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  • Debunking Home Based Business Scams
    By admin on August 11, 2008 | No Comments  Comments

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    Finding a home based business on the internet is a dime a dozen. Almost everyone feels that they have the best home based business out there. They all state that they are making more as a part time employee than they are making as a full time employee elsewhere. Could this really be true? Could you really make thousands of dollars a month getting involved in these businesses? They look appealing and there are many people who want to give them a try.

    First of all, why are you looking for a home based business ? Most people are looking for one because they are looking to increase their monthly income. They are behind on their rent, they need to pay for their groceries or what not. Everyone that is looking to start a home based business has their own reasons for looking. There are ways to determine whether or not the business from home is a scam. Also, there are common scams that you might have seen.

    Have you seen the one that says you can make thousands of dollars stuffing envelopes and mailing them out? There is not anyone that has not seen this one when they searched for a business from home. How do you make money? Well first you have to understand how the process works.

    You send the company the fee for them to send you the material needed to put in the envelope. You know that ad that you responded to in order to get the material? That is the same material that you are putting in the envelopes to send to other people.  The way you make money is for them to send you the start up fee and you hope that many people answer the ad like you have. Then you will get your big pay day.

    Another scam out there is the one in which you see is the one that asks you to do some data entry from home. A company sends you the information that you need once again after the fee that is needed to get started. These ads promise around two hundred dollars an hour. That is some serious money if you can persuade many people to send you their membership fee.

    There is even a home based business in which you can make great money from real estate. There are commercials that state they can help you find houses for pennies on the dollar and then you can turn around sand sell it for a lot more. That all sounds great because we all know that the real estate market can be very lucrative.

    In order to make this business work, you have to have the time to put in some work. Depending on the house you get, there maybe little or no maintenance to be done. Even after you completed the renovation or the fixing up the place, there is not guarantee that you will sell the property. Right now is not the ideal market for sellers. So even though this business seems legit, there is no guaranteed money.

    So let us put all of these get rich quick schemes to bed. There is not, unless you win the lottery or have some special talent that the world will pay millions to see, a quick way to get rich. You have to work hard for whatever you get. Then it will truly mean something.

    Boat Storage in Waldorf

    Start your Mystery Shopping Jobs today with our Secret Shopping Career Opportunities

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  • Earning From Your Home Based Business
    By admin on July 31, 2008 | No Comments  Comments

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    Working at office is perfectly okay and there are many people who earn their livelihood that way. They leave their residence at a fixed time in the morning and return back at a fixed time at night. So what if their cousin is schedule to come to their dwelling for a few hours during the daytime, or if their friend has to undergo a minor surgery at afternoon, they just cannot be present. They have no option whatsoever. If they want to attend that surgery, or to talk for a few hours with that cousin who will just be staying for a few hours, they have to take leave from the office. This means deduction of salary. They could have easily spent some time with their cousin or might have taken him along to the hospital to attend the surgery, if they had their own home based business .

    The biggest advantage of home based business is that one does not have to adhere to fixed timings. One can work as and when they feel like it. With this type of work you earn as much you work. It also depends on how fast you can complete an amount of work. The faster you complete, the more you earn. There are many types of openings for these types of jobs and their range varies. You might just have to stuff envelopes with manuals, applying address labels and stamps on them and then posting them. Then again you might earn money by filling up online surveys. There are many people who get paid for writing articles or just for typing out documents. Most of these jobs entail that you have a little bit of experience, but some of them, like the one of stuffing envelopes, does not require any prior experience.

    If you have a good knowledge of medical science, you can opt in for a home based business that requires you to do medical transcription where you have to listed to recorded medical conversations and type them out on paper. This requires that you have a sharp ear too, for the swishing voice in the background might mean that someone has removed the X-ray plate from the viewer.

    Though there are time schedule for these home based business they are not so rigid and you always have that spare time to chat with your cousin. If you thought that these types of jobs do not offer good money, you got it all wrong. If you are proficient with the camera, just 1 to 2 hours of work that involves shooting a couple of images might well earn you 40 to 50 dollars. Quadruple that amount if you are willing to work the normal 8 hours that you might have had to spend in office and it is not a bad sum at all. The time spent in going to and back from the office is not taken into account.

