Managing Multiple Survey Sites

I've had several people ask me how I find time to do so many surveys and how I keep up with so many sites.

Here are some of the steps I take:

1. I use one email account for all survey sites. This is a separate account from my personal email so I don't have to deal with any junk mail coming into my personal account.

2. I check my survey email daily. Before I do anything else, I immediately delete any junk mail that has come in and save only survey invitations. This can eliminate more than half of my emails sometimes.

3. I organize my email. I made a folder for each survey site so I can quickly move any point verifications, redemption emails, etc. to the folder to keep track of my rewards.

4. I earn my computer time and I don't watch much TV. After my son goes to bed and I spend approximately 1/2 hour cleaning house, then I feel like I've earned the time to spend on the computer. I go to my survey email and simply start with the first email and go one by one, no matter which site the next invite came from.

5. When I'm done, if there is still time, I pick one survey site to actually go to their page and see if there are any other open opportunities on the site itself. Most of the time, you'll find that there are. Each night I pick a different site, so I can make the most of each site over the course of a week. I also take that time to check point levels and see if I can redeem for anything.

6. If I don't want to, I don't. If I don't feel up to surveys one night, then I simply don't do any. I might do step number 2, but otherwise I just start again the next day.

One other hint: When you join a survey site, be sure to take a few minutes to fill out your initial profile. This saves you time from not qualifying for surveys, as you'll get more tailored survey invitations, based on your profiles, sent to you.

You'd be surprised how an hour each evening can really help you rack up the points for rewards. Happy Surveying!

Saving Time - Subscribe to a Blog Reader

We all talk about saving money. But what about other areas of our lives that could use a little bit of savings? One big area that I need to work on is time management. It seems as if there is never enough time in the day to get everything done. So today, I thought it would be neat to discuss a time saver.

If you're like me then you may read multiple blogs. I follow many adoption blogs, as we just completed our adoption of a little boy from Russia almost six months ago. I also follow many blogs about living frugally. In the beginning I would visit a blog and add it to my favorites. I found myself going to my favorites every day and clicking every blog to see if there was a new entry. It was taking forever to visit the blogs I enjoyed.

A good friend of mine Becky (who recently also completed her adoption) emailed me one day with a life saver - she introduced me to a blog reader. It's easy to set up and then each day I log in and the reader tells me by putting in bold the blogs which have new entries. This means that I only hit the blogs that have posts I have not read yet, therefore saving me quite a bit of time on the computer.

Setting up a reader is easy. There are many to choose from. With the reader I have chosen, you simply sign up, then begin adding subscriptions (blog addresses). You can manage them and sort them any way you want. When there is a new entry it comes up in bold, you click on it and brings up the new entry. You can read it from there, or click to go the site itself. Once read you can click that it's been read and the title of the blog goes back to regular font until the next entry is placed.

It's an easy time saver!