Many folks are interested in the idea of shopping-while-making money through mystery shopping jobs. Unfortunately, many find themselves scammed after paying websites that supposedly offer mystery shopping assignments but turn out to be rip offs.

While there are indeed a lot of scams in terms of mystery shopping jobs, mystery shopping is a legitimate market research tool used by big companies to evaluate the quality of their services. Hence, mystery shopping is real and many people are earning money from it.

If you are interested in learning about honest-to-goodness paying assignments in mystery shopping, I suggest you go to the National Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA) http://www.mysteryshop.org/ , an organization of mystery shopping companies. This is the organization that you can TRUST in this field

Check out their listing of shopping assignments by country and by state from member companies. Companies are accepted as members of the association only if they have been in existence for two years and they can submit proof of business existence. Make a list of these companies and check out their requirements to be a mystery shopper.

The MSPA North America has a job board listing available mystery shoppers position. Click here for the job board

If in doubt, double-check the company with the local Better Business Bureau http://www.bbb.org/ , usually under the Service Intelligence category. Find out if any complaints have been lodged with the mystery shopping company, before agreeing to do work for them.

You may want to read more from our article “Mystery Shopping—Is It Real?”