    Before you settle in for a home based business read the terms of service and the rules and regulations carefully before clicking on the accept button. Though there are not any rigid rules and no stiff penalties, it is always wise to be on the safe side. There are many people who are minting money working from their residence and there is no reason why you too cannot emulate their feat.

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  • Mystery Shopping Employment Adventures
    By admin on July 25, 2008 | No Comments  Comments

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    She knew she would not become rich in her job with mystery shopping employment . The pay is low for many assignments and by the time she adds her time shopping and making reports she barely makes minimum wage. But she enjoys the challenge of the jobs. 

    With her shopping job she can dress up and act in a way she normally would not. She can complain or be a wealthy socialite or some other different persona. This job requires her to be someone she may not be and she gets a thrill out of that.

    It allows her to try new things she never would have had the nerve to try before. She gets to experience ritzy hotels and five star restaurants as well as try new products she would not have normally purchased. She earns extra cash and various freebie products and services. Her job allows her to refill her cars gas tank a couple of times a week. As a shopper at a gas station she was reimbursed for her gas purchases. She has been able to travel on a cruise ship as a shopper and took her kids to the movies as an assignment. And she was reimbursed for each job.

    Her personality makes her a good fit for mystery shopping employment . She is detail oriented and observant. She knows what she should be looking for without drawing attention to herself. Her good recall of observations is an asset when she fills out her evaluation questionnaire.

    She has a reputation for being honest. She does not make up answers or second guess any observation she made. Her reputation is at stake if she does not do her job with integrity.

    She is reliable. When she agrees to do an assignment, she does it. She has proven she is consistent about doing any job she has been invited to do. She is objective and reports the facts only on her evaluation forms. Only when a client asks for a personal view does she gives a brief description. And she leaves out any personal feelings she may have had about the assignment.

    She is essentially working for herself as a contractor in this type of employment. She must be motivated to do the assignments on time. She has good grammar and spelling skills and communication skills that help her fill in reports and relate to sales staff and other customers.

    Mystery shopping employment is a service where businesses hire clients to act as a typical customer to evaluate their business performance and the services their customers receive. It is a legitimate marketing research tool many businesses use to evaluate their services. The shoppers carry out all parts of their assignment in a professionally objective way. They report their information on a questionnaire provided by the market research organization. The client uses the results to make improvements to his shop and staff attitude.

    She feels she is helping other customers with her mystery shopping employment . She often gives suggestions on tangible ways the company can improve its goods and services to help other customers receive a better experience at the shop.

    Mystery shopping employment is not for you if you are wanting to make a lot of money quickly. But if you enjoy trying new things, helping others and acting as different characters, you just might enjoy the assignments as a shopper.

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  • Students Act In Secret Shopping
    By admin on July 19, 2008 | No Comments  Comments

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    The student needed extra money to decorate her apartment. She looks at several options, everything from a part time waitress job to working at the local mall. But with her odd schedule of classes she needs something that can be done in her free time and on her own schedule. She decides she would like to be a secret shopper . She applies to several companies she found online, being careful to avoid sights that asked for a fee to apply. These are often scams.

    There are many benefits to a shopper job. The job is enjoyable. Most shoppers enjoy shopping. The shopper who is paid to visit stores evaluates services and products like food, drinks, spas and sales staff. They purchase specific products to be evaluated and are often reimbursed for the purchase and their time. Shoppers provide a valuable service to the business by providing a real view of how the customer is treated at their store.

    Another benefit is the shopper is attracted to acting. Since the students major is in drama, being a secret shopper was a good fit for her. The shopper gets to perform in front of the hidden cameras pretending to purchase items or complain to the staff about a grievance.

    Shoppers can do the assignment at a convenient time for them. The student can take assignments that are convenient for her schedule. The shopper can be any age or gender, retired, students or a homemaker as well as employed persons looking to make extra cash. You can register for several companies in many industries or a few that specialize in a certain niche such as cruises or restaurants.

    The pay can be good for the amount of time spent shopping. The amount of pay depends on the difficulty and type of assignment. For example, a simple task of evaluating a bank might pay eight dollars while a more difficult assignment may pay twenty five dollars or more. Taking on assignments back to back in a day can yield up to a hundred dollars. A professional shopper can earn hundreds a month with hard work and many assignments.

