How Many Mystery Shops Per Day Is Realistic?

"How many shops can you do in a day?" comes up in every shopper group, and the answers range from three to fifteen. Both ends are telling the truth about their own days. The number depends less on how fast you are than on what kind of shops you are doing, how far apart they are, and whether you count the reports.

This post works through three real shaped days, a light one, a normal one and a heavy one, with the arithmetic shown. The result surprises most people: past a certain point, more shops make you more money without making you any better paid.

Not all shops cost the same time

Before counting shops, sort them. Most of what a shopper does falls into a few rough shapes. The numbers below are illustrative, but the shape will look familiar.

Look at the quick audit. It feels like the most efficient work there is, in and out in fifteen minutes. But the drive and the report do not shrink just because the visit did, so it ends up the worst paying of the three per hour. Quick shops are worth stacking only when they are very close together, which cuts the drive, or very close to something better.

Three days, worked out

Each day below includes driving from home, between every stop and back home, on site time, and report time. Mileage costs are left out for now.

The light day: four shops

Two standard shops, one long shop and one quick audit, spread out enough that each drive is about 18 minutes, five legs in all.

• Fees: $20 + $20 + $35 + $12 = $87
• Driving: 5 legs at 18 minutes = 90 minutes
• On site: 25 + 25 + 60 + 15 = 125 minutes
• Reports: 20 + 20 + 30 + 15 = 85 minutes
• Total: 300 minutes, five hours, for $87, or $17.40 an hour

The normal day: seven shops

Three quick audits, three standard shops and one long shop. With more stops in the same area, the drives tighten to about 15 minutes each, eight legs.

• Fees: $36 + $60 + $35 = $131
• Driving: 8 legs at 15 minutes = 120 minutes
• On site: 45 + 75 + 60 = 180 minutes
• Reports: 45 + 60 + 30 = 135 minutes
• Total: 435 minutes, seven and a quarter hours, for $131, or about $18.07 an hour

The heavy day: ten shops

Six quick audits, three standard shops and one long shop, eleven legs of about 15 minutes.

• Fees: $72 + $60 + $35 = $167
• Driving: 11 legs at 15 minutes = 165 minutes
• On site: 90 + 75 + 60 = 225 minutes
• Reports: 90 + 60 + 30 = 180 minutes
• Total: 570 minutes, nine and a half hours, for $167, or about $17.58 an hour

The heavy day earns the most money, which is real and matters. It does not pay any better per hour than the light day. The extra shops it added were mostly quick audits, the lowest paying work on the list, so the day got longer without getting richer per hour. And three of those nine and a half hours are reports, which in practice means an evening at the laptop after a full day in the car.

What actually caps the number

Speed is rarely the limit. These are:

• Time windows. Two lunch shops cannot both happen in the same lunch window unless they are minutes apart. A day can only hold as many daypart shops as it has dayparts.
• Report deadlines. Many companies expect reports within a set time after the visit. Ten shops in a day means ten reports due on the same clock, and a late report can cost the fee.
• Detail. By the eighth shop, names, times and observations start to blur. Detailed reports are what keep editors approving your work and companies offering more of it.
• Purchases. Every shop that requires a purchase is money out of pocket until the reimbursement arrives. A heavy day of purchase shops can float a lot of your own cash.
• The car. Mileage is a real cost on every leg, and the heavy day drives the most. The 1099 mileage deduction post covers how to account for it.

Symptoms your days are too full

• You are writing reports the next morning for shops you did yesterday.
• Editors send back more questions than they used to.
• You catch yourself rushing the last two or three shops of the day.
• Your days run long but your weekly total does not grow to match.
• You turn down a well paying shop because the day is already full of small ones.

That last one is the expensive symptom. A day packed with $12 audits has no room for the $35 shop that pays better per hour, and you will not see the trade unless you look at per hour numbers instead of shop counts.

How to build a better day instead of a bigger one

Start from the shops that pay best per hour and anchor the day around them, especially ones with tight time windows. Then add quick shops only where they sit on the way, close enough that the drive almost disappears. A quick audit five minutes off your route is worth doing. One twenty minutes away is often not.

Count the reports as part of the day when you plan it, not as something that happens after. If a plan only works by pushing three hours of writing into the evening, it is a longer day than it looks.

This is the kind of planning a route planning app is for. In Shop Tracker, the Route Planner lays out the day's stops in order with arrival times against each stop's time frame, and the Analytics screen shows what each company and shop type actually pays per hour, so the choice between one more audit and a better shop is a number rather than a feeling. The post on what mystery shoppers make uses the same approach across a whole month.

So how many is realistic?

For a mix like the one above, somewhere around six to eight shops is a full, sustainable day, with the reports done the same day. More is possible when the shops are short and clustered, and it is a perfectly good choice when the goal is total dollars rather than rate. Fewer is completely normal when the day includes a long shop or two.

The better question than "how many" is "what does each one pay per hour, all in." Answer that, and the right number for your days tends to pick itself.

Who can skip this

If you shop occasionally, fitting one or two shops around other work, none of this needs a calculation. Do the ones that are convenient. The per hour view starts to matter once shopping is a big part of your income and your days are full, because that is when every slot you fill with a low paying shop is a slot you cannot fill with a better one.