Salutations,

I am spending way too much time checking sites for assignments. I am currently with 40+ companies and like to be busier! So my question is how do experienced shoppers organize their scheduling? Do you schedule time out of the week dedicated to finding jobs? Track each MSC's posting dates? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

I use a combination of strategies. I need to take breaks frequently during the day and when I do, I check some job boards and check the forum. I have done this long enough I know roughly when who is likely to post the shops I want. My bookmarks folders in Firefox include one of my current 'best' companies. Those will get checked several times a day. I then have other MSPs broken down into manageable size bookmarks and I will generally make it through the more promising ones of those weekly out to companies I have been registered forever with and never found a shop, which get checked once every blue moon.

I found the X shop posted today, today is 8/30, I will mark my shop sheet for 9/28 to start checking for that shop, unless, of course it is my company that posts late Saturday nights and I will mark the Saturday before 9/30 to watch for the shop. Every other Thursday is marked to watch for my shops from another company. All of this is kept on my shop sheet and the recheck dates just get cut and pasted into the future sections of the sheet once the shops post.

40 companies is not a lot. My 'best' companies tab has 20 and that changes each year as clients move or new clients enter the system. If you want more work you need to register with more companies. And certainly some you will never see work from, but you cannot know in advance because they may have clients everywhere in the country except where you are.

I have a few of my favorite companies whose sites I will check when there is a shop that I would like to do again. I think I get most of my assignments from e-mails.
Every month or so, I will log in to each MSC Web site and search for assignments. This serves two purposes. One is, obviously, finding assignments. Two, and I can't speak for each MSC, but I remember during my time as a scheduler that the site would not e-mail shop opportunities to shoppers who had not logged in for awhile. This was an effort to avoid sending too many e-mails so that we did not get blocked as spammers.

I certainly get shops from emails as well but the shops I really want, where the scheduler does not contact me before they are posted are grabbed quickly. If I am not on the site soon after the shops post there will only be the podunck locations left. And as I pointed out to someone earlier this month, I was entering the report for the completed shop before the email from the company posting the shop hit my email. I'm sure there were frustrated folks who went to the site to find they could only sign up as a backup shopper.

Just for giggles I looked at this month's tab on my spreadsheet. I did 250 shops this month. All 250 were either automatically assigned to me, were a result of me sending schedulers locations I was going to be in and asking them for work, schedulers emailing me asking if I was going to be in an area, or me contacting schedulers about shops I knew were going to be out there and asking for them before they were posted on the job board (and in some cases places that never would have hit the job board). I did 0 shops this month where I went to a job board to find a job and either self assigned or applied.

bgriffin, how many hours do you work?!?

I receive more emails and phone requests than I can fulfill. It is best for me to self-assign most jobs and apply for a few others.

I like my unique monthly schedules.

I do this full time and it appears I shopped 21 days in August (which, incidentally, is same number of days a regular 8-5 Monday-Friday type job person would have worked). About half of those days were leave at 8am get done at 9pm kind of days, the other half were leave at 10am and back by 2pm kind of days.

@bgriffin wrote:

About half of those days were leave at 8am get done at 9pm kind of days, the other half were leave at 10am and back by 2pm kind of days.

Which days do you like better? The 12+ hour days or the 4 hour days? Do not base answer on $ made. Answer on hours worked.

Is this a trick question?

Maybe.

I am assuming during your full day. you are writing and submitting your reports from the road?

Thank you for sharing

Route shoppers might do some reports from the road. OTOH, both route and video shoppers often have longer than the standard deadlines for report submissions. It's rare for anything less than 24 hours and not uncommon for it to be several days.

I'm assuming bgriffin seldom reports from the road during his day shop time. I'm assuming he reports some at he end of the day when on the road, and some when he gets home depending on the deadline. I'm thinking he won't give up shop time to report.

I'm thinking you are absolutely correct.
The 8am-9pm days were ones where I was out shopping until 4-5pm or sometimes later and then up until 9 or 10 working on reports.

I am fortunate I my msing isn't our main source of income. I do it for meaningful reimbursements and to fund my travel and extra fun. That way DH can't tell me "no, we can't afford it" LoL.

I check the few companies that offer verification's and audits, that I need to get the jump on, up to several times a day. I rely on email notifications for most, watching for bonused shops or stuff I'm getting/doing anyway or check their sites. I have a few companies that call me directly.

I am thankful for everyone here who posts about new shops/I heard about this shop/ etc, as it clues me into what companies, that I don't check regularly, might have going on. And periodically I run thru my company list, just to see what's going on.