You could win a 12 month subscription to this informative magazine simply by telling us how many categories there are in the articles archive – there are two subscriptions to win, valued at $30 each.

Note: Save Time Online Competition Terms are available here. This competition will be open for one month. Winners drawn 9th Sept and announced in the following newsletter. Giving your answer as a comment will not enter you in the competition and it will be deleted rather than published.

We came across a blog post that lists some SEO gamesto play – we haven’t tried them yet, but thought we’d share them anyway. We figure if you’re going to spend some time playing a computer game, why not make it on a topic that is useful and may teach you something? And the whole point of us saving you some time online is so you can choose to play games if that’s what you enjoy doing.

We’d like to congratulate Karen (Time Well Spent) and Simone (Wellness, Fertility & Balance) on winning a door prize of a feature listing on Save Time Online for a year – we’ll post links to their pages once they have provided the information to go on their pages.

There were many great presentations over the weekend, including a session on web 2.0 and social media, and Tash’s presentation on promotional articles. Ally also shared her story in a forum, along with the Founders Award winner, Amanda Cox, Glenys Gijsbers and Bernadette Huysing.

We’d like to thank Melissa and her team for a great weekend, and highly recommend you diarise it for next year! And we may just offer another advertising deal if you mention us when booking (and we hope those people who took advantage of it this year benefit from their upcoming newsletter ads.)

Run a business as a sole trader? Then you need to be at THE small business conference of the year! Covering many topics relevant for running a small business, the Business Mums Conference (and Dads are welcome, too!) is in Melbourne on 20 – 21 June. We’ll both be there, and Tash is presenting on promotional articles, so make sure you say hello! Unlike most business events, this one costs  less than $500 – and if you mention Save Time Online when you book, we’ll throw in a newsletter ad for you (half day bookings excluded.)

If you would like to hear about deals like this first, plus see what’s new on our site and enter our competitions, why not subscribe? It doesn’t cost anything and you never know what it could save or win you!

It is a huge time waster when you’re online, even with spam filters that stop the majority of it reaching our inboxes. So you can really save yourself some time by reducing the chances of being spammed.

Here are some tips to help you:

• if you don’t trust a website, don’t give them your email address
• have a secondary email address to use for subscribing to newsletters and websites you aren’t sure of. That way, if you get spammed by them, you can stop that address without having to change yor main email. It can also save you time by having your newsletters separate to your important emails
• if you have a website, don’t put your email address on the site as text – spammers have software that can scan the net for email addresses (called harvesting.) Use a contact form or show your email address as a graphic or in a way only humans understand (e.g. myname @ savetimeonline.com.au or myname@NOTTHISBITsavetimeonline.com.au)
• don’t respond to any spam as that tells them your email address is real – and that even includes not clicking on links in their email
• choose a complex email address that is not so easy to guess – for example, susan.brown@ and sbrown@ are harder to guess than susan@ or sue@

The Word Constructions blog gave more tips on reduing your spam and tips on keeping your emails away from spam filters.

More listings will be added throughout the month so keep checking for bargains! And if you run a business, you can join the madness*, too, as the more we offer, the more fun it is for everyone!

* Want to join May Madness? All family-friendly Australian businesses and websites are welcome to participate if they meet the following criteria:

• make a genuine offer to people throughout the month of May

• promote the May Madness promotion by linking to this page as often as possible 

Every year, Save Time Online bring you offers from a collection of businesses so you can save money and time from one place.

To find out about the offers and specials, just visit our May Madness page. Find the specials that will save you time and money, and follow the link to that site to start saving.

Keep coming back as we add offers throughout May as more and more businesses join in the madness.

If you run a business, you can join in, too. Simply make a genuine offer to people during May, add it to your website with a link back to our May Madness feature, then we’ll add your offer to the collection.

Enjoy May!

As always, we have a mothers day page brimming with ideas  for you, but thought we’d give you a few extras here as well…

• send Mum out on the town with other Mums so she can relax and be herself for a few hours.
• buy her some bulbs to plant for Spring colour, or some roses she can treasure for years, or a fruit tree she can appreciate with every bite – Garden express has over 2000 products apaprently so you should be able to find something Mum likes! And this is an environmentally responsible gift, too
• a book suits most Mums, as long as you choose the title with her in mind – don’t just think of novels when you can get a gardening book, some mouth watering cookbooks, herb books, business mum guides, money saving books, health/spirit books and language books.
• subscribe Mum to webflicks so she can catch up on those movies she missed
• send her a personlised card – you can be sure she doesn’t have one of those already!
• invest in her future with an investment account so she can trade and build a nest egg as markets improve over time
• comfort her with some dermatolgist-tested skincare products or some cosmetics/perfumes
• give her a mini-you! Mydolls will turn a photo of you (or your kids) into a unique sculpture so Mum can have a quiet, tidy version of her family at home all the tiem!

In some ways, the day has lost its political aspects, and became simply an occasion for men to express their love to the women around them in a ways similar to Mother’s Day (2 months away) and St Valentine’s Day (just 4 days away!) mixed together. In others, the political and human rights theme runs strong and political and social awareness of the struggles of women worldwide is brought out and examined in a hopeful manner.

We’ve just found a way you can help Australia’s homeless in about two minutes without spending a cent – Bayer will donate $1 in your name if you simply create a butterfly. So even if your budget is tight, you can help from the comfort of your own home or library.

We wish a Merry Christmas to all Australians, rich or poor, mansion or park bench.

The 1st of December.

You know that you just have 24 more days to organise your family Christmas. The heat is rising and it’s not just because its the first day of Summer.

You still have work, you still have to take care of the kids, you still have to keep the house in running order, you still have to have time to yourself so you don’t go insane. How do you find time to prepare for Christmas?

You hate shopping at Christmas time, people are pushy, rude, mean, eager to get in before EVERYone else, shoving, yelling, trying to find that car park that isn’t two kilometers walk away. How do you deal with shopping at Christmas?

All that you need to do to take away these stresses is to take a little time to prepare and organise. Some tips and pointers to help you over the next 24 days are:

- Write down and plan what you need before you start to shop. Nothing is worse than getting home from Christmas shopping and realising you forgot something.

- Shop online where ever you can. This keeps you away from those pesky crowds and everything is delivered.

- Get as many things as possible from the one shop as this saves time in travelling and it will also save in delivery fees if you shop online.

- Plan and order as much as you can before the day. Get your turkey, pre-order flowers, put in a request for a personalised Santa Letter.

- Get the kids to help you out by giving them large sheets of paper to colour in to make wrapping paper or to make cards out of. Or you could get the gift wrapping done in store as this saves time and makes it harder for someone to see what their present will be.

For more handy ideas and links just visit out Christmas Page and have a fantastic month leading up to Christmas!

This year the Melbourne Cup is held on Tuesday the 4th of November!

So get your hat on and go celebrate this famous Melbourne tradition!!