For almost any webmaster, full or part time, budgeting one's time effectively always seems to be a problem. Between checking stats and reading the boards, there hardly seems to be any time left to get any work done! But of course, you can accomplish much more if you learn that there is a time and place to do these things, you just have to figure out how much of your time to allow yourself for these activities and stick to your plan.
"For almost any webmaster, full or part time, budgeting one's time effectively always seems to be a problem." |
Every day, whether you work full time or part time, you will want to check your stats, and do some reading. Checking stats helps keep you focused on the task at hand. If you haven't made many sales, it may motivate you by letting you know you need to work harder. If you've made lots of sales, it can help you by showing you how much your hard work is paying off! Either way, you should budget some time to check your stats. Unless you're making as much income as you are happy with, never spend more time than it take to check your top five sponsors when you first begin the day. You can check them again at the end of your work day and also check any other sponsor stats.
Of course you will need to keep up with the news of the adult industry by visiting the me ssage boards and by occasionally visiting the news pages of the adult webmaster sites. This is something that must be done, no matter what. Keeping current on trends and new laws is imperative. But again, you must budget this into your time so that you don't end up looking at the clock, finding your day two thirds over and having accomplished nothing but reading!
Your most important tasks are going to be making and promoting your sites, of course. Those two tasks alone should make at least half of your work day, and preferably seventy-five percent. If you don't make sites, you don't make money. If you don't promote sites, you don't make money. And the more sites that you make and promote, the more money you should theoretically be making!
There are other things you will need to do as well, mostly on a weekly basis, like seeking out new places to promote your sites and looking for new content for your sites. Some other small tasks are buying domain names, checking your server logs, updating old sites, checking for dead links on all your sites link pages and making new link exchanges. All these tasks put together should not take up more than one full work day each week.
For example, if you work four hours per day, you should not spend more than four hours per week on these tasks. This rule can be bent, of course, if there are special circumstances like someone is hotlinking you and you need to carefully monitor your logs, or if a content provider is having a huge sale and you need extra time to browse their new sets. But try to be reasonable.
Now. Let's assume you are working a four-hour day. Many will be working one or two, and many will be working eight or even twelve or more. But we're going to follow the part time rule since a lot of webmasters still have day jobs. I will base this schedule of mine on a four-hour day as an average and you can adjust accordingly. Remember, this is just a basic plan, you can modify this as you see fit.
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When your four-hour day begins, you will want to spend some time checking your stats, answering e-mails and catching up on the message boards. Spend no more than thirty minutes at this right now, and watch your time carefully! You can spend a little more time on this later.
After this, you will need to begin making sites and promoting them. Do this for at least TWO FULL HOURS before you stop. You must spend AT LEAST half of your time at this! This is very important if you want to be successful. I would suggest using up to three hours for this, but if you want to leave time for other things, you should still consider a minimum of two full, uninterrupted dedicated hours.
After your two hours of building and promoting, you may want to take a short break for a snack or something. Take some time, but no more than thirty minutes. You want your mind to be on the task at hand when you return from your break. Anything longer than thirty minutes can and might leave you forgetting what you were doing before you left.
When you return from your break you should have about an hour and a half left. You can spend the next hour building and promoting more sites, or you can use this hour as part of your four hours per week that you use to accomplish your secondary tasks. You want to remain a little flexible, as that is one of the biggest perks of the webmastering business. But you still need to keep a schedule of some sort in order to get anything done!
Finally, during your last thirty minutes, you can recheck your stats from the morning, check any others that you didn't check earlier, and read some more on the boards. This is your time to wind down, relax, and pat yourself on the back for getting in a good day's work!
Of course, as I mentioned earlier, you can feel free to modify this schedule. If you prefer not to check stats when you first begin, but instead want to dive straight into work and then by all means, do so. This is just a rough outline meant to teach you how much of your time you should be spending on certain tasks in order to pull the most out of whatever time you have.
Your time is yours, and no one can tell you how to spend it but you. You just have to keep your mind focused on what is important in this business, making money! If you can always remember that, you will remember to budget your time wisely.