Menu

• Dictionary
• Hot Shots

Directory

• Sponsors
• Billing Options
• Content Providers
• Web Hosting
• Traffic Counters
• Website Designers
• Resource Sites

Now there is a headline that I'm sure you're all familiar with and it's one that each of us in this industry needs to consider more carefully because the deeper you get into this business the more you need to manage your time if you want to survive.

For a couple of weeks now both Steve and I have been noticing that we're getting busier and busier yet for various reasons our income hasn't been increasing despite all that hard work. The exchange rate for the Australian dollar against the United States dollar has been partly to blame for that lack of increase in our income.

At the same time as we've been working hard on projects for overseas clients ... and for the last few weeks those projects really have been taking a huge chunk out of our time ... the Australian dollar has been increasing in value compared to the US dollar. That means that the more the Australian dollar increases in value the less money we get in our pocket so we're basically working harder for less money.

However, that's not the only reason that we've noticed a drop in our income compared to the amount of work we're doing. It is quite possible to be very busy without achieving much and that's something that we're seriously looking at right now.

Of course it is quite possible to be very busy with very important tasks without actually putting in any billable hours ... or income-earning hours if you're an affiliate marketer. You might be spending a lot of time on research and that's very valuable time because if you're not spending time researching then you're definitely not staying ahead of the game and the further you fall behind the harder it is for you to make money.

You might also be very busy supervising various projects if you employ outsourced workers ... or even in-house workers. If you're not spending time supervising those people who work for you then you run a very real risk of paying a lot of money for work that produces nothing of much value.

If you're like us you might also be spending a lot of time talking to prospective clients and chasing down leads for new work. If you're not spending hours ... non-billable hours in the short term ... on work like that then you're going to reach a point where you you've finished everything you might have been doing for other people and now you've got no work to go on with.

When you have no work from clients to go on with you're cash-flow dries up very quickly.

In the last two weeks I think Steve has probably spent five or six hours working on developing contacts with potential clients and that's valuable time but certainly time that's not going to produce any income in the next few weeks.

And then there's the time spent on work that we think is valuable but isn't really. We might have taken on a job for a client for a payment that looked quite reasonable at the time but it's actually a job that is taking more time than we thought it would. Jobs like that end up costing you money rather than making you money and you don't have to be involved in client work to be wasting time like that.

You may be involved in some affiliate marketing project that you thought would be a great way to make lots of money for little outlay in time. However if you take a good look at the time you're working on the project compared to the amount of money it's bringing in you might just see that it's actually costing you more than it's making.

But how can you make an objective judgment about your work time and whether you're making money or losing it?

Well that's really very easy and the first thing you have to do is to set a reasonable dollar value on an hour of your day. The more experienced you are the more an hour of your times should be worth (there are other factors that can influence that hourly rate but we're keeping it simple here) ... multiply that hourly rate by the number of hours your spending on the project and add in something for costs such as power, content, traffic etc. Then subtract that figure from the amount of money that you're making from the project and if that number shows that you're breaking even ... or perhaps in positive territory ... then you're doing something that is worthwhile.

But if you're in negative territory then you're making a loss and it's time to re-evaluate the project. And when you do that re-evaluation you need to be objective because you may have some very real attachment to that project. However if you're losing money on it you may really need to either scale it back or ditch it completely.

When time is money you really can't afford to be wasting your time.