I am brand new to this, having dabbled over the past month. I've done about a dozen shops that were convenient to my time/schedule, and found I enjoy it. I've just received my silver certification, and will have a lot more time to devote to it in the coming months.

Here's my question: I'm registered with somewhere around 40 agencies, and go through them every couple of days checking out the job boards. Many have never had a shop in my area (Tucson, AZ). I've just acquired a list of about 250 agencies, and don't want to waste time on fruitless searches over and over.

How much time do you experienced shoppers give a non-producing agency before you stop checking with them for shops?

Time is precious, and valuable. Most MSPs I've signed with don't have any shops, at present, in my area. But, contracts change. It's musical MSPs.

I add each one to my bookmarks/favorites in the mystery shopping folder in 3 browsers. The ones that I work with regularly get an ! next to their name. Those are the ones I check often. I will check on all remaining two or three times a year, or as time allows, to see who they've got.

Yes, I like the browser technique. I use Firefox almost exclusively for my MSing. I have a 'bookmark folder' for my bread-and-butter companies that I check daily. I have a new companies bookmark that is companies I have signed up with in the past 3-5 months. I check these about once a week. And then I have alphabetical bookmarks of about 30 companies each that are companies I have signed up with. These I go through every 3-4 months. When I note that a company has gotten a client with decent shops in my area, that company get added to the bread-and-butter folder of bookmarks for a daily check. When a new company still shows nothing after 3-5 months, they get moved out to just the alphabetized lists. It is indeed, as Mert pointed out, musical MSPs. And the companies I worked for most and did the best paying jobs with last year will rarely be the best in the current year as clients, jobs, schedulers and entire companies change.

How much time? With my bread-and-butter bookmark there are currently 34 companies. With Firefox I can have the computer open them all in tabs on a single screen. Firefox has saved all logins and passwords, so it is a simple matter to go from tab to tab to tab and get them all checked within about 30 minutes, though frequently I will check them a few at a time while I am doing other things. I shove the most important ones to the top of the folder so that if I get pressed for time I can at least get those checked daily and some of them I check multiple times per day. While responding to emails about jobs posted sometimes works, I find that as with Jobslinger and other services, by the time the infomation is out there, the jobs are gone.