I've been a lurker for a while and have learned so much. Thank you so much to everyone. I am enjoying the Mystery Shopping that I have done so far.

Of course I have a couple of questions.

1. How do you suggest keeping up with the companies you are signed up with?

2. And once you know who you may work for, how do you suggest checking with all of these companies? Bookmarks?

Thanks everyone.

Sueinsc

Hi and welcome!

I keep an Excel spreadsheet with all of my company names and passwords. And yes, bookmark them. Over time, I have been able to group them into ones that I check daily, ones with some shops in my area, and ones with nothing available to me (the biggest group).

Thank you Bayberry.

A spreadsheet for keeping up with who I am signed up with and bookmark folders (Firefox) for checking the job boards.


First, I maintain a spreadsheet (OOPS, edited to replace 'for' with 'with') with every company I have come in contact with - not just signed up with. That spreadsheet has the name, date first of contact, referral (or how I learned of it), am I signed up, did I do any shops for them, and notes on the company. I find those notes very useful especially for those companies that I forgot about and am reconsidering. Often the notes tell me I told not to sign up for them and why. Or it tells me I am signed up for them already. The spreadsheet has saved me a lot of time that way.

Next, I use Firefox to use a series of bookmark folders in the bookmark toolbar and open up one at a time as I desire. Let me explain more. The first is called 'MS-1' which stands for Mystery Shopping #1. In it is a select group of about 12 favorite companies that have lots of shops that I like to do. When I search for jobs, I can open one bookmark at a time or use Firefox's 'Open All in tabs" feature to open all 12 bookmarks in that folder at once. Saved usernames and passwords help speed along the process. The 'MS-2' folder has a group of companies that are a bit less important for me. 'MS-3' is the next group and so on. Companies will migrate from one folder to another as their value to me or my preferences change.

Good luck!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/22/2014 01:58AM by vlade5394.

I don't bother with a separate spreadsheet for each company, I simply add notes to my master "My List of Companies" sheet. Companies come and go, get bought out, change their names and have other changes. My list includes every company I have ever attempted to sign up with as well as those I have heard of and a note as to why I decided not to register with them. There are many lists of companies out there on the web that are no updated, some of them are ones I copied off back in 2003-2005 and half the companies are gone or have changed names. So when I see 'Shop 'n Check' on my sheet, it tells me that it became Market Force, so it is not still another company to research and see if I want to sign up.

The spreadsheet includes user name and password, address for the log in to their job board, date I registered, phone numbers, addresses, scheduler names, payment cycle, how they pay, etc. I no longer keep it carefully up to date, though I do refer back to it when I get an email from a company I don't remember registering with and certainly when shoppers I have grown to respect have issues with a company, that gets noted on my sheet along with the approximate date of the issues.

I have a spreadsheet and a print out. They're divided by type of shops they do, and there's a whole section of Geographically Inconvenient ones. Ones in other countries, or specific to regions of the US other than mine.

Then I have a reverse list. List of places, divided into category types, and who shops them. This is so that, when my car needs a brake job, I know whose board/scheduler I need to contact.

I just keep on learning from all of you..many thanks. Now to start that spreadsheet...............

I like the keep track of what's useful, idea.