Appy shoppers: are the new money-making services worth it?

theguardian.com:

With the cost of living on the rise, you may be looking for easy ways to earn some extra cash. And the good news is that there are a growing number of apps that say they can help you top up your income.

One that has been gaining in popularity recently is Shepper, which says users can earn money by completing quick mystery shopping tasks in their area, with each errand usually taking about 10 to 15 minutes and payments typically ranging from about £3 to £10.

The number of users, known as “Shepherds”, has apparently soared to more than 100,000, with the cost of living crisis leading to more people downloading the app.

After reading that the average Shepherd earns about £100 a week from the app, I decided to have a go to see if it was too good to be true, or if it really could help to boost my rainy day fund.

There are several other apps that promise easy cash for quick jobs, including EasyShift and Field Agent, so I gave them a go, too.

Getting started with Shepper is easy: you just need to download the app and submit your name, email address, date of birth and location.

Then you have to do a quick practice run, which involves answering questions about a product and taking some test photos to demonstrate how it will work in stores.

After you have passed the induction, a map of the UK will pop up, showing you all the live jobs available that day.

This is where I ran into problems: there weren’t many jobs near where I was staying at the time, in north Wales, and only a few listed on the outskirts of London.

I monitored the app for about a week and noticed that the number of tasks listed varied greatly – from 1,800 to more than 3,000.

Although there were some in north Wales, they were all too far to access on foot and often more than