Mystery Shopping Advice   There’s nothing more important when you are about to plunge into a new business than to be prepared. Obtaining information about mystery shopping before you actually become a mystery shopper is crucial for building realistic expectations and maximizing your income as a mystery shopper. Mystery shopping is now more than an amateurish recruitment of secret shoppers to check on consumer service. Mystery shopping has become a legitimate market research tool for evaluating staff performance and developing more effective customer service policies to attract more consumers and realize higher revenues. Organizations such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), The Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA), and the Better Business Bureau (BBB) have also paid substantial attention to the growing niche of mystery shopping companies, and have tried to somehow guide the ethical conduct of firms on the market for mystery shopping services. As with other successful business projects, providing mystery shopping services has been emulated by scam artists and pyramid structures. In fact, some mystery shopping scams have succeeded in casting a shadow over the legitimacy of the bona fide mystery shopping companies. Mystery shopping, however, is a legitimate way to recruit secret shoppers whose feedback and staged customer experiences can provide valuable insights to team managers and business entrepreneurs how to develop and improve the quality of service on their premises. Mystery shopping jobs also allows secret shoppers to earn some extra cash and various perks – freebies, free trials, or free services. Some may try to outstretch the benefits of mystery shopping to mystery shoppers to extensive limits by implying that mystery shopping can bring you millions or can change your lifestyle dramatically. Whereas this is not true, mystery shopping can surely provide some extra cash, extra free services or even purchases and services you otherwise wouldn’t afford at all or on a regular basis. For instance, my latest gas station mystery shopping experience allowed me to refill my tank three times in a week – something that I ordinary do over a period of three weeks. By taking on this mystery shopping assignment, I managed to travel to my parents’, who live hundreds of miles away, two times practically for free, and spend some happy moments together – something that usually happens once or twice a year. Therefore, mystery shopping can give people some flexibility and extra resources to do something that can either provide more comfort in their lifestyle, or can simply ensure some more happy moments and entertainment. Potential mystery shoppers have to be forewarned of the lurking mystery shopper scams out there. But at the same time, mystery shopping should be embraced as an activity that makes real impact in the world of customer service. Various companies – small, medium and large businesses rely on mystery shoppers’ feedback to evaluate the true advantages of their customer service and to better attune their services to the needs of their customers. Mystery shopping is a powerful market research mechanism and brings meaningful results to businesses that employ it. Therefore, mystery shopping is a responsible, yet entertaining, occupation that helps both businesses and secret customers share in the benefits of improved customer service, innovated products and better consumer environment.