This thread has gotten so far off topic that I didn't even know it was my thread for a full page. I may have been in a bad mood when I wrote the initial post, but I still stand behind the full time-vs-cost breakdown analogy in my first post.
The expert shoppers will tell you that they have systems where they can do the mundane bookkeeping in mere seconds and knew every job so well that they don't have to factor in reading the shop instructions.
Shop instructions can change on a monthly basis for some customers, so you still need to verify that they are still the same before each shop.
I download and place the shop instructions in every folder with the job and the receipt and my notes and any photos or video I have of the shop and an HTML save of the survey right before I hit submit.
I prefer to have my shop survey saved as HTML, so I can bring it up in the browser and cut and paste from it much easier than if I convert it to a .pdf as some do if it needs further information. It also saves much faster and there is no data formatting lost when you convert HTML to .pdf.
Then there is this whole men vs women multitasking argument. I can walk and chew gum at the same time.
I thought that women made up 80% or more of the shoppers until I went to an Ardent shopping class recently and met 11 other local shoppers. They came in all shapes and sizes and the ratio of women vs men were more evenly split than I expected.
Sure the long time shoppers know when certain companies release all the jobs at once for the month and are literally making the server almost fall down trying to grab the highly desirable jobs in a matter of 10 minutes for some companies. This is the kind of information that will never be posted here as those that have those dates circles on the calendar don't want to share with the competition.
As with anything, the longer you do it, the easier it becomes. To compare being an independent contractor with a 9-5 job and comparing the cost of gas going to and from a job is completely different than needing to make your own schedule and time management to basically run your one man or women company. When you work as an employee, you don't have to think about where your next days work is going to come from. You show up and you have a manager to take care of this and you just do as your told and take your W2 form and you should be able to leave your work at work and come home and leave it all behind.
With this type of work, you are always on the clock so to speak. You are checking email and looking for jobs early in the morning as the early bird gets the work so to speak.
I bet some of you cannot resist checking the Shop Notifier app on your phone every time it updates. This is not the cost of doing a job, but it robs you of your time how many times a day? Do you set it to notify you of every new job, or do you set up the "Blackout Times" and take time off? What do you set the notification frequency at? Do you set it for "As often as possible.", or do you set it for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or risk loosing a job by setting it for 1 hour or 4 hours?
These are the choices that every shopper needs to make, as there is no wrong answer.