now, in my experience it’s difficult to actually make cash money from mystery shopping. Perhaps in the US there are some companies that pay more money than what is available in Canada. The one that I signed up for did not pay a lot of actual cash (although sometimes the opportunity simply required time and a small cash reward was given, perhaps $10-20).
But usually I was rewarded through free services or items. This isn’t quite making money, but if you can get things that your family needs and might have otherwise had to pay for, then it can almost as good.
For instance, through my mystery shopping we got free dinner for date nights, a free oil change, and free professional carpet cleaning in our home! Those are fairly practical things that were really helpful and enjoyable for us!
There are many websites to be found if you google “mystery shopping” or “secret shopping”. For anyone in Canada, the one that I used is called Sensus.
Just a short tip this morning, as I’m off to try to grocery shop on a much decreased budget (for the Savvy Spending Challenge). Make sure you check out Making Do Mondays and add your own link!
One word of warning to those looking into Mystery Shopping – there are several scam sites and adds for these jobs as well, so check into the one you’re interested in working for . It took the Better Business Bureau for me to get the money back I’d invested into one fraud system before realizing it. The “company” refused to refund, so I wrote a letter of complaint against them to the BBB and was refunded the money put in but out of the time wasted by a fraud.