Mystery Shopping

Mystery Shopping is something that is has been in the background of my mind for a while but I wasn't really sure if it was for me so I have put it out of my mind until now.

For those that are unsure basically mystery shoppers are people that go into shops, restaurants, hotels etc and feedback on the service.

Recently I thought I might like to give this a try and so set about researching the various companies that sign up mystery shoppers. At this point I must tell you to beware, there are companies out there who ask you to pay to sign up with them and I really can't see the point in this as there are many out there with excellent reviews that charge you nothing whatsoever (after all that would defeat the point for me!).

I read a lot of good things about a company called Grass Roots https://www.grassrootsmysteryshopping.com and so have recently signed up to them.

I will let you know how I go as time goes on but so far I have found them easy to use and I like the set up of their site. You can add up to 5 locations that you are willing to mystery shop in (e.g. home, work) and also specify the times that you would be available at each address. Assignments are then emailed to you whenever they become available in these areas and you can choose whether to accept or decline once you have read the brief.

The Homeworking Forum

I have just recently discovered a brilliant forum for tips on all things homeworking. http://www.homeworking.com/forum.htm

This forum really is one of the best I've seen in a while and after looking around it I tend to trust it a bit more than the average forum as it doesn't focus on advertising various programmes (in fact this is banned) and seems to have a lot of people involved that want to give genuine advice.

If you are interested in a specific person's efforts to work online then there is the option to message the person or you can click through to their profile for further information. So there is still the option to gain idea's but it's not rammed down your neck if you know what I mean.

Due to the above this is not really the place to go if all your are interested in is advertising your affiliate programme or whatever but if you really are after advice then I would definitely pay this site a visit.

Bloglovin

A reader has suggested Bloglovin as an additional way to promote blogs (thanks for the tip!) and I thought I would follow this up to see what it was all about.

So far I have had a quick look around their site and signed up but from what I can see so far it seems to be a way for me to add blogs that I'm currently interested in following rather than to promote my own blogs.

I can see what my reader was saying in that you could encourage others to add your blogs to their Bloglovin file but other than that I'm not sure how it's useful to promote my own blogs. Or am I missing something?

Anyway it's a really good looking site, clean and concise, with mainly girl users centring around fashion blogs mostly.

I would love to hear more from anyone who uses this regularly?

Building Mania

I've hardly had a chance to get anything done lately it's been so manic here. We are having lots of things done to the house and have had various sets of building people here almost constantly for the past week. I'm currently hiding out upstairs while lots of banging happens downstairs and it's nice to just pop on here and think of something else for 5 mins.

I had never realised before how much builders moan! It started with the boiler people having a good old grumble about the cottage being old fashioned and pipes etc being awkward to get at and then the wall knocking down lot were unimpressed with the boiler lot and so had a bit of a groan about them and so far it hasn't stopped. The building trade is more gossipy than the housewife brigade I have decided!

Another week or so and we should be workmen free :-)

SocialGo

Hey everyone,

This post will mostly be a plee for input from others out there also working from home online.

I once went on a site called SocialGo and now regularly get emails from them about setting up my own network and was wondering if anyone else had come across or was using this site?

It seems to be a place where you set up your own community for your chosen topic, so i.e. you get message boards, places for people to post pics and exhance idea's etc. Now I think it looks brilliant but there are many levels and I was wondering if anyone had used the free one in particular? I wouldn't mind paying a fee eventually if it was worth it but I would want to start out on the free package at least until I knew a bit more about it.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

New Blog Still Going Strong

My newest blog is still going strong and now has 6 followers after 2 posts. Amazingly though my others are still getting hits, even when I haven't updated them in quite a while. The target now has to be increasing the amount of hits (and clicks I guess but I'm not sure how I can influence that and I think it's actually frowned upon by Adsense if you try), I'm hoping by increasing the amount of hits, the clicks will take care of themselves.

For now I have decided to concentrate only on blogging as a way of earning online. There are millions of ideas out there but I found I was getting pulled in all sorts of directions and not actually getting much done.

Will This Ever Work!?

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but I was having problems with my old computer and so haven't been keeping up with things as I should. I fully intend to get back to this now though and make a good effort on it.

I have started a new blog for the new year and this time rather than making it about a specific topic I have just wrote exactly what I thought and it seems to be going much better! Ok so granted I have written one post so far but already it has 5 followers and 4 of those have commented. Now I'm not sure how everyone else's blog does but for me that is a pretty darn good result.

I'm hoping now that this leads to increased views and clicks which will all tot up on my Adsense account.