    Another benefit is the tasks are often simple to complete. It can be as simple as assessing the bank teller at the drive through. The shoppers often carry a timer or stopwatch to evaluate the time it takes staff to wait on them. They evaluate the service received by sales staff, the friendliness of their waitress or how clean a business is. The client normally provides a specific set of questions and observations they would like evaluated for the secret shopper before they begin their shop.

    The future looks good for the shopper. As more and more companies turn to these shoppers to help them provide better service, research their market and products, the industry is expected to grow. Some companies are even beginning to hire shoppers to evaluate shopping on their website.

    The student has signed up for several companies to begin her assignments. She has been able to purchase some decorative items for her apartment and been reimbursed for them She enjoys being a secret shopper since it fits her schedule, allows her to purchase products and put her skills to use. She even thinks it has helped her improve her acting skills for her drama classes. 

    Self Storage in Brooklyn

    Tron Jordheim , director of operation at  PhoneSmart ( a subsidiary of StorageMart ) will be interviewed by Syndicated News on 7/23/2008 6:00 PM. The topics of discussion will include Self Storage , Secret Shopping , property management , Self Storage Advertising and Self Storage Marketing

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  • Secret Shopping – Ideal Job For Social Butterflies
    By admin on July 18, 2008 | No Comments  Comments

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    Kendra, a 36 year old housewife and mother of two teen-aged boys, sat alone at the computer late one June evening. With her husband and sons in bed for the night, Kendra had fixed herself a big, mellow cup of chamomile tea and was busying herself with emails, catching up on her crafting forum messages and basically just browsing the Internet looking for nothing in particular. As she skimmed through posts about the knitting and scrap booking projects made by online forum friends, she caught a glimpse of a paid advertisement that piqued her interest. It was one of those secret shopping advertisements, and it claimed, as they all seemed to do, that she could make money and have the opportunity to visit local restaurants and retail shops in the process.

    In all of her years of online surfing, she had stumbled across many such advertisements, and they all ended up running down the same road, asking for fifty dollars in order to become a member of a site that promised the goods. If she knew anything, she knew an online scam when she read one. What the heck, just check it out, she thought as she clicked the link, even though she was not expecting this one to be any different. Surprisingly, this one was different. There was no membership fee, and no money to pay. In fact, Kendra was pleasantly surprised when she was asked to submit an application to the company, including references. 

    In her teen years, Kendra was the quintessential mall rat. She loved to browse the racks of clothing, hang out in the music store and eat lunch at the food courts of all the neighborhood malls. Secret shopping would be so perfect, she thought to herself. With her boys in school and her husband at work all day, Kendra was bored and lonely most of the time. She was itching to find something, anything to do that could bring her some extra spending money and get her out of the house. She was a self proclaimed people person who rarely got to be with people. It was driving her crazy. She understood the basic premise of secret shopping , as she had stumbled across it before but had always assumed that it was not legit.

    Kendras excitement began to grow as she followed another link to a nationwide association specifically geared towards the career of secret shopping . Wow! People really do this for a living! By this time, Kendra was almost giddy, imagining herself dining at a local deli, mentally reviewing things that she would want to look for, and wrapping her head around how she would remember all of the details until she could get out to the car and write her report. Browsing some of the frequently asked questions and forum threads on the site, she was finding more and more tips and bits of advice from some of the more seasoned people on the board. One person suggested that a small hand held recorder could be used to quickly record her impressions of what had transpired, until she could get home to do her full report. She knew that she could learn so much just from reading up on the forums. She had no doubt that she could do this job.

    By the time her application was accepted and her first secret shopping assignment had been given, Kendra felt as if her life had taken on a fun, exciting and profitable new direction. Within a few months, she was a pro. She had spending money, she went out almost every day of the week to a new location, and she was happier than she had been in a long time. Kendra had found her niche in secret shopping . 
     
    Boat Storage in Brooklyn

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  • The Tough Part Of Mystery Shopping Employment
    By admin on July 17, 2008 | No Comments  Comments

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    Given the fact that the job of a secret spy is the latest rage, it is not surprising that more and more people are trying to get themselves employed in this type of work. While quite a few know the route to take in order to land up with such a job, there are some who get lost. Securing a mystery shopping employment is not so tough. There are no obscurities involved with the same. You know very well the name of the job and also know that you want to get enrolled in the same. Just fire up your browser, browse to the search engine and search for that term. If you have queried the search engine with the proper search terms, you will get many results. This is the initial step and the easiest one. There is no reason to be worried, since the other steps require a bit of common sense.

