I am an experienced shopper for almost 5 years. I have a wide variety of experience and learned a lot of tricks of the trade. Would love to coach. Is there much demand and what would someone be willing to pay to be trained?

At no cost, shopping can certainly be self-taught. I would think if there is a demand to pay for coaching, it would come from people who do not know that mystery shopping exists.

Newbies come here and other forums to get "coaching" or help, and ask questions which we experienced shoppers help them with. There are a couple books written by shoppers as well. Sorry, just not the way it goes. Mystery shopping is not supposed to cost when you start, as you know when starting the pay is very low.

And I would suspect that it would come from folks with little enough imagination that they were unable to figure it out for themselves. Is that the population you want to work with and compete with for work in your market? In no time they would be asking for a refund because "it doesn't work" and they submitted reports and didn't get paid--probably because they didn't follow the company's instructions but rather the basic guidelines you gave them.

There is something about the 'about 5 years experience' that does something to us. It is the stage where many shoppers are tired and disgusted with low pay of shops and the monotony of seeing the same shops for the past 5 years. It seems to be the time when they decide to make 'real money' by writing a book on mystery shopping, starting their own MSP, becoming schedulers or editors or setting up fee based websites to teach others.

When I hit that mark I certainly had the same thoughts! "Wouldn't it be nice to make a pile of money off of my experience and not have to deal with another snarky sales representative in the field!" I looked at some of the books out there and realized that they were out of date before published. This is a constantly evolving/devolving business. MSP attitudes towards shoppers have taken a huge hit in the past 24 months, companies that did okay in a booming market can't pay their shoppers in a timely fashion, companies have merged or faded out entirely. I looked at some of the paid websites and they just looked sad and scammy. I did figure out a reasonable way of limiting the wannabe shoppers I was mentoring to those who had a reasonable chance of success. But eventually I decided there was less liability and probably only a little less money to just post efforts to help on forums (where I am not paid at all). I have met some really nice folks and I have no obligations to anyone except to try to be fair.

housingbubble,
I, and many other, mentor through the online forum, for free, because others shared generously with me, on the forums, when I started. I frankly do not see charging for mentoring in this field as a viable business plan. Every reliable source (including, I thing, the Federal Trade Commission) cautions prospective shoppers NOT to pay for information about shopping or for shopping assignments.

If you want to make a little extra money helping shoppers without actually charging them, you could start a blog and put advertisements on it. I just do not know of many shoppers that could pay for coaching. The pay is low starting out. You could coach via your blog. I would read it. I am always looking for advice and guidance. I am not a seasoned shopper and always appreciate any and all help I get.
Good luck!