Earn Money From Retail Merchandising

What is Merchandising?

Merchandising encompasses the many different tasks that one does to support the movement of services and products out of a retailer's door. This includes having coupons, brochures, or other informational material available at or near the point of purchase to encourage the shopper to buy the item, ensuring attractive signage or other high quality promotional displays, the way a product is displayed, placed and arranged on a shelf or hangers. But there are many activities that merchandising includes. It can go on to include ensuring that the proper product is out on the sales floor, in sufficient quantity, in the correct place, and that it is priced correctly.

A merchandiser will sometimes deliver sales or educational materials to a store, or even give some training on the items, so that the store employees will learn more about the retail product and how to sell it. The retail merchandiser also serves as a "goodwill ambassador" for the manufacturer, and needs to develop a positive relationship with the store which can often lead to securing better placement of, or additional orders for the product.

How Much Can I Make From Being a Retail Merchandiser?

While it can very well grow into a full time opportunity, if you do it as a part time, work from home type job, then a typical income will be paid as follows. Merchandising manufacturers or companies will usually pay you in one of two ways: 1) they pay an hourly wage for all the work that you perform for them, so the amount you can earn per assignment will vary with the amount of hours it takes. You will typically make $7-$16 per hour as a retail merchandiser, or 2) the company will pay you a flat rate per job (like they do in mystery shopping). And you get paid this rate whether it takes you five minutes or five hours to complete the merchandising job. They usually pay $9-$20 per job.

A major positive from retail merchandising is that it can be fairly regular work, but very flexible. You can typically select the days and hours you do the assignment within certain date ranges. And maybe best of all, many of the companies you work with will want you for ongoing assignments (provided you do a decent job), and they will offer you lots of different assignments on a regular basis.

Since you will be at the retail establishment anyway, read about mystery shoppers, another work at home opportunity that you may also be able to perform during the visit.