    Once you have typed mystery shopping employment in the search engine and have clicked on the search button, you will be presented with pages of results. It is advisable to go through one result at a time. Click on the first search result and check out the page that appears. Quite a few sites will provide a form that you are required to fill up before you can get yourself enrolled. Do not act in haste and read the Rules and Regulations first. In many sites this is also classified as Terms and Conditions. In advertising parlance they are known as Fine Print and one should read and understand them properly before proceeding further. If you find yourself in any problems in the future, your only hope lies in these Terms and Conditions. Do not let this bother you but do read it and understand it.

    Once you have understood the regulations, tick the box next to the phrase I Have Read the Terms and Conditions and agree to abide by them and proceed to fill up the form. Most mystery shopping employment sites have forms that will ask you for your name, address, email number, city, state, zip number, contact phone number, age, gender, community, languages known etc. Some of them might also ask if you are willing to work part time or full time. A few might even ask you to type a password. No, you are not supposed to know the password, but you are being requested to create a password that will be required later on to log into your profile page in the web page. Type in a unique password and note down the same somewhere where you can access it easily.

    Once you have completed the form on the mystery shopping employment website, you will receive an acknowledgement email. Click on the link contained in the same to verify to the website that you are the owner of that email identity to which the mail was sent. This is all. Keep on checking your email daily and you will receive new mystery shopping employment offers daily. Select the one you like and enjoy your new job. If you are still wondering what the tough part was, you have not gone through the terms and conditions properly. Reading the same in full takes time and is a tough job, which most people ignore. You should not.

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    Tron Jordheim , director of operation at  PhoneSmart ( a subsidiary of StorageMart ) will be interviewed by Syndicated News on 7/23/2008 6:00 PM. The topics of discussion will include Self Storage , Secret Shopping , property management , Self Storage Advertising and Self Storage Marketing

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  • Stay At Home Mom Works In Internet Jobs
    By admin on July 12, 2008 | No Comments  Comments

    The mom of two young children with special needs needed to stay home for her children but still earn an income to contribute to the household finances. She began her search online for ways to make money. She found there are many types of jobs available. Work at home jobs is particularly advantageous to the stay at home mom who needs to be home for her children. There are thousands jobs available online, which help them to get a suitable job and thereby earn a little extra every month.

    The stay at home mom does not have to sacrifice her time caring for her children in order make money. She can select from any of the work at home jobs available. The options range from customer satisfaction, online surveys, data entry processing, virtual assistants, and online tutor to getting paid to shop and operating your own business online. Most online jobs require you to have some basic computer experience.

    One job many moms select is the data entry processing jobs. These jobs do not require much effort and time. You fill out the forms provided by the company at your own pace. A stay at home mom can do the work when she finds free time.

    Another option is to become a virtual assistant. Virtual assistants jobs do require some experience and qualifications. These jobs are suitable for moms who have previously work in administration or clerical work. Virtual assistants earn an income similar to an administrative assistant in real world. However, with this type of job the mom will need to provide regular hours to her clients. This is a good job for moms with older children.

    The stay at home mom can be an online tutor. This job allows you to provide help to students of many age groups. This is a good fit for a former teacher. Another option is to do freelance ghostwriting. If you have good English writing and grammar skills, you can write articles, books and reports or web content for clients who pay you for the service. You will have deadlines and pressure to complete the writing on time.

    Another option is to do online or local paid shopping jobs for clients. Many businesses need real people to act as customers to research their sales and customer satisfaction staff for improvements. They need to know how well the customer is treated, the service they received and if their stores and facilities are clean and customer friendly. These businesses hire shoppers to anonymously shop at their stores. The business reimburses any purchases made after the shopper writes a full report on their findings.

    Transcription jobs are also suitable for moms. She will transcribe documents and edit records. Transcription jobs require some special knowledge. You can take a short course and training.

    The mom of the two special needs kids researched several opportunities for jobs. She is interested in enjoying a fun work at home job while not sacrificing her family time. She has found a good job that allows her to work at her own pace while being there for her children.

