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Day In The Life Of An Internet Entrepreneur
Friday May 11th 2007, 9:59 am

I’m always fascinated by how other internet entrepreneurs spend their day so thought I would provide an insight into my working day in the hope that other entrepreneurs with blogs will read this and do likewise.

For me there is no typical day as such. Monday to Friday, 9-5, is more or less out the window if you make a living online. This is especially true if you work from home and a computer is never more than a few footsteps away.

My day usually starts at some time between 6.30am and 7.00am because I have a dog to walk and a son to get off to school. Walking the dog gives me half an hour of thinking time and is often when ideas for articles - including this one - pop into my head.

Once back in the house, on goes the computer and I will check for emails that have come in over night and pay my first visit of the day to half a dozen forums and websites that I like to haunt. I’ll also take a look at the BBC website and also Bloomberg to see what’s been happening in the world since I last looked.

I breakfast between 8.30am and 9.00am - flicking between Bloomberg, Sky News and BBC Breakfast as I tuck into a bowl of cereal and fruit juice - and then it’s back to the computer screen to begin the day’s work in earnest.

I then work from 9.00am to 2.00pm, taking the odd break to rest my eyes, to grab an apple and to either sit out in the sun for half an hour or to walk the dog again. Otherwise I’m tapping away at a keyboard.

As you’ll probably know, I juggle more websites than is probably good for me and all need various amounts of attention. At last count I had 42 websites up and running (well, some are barely walking, but that’s another story) so getting round them all in a day is not really on the cards.

What I do is divide my time up as if it was a school timetable. A single subject gets an hour and a double subject two hours - with a subject being a website. So instead of “Double Maths” first thing I might have “Double Entrepreneur.co.uk” (in fact today I’m starting off with Single Entrepreneur.co.uk so you’ve got an hour of my time and 20 minutes of it have disappeared on the above).

An hour isn’t particularly long, but I’ve found that by focusing on a website for an hour (or two hours if I’ve really got something that requires more time) I get as much done in 60 minutes than I used to get done in three hours of “working” on just one website a day.

Once that hour is up - and the clock at the bottom right of my computer screen keeps me right - that’s it. I move on to the next website. If I haven’t finished what I was doing it doesn’t matter. If it’s important I’ll find an hour for it the next day.

What websites I work on on any given day is decided the night before. That’s when I sit down for ten to 15 minutes and plan out my timetable for the following day.

I have a piece of paper that lists all 42 of my websites as well as eight domain names that I would like to develop sooner rather than later. The websites are listed in order of what they earn, with my biggest earner at number one and the one that earns the least occupying position 42 (and yes, all 42 do contribute to my overall earnings).

I also group them into three sets of 14 - a bit like having a football league of 42 teams, with 14 teams in three divisions. So I have a Premier League of 14 names, a Division One of 14 names and a Division Two of 14 names. And every quarter, websites can move up and down the league table, depending on what they are earning.

At a glance I can see websites that should really be earning a lot more languishing in the bottom division and that tells me I can earn more just by working on them. And I can see other websites that make their way into the Premier League when previously I had thought of them as First Division at best.

Incidentally, after the first quarter of 2007, entrepreneur.co.uk finds itself in 11th place in the Premier League in terms of earnings.

When I plan my work, I look through my list of websites - from Premier League downwards - and if an idea for an hour’s work springs to mind I write it down. When I have enough websites to fill the following day’s available hours I have my timetable to follow for the next day.

Some sites obviously need more attention than others, while some need updated at specific times of the month, and I take this into account when working out the timetable. But as a general rule of thumb, I try to fill my timetable with websites that are earning the most money. Premier League websites get first dibs on my time. Division Two as a whole will be lucky to get more than a few hours a week. If I can fill a day with ideas for just Premier League websites, the other 28 websites won’t get a look in.

At 2pm I usually take an hour off to have some dinner and from 3pm onwards my days can vary greatly.

I might return to my computer to do another three or four hours work before tea (we are a family that has breakfast, dinner and tea) at around 7pm and I may even slot in another couple of hours after 8pm, taking my working day to 11 or 12 hours. That usually happens one or two times a week.

Twice a week I will get one more hour of work in after dinner and that will be me for the rest of the day. I then head off to the gym, take my kids to the sports that they do or just enjoy some time off. Watching TV, reading, walking the dog, going out for a meal. That sort of thing. Dodgeball in the garden and cycling are currently in favour in my household.

Weekends are slightly different because the kids are at home, but it’s unusual for me not to do any work at all, especially on Saturday mornings which until 2pm are generally a relaxed version of my usual working day (I tend to be a little less focused, but still get some things done).

Every evening I’ll find the 15 or so minutes needed to plan out the following day and before going to bed I will end my day as I started it. Walking my dog. I get to think about what I have done during the day and what I plan to do the next day.

I go to bed with my head buzzing with ideas. Ideas that often have me springing out of bed the following day so that I can get to work on them ASAP.

So that’s how I spend my day. How do you spend yours?

PS The above took me 57 minutes to write. The old rule that work fills the time allocated to it rings true for me day after day.




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