Woman Made $850 in Less Than Two Days Pretending to Look for Apartments; Here's the Side Hustle Behind It

A woman toured a run of rental flats she had no intention of leasing and walked away with $850 (£629) in under two days.

She was not house-hunting. She was working. The tenant was a mystery shopper, paid to pose as a prospective renter and quietly grade the leasing agents on how closely they followed their sales script.

The job was described by Mercedes Eckert, founder of the mystery shopping organisation iShop, on episode 752 of The Side Hustle Show. Eckert, who has spent 13 years in the trade and says she has helped more than 25,000 people get started, used the apartment shop to show how much a single assignment can pay.

According to Eckert, the shopper toured units as a fake renter, watched how each agent handled the pitch, and noted whether they closed by pushing her to fill in an application. 'That's all she had to do,' Eckert said. The brief, she explained, usually comes down from a large apartment company checking whether staff follow their training.

Brands rely on mystery shoppers because they cannot be everywhere at once. They want a real customer's view of what happens at the counter, then use it to update training, hire, or occasionally let someone go. Eckert said the aim is normally coaching rather than firing.

What Mystery Shoppers Actually Earn

The pay does not behave like a wage. 'You're not paid by the hour as a mystery shopper. You're paid by the job,' Eckert said. Based on her company's data, shoppers who fit the work around a main job average $200 to $500 (£148 to £370) a week.

Stacking jobs is where the figures climb. Eckert calls it route shopping, stringing several assignments into a single loop out of the house and back. 'This is how you make the big money,' she said. Her own best day came to $600 (£444), earned by running the same car wash roughly 20 times without leaving the driver's seat. Her easiest paid $300 (£222) for 30 minutes of screenshots taken on her sofa.

Asked for an hourly figure, Eckert put the rough range at $25 to $40 (£19 to £30). At the top end the money turns serious. She said she knows one shopper who clears six figures a year full time, and another who made $65,000 (£48,100) in 2025.

Demand is not the constraint. One provider told her it releases 35,000 to 40,000 shops a month and still needs fresh faces, partly because companies rotate shoppers so employees cannot learn to spot them.

The Scams That Give Mystery Shopping a Bad Name

The field carries a reputation problem, and Eckert traced it to fraud. The warning signs, she said, are usually easy to read. 'Common sense tells us jobs and companies don't typically pay you before you go and do your work,' she said.

Two cons surface most often. In one, a target is posted a cheque, told to bank it, and asked to send money back before it clears. In the other, they are told to buy gift cards and share the codes, on a promise of reimbursement that never lands. 'Anytime somebody promises you money ahead of time, it's usually a scam,' Eckert said.

Legitimate work runs the other way. Some shops, such as restaurants or car washes, ask the shopper to pay up front and claim it back on the provider's payday. Others, like the apartment tours, involve no purchase at all.

How to Start Mystery Shopping Without Getting Burned

Shoppers sign up directly with providers, which outsource programmes on behalf of the brands being checked.

Eckert also runs ShopQuest, a free site that lists mystery shopper jobs by city, alongside her paid training.

The market is larger than most people assume. Eckert calls it a $2B (£1.48B) industry, and research firm Fortune Business Insights valued the global mystery shopping services market at about $2.31B (£1.71B) in 2025.

Her advice to anyone weighing it up was blunt. 'Just show up', she said. 'If you decide on a side hustle, show up for it.'