    There were an abundant amount of home based jobs available on the internet.  The stay at home mom who does her research can select the most suitable job that allows them to add to their familys finances. She should not pay any fees for the jobs she applies for. Many of those are scams and will not provide work after they take your money.

    With the internet, the stay at home mom can find employment while continuing to care for her children.

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  • Jobs For The Stay At Home Mom
    By admin on July 8, 2008 | 1 Comment1 Comment  Comments

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    There are certain situations in life which makes life tough for many people, making them frustrated and dejected too. Take for example the stay at home mom . She may be habituated to working in the office but due to circumstances beyond her control she is usually forced to reside with the confines of her residence. People who are habituated to office life will know very well how boring and exasperating this type of life can become. They have spent years attending office and mingling with the other staff. Apart from that there is the pay packet that they bring back at the end of each month. Not only does this pinch the pocket, it also brings about a sense of desperation too.

    However, now the stay at home mom need not be dejected. There is some good news for them which will help them to lead an active life from the confines of their house and earn a good sum of money as well. Thanks to the ever expanding reaches of the internet, there are more avenues and routes for those who wish to earn from home. A cursory glance will reveal thousands of opportunities and quite a few of them will be suitable for you. Home based working opportunities are growing up with every passing day and it is up to you to harness the facilities provided by the world wide web. All that you require for doing such work is an always connected internet connection and the willingness to work.

    Some of these works might demand that you have to stay awake at odd hours of the day. If you are doing work for an Australian client, chances are that they might be online well past your normal sleeping hours. These are trivial issues and can be overcome with a little resolution from your end. There are many online opportunities for the stay at home mom and you should select one that is most suitable for you. If you are an experienced teacher, there and many organizations that conduct online schools, or virtual schools as they are commonly known. You can fill up their online enrollment form and then give a simple exam to prove your ability and that is all. If you are skilled enough, you will be absorbed by that organization and can start working for them.

    The modern generation stay at home mom has many advantages over their previous generation. The internet has brought a huge revolution and it is up to you to tap the same and use it to your potential. If you are an experienced typist there are innumerable data entry jobs available online and they offer a decent price too.

    There are quite a number of online bidding sites which advertise different types of jobs. It is no big deal for a stay at home mom to do some of these jobs. Just visit those sites and enroll in a few of them. While you are filling up their online form you are presented with a selection list where you can specify your areas of specialization. As soon as there are new jobs that meet your criteria, you will be sent an email with links to these jobs. You can now bid on these jobs and on winning one, complete it and start minting money.

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  • Ooops
    By admin on July 7, 2005 | 1 Comment1 Comment  Comments

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    Welcome to the secret shopping blog, where we keep a diary of our experience in the world of secret shopping and mystery shopping.

    The world of Secret Shopping is not fool-proof. We decided to add another element to our department about two weeks ago. We came to the agreement that we would add a couple of new shoppers. Fresh bodies are important for the secret shopping world because they add new voices and new scenarios. After a very vigorous training session, the training coordinator got both of the new people up and running. Trust me when I say that this training is precise. One of the new people started right away on their shops, and did great. They got about 19 shops done in an hour and a half. We considered that to be pretty great because some of the shops they finished were usually difficult to obtain. Another regular shopper finished about 20 shops later in the day after their shift.

    When the audio vault was checked a couple of days later it was discovered that while the calls were in the audio vault there was no actual recording of any of the shops. My first question to myself was why the new person was allowed to be here for an hour and a half without checking one of their calls to make sure they were doing them correctly. Besides the actual shop, there is at least one other thing to take into consideration at this point. Was the new person voice at the correct level for a correct recording? This seems to me like an important thing to check right off the bat.

    Well, after a little investigation, the problem was figured out. It seems that someone had been doing some evaluations at that same computer one day earlier and had plugged in their headset. In the act of plugging in the headset, they unplugged one of the connections to the phone that completes the wiring for the recorder. From a technical stand point, not a big issue. The plug was put in the correct place and we were ready to go. Worst case scenario, we lost about 39 shops and a few days of work time. So we rearranged the schedule a bit and are trying to get back on track.

    We learned a lesson that day. The future will hold more whoopsies, but hopefully they will get figured out quickly and without much damage.

    Thanks, Natalie

    “When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.” Henry J. Kaiser

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