Welcome! Some tips - read the guidelines a few times for new projects. Most have some nuanced details and will want you to get specific information using either exact questions or example questions. Make those questions your own and natural sounding so you can create authentic dialogue with the employee you are shopping. Take more pictures than you think you will need. Practice taking pictures while you are pretending to text on your phone, there is a bit of an art to it and once you master this you can covertly take pictures. When i arrive at a location, I always quickly snap an exterior pic as I'm walking up to the front - this makes it easy for me to see exactly when I arrived and started the shop (something you'll need to enter on every project). I do the same thing when I'm leaving and walking to my car, as that will give me my exit time. Once you complete a location, move to a nearby parking lot and enter your notes so you don't forget them. Don't sit in your car in the retailer's parking lot and do anything, as thats not normal customer behavior. I email my comments to myself, and those notes become the basis for my narrative responses. For shops that require specific timing, use the stopwatch app on your phone. I screenshot the time at each stage of the shop, which gives me a visual history of each timing step.
Explore some of the "non shopping" projects from Service Evaluation Concepts (insurance time audits), Customer Impact (light merchandising), RQA (recall retrievals) as a way to increase your income. Their projects generally pay well, can be done in routes, and don't require narrative writing.
Ask questions here, you'll find a very supportive and knowledgeable gang to help you get going. Good Luck!