What does your typical day look like?

[Robert Paulson]

This question is directed at those fine folks here who are able to earn a living from their web work. I would imainge some do fine as hobbyists, or as an income supplement, but I'm interested in hearing mainly from the people who can afford the house, car and family with their web work.


What does your typical work day look like? I'm trying to establish a daily routine, and have a handful of steps I walk through/sites I visit every day, but am wondering what kinds of things are the important things I should be doing, which are less important.

Thanks in advance!

[jlknauff]

What aspect in particular are you looking at? Development, design, SEO?
Done 'em all in varying capacities ;)

[Robert Paulson]

Well, for starters, let's say an existing site. Let's say you've achieved some level of SEO success, the revenue side is starting to pick up, and the main focus of the site is to keep it entertaining, ranked highly, and adding new members. What would be a daily routine for that?

(I'll ask some follow-ups of other scenarios after this. ;) )

[jlknauff]

Finding suitable subjects to write (or purchase/outsource) new content. Continue building links to it. Continue optimizing the code. Improve useability. There will always be room for improvement.

[dazzlindonna]

I blogged about my typical day a while back. Here it is... http://www.seo-scoop.com/direct_link.cfm?thepost=140

[eitemiller]

Good blog entry, Donna.

I do make house payments, car payments, etc from SEO - but just barely. Since I just started this full-time (what, 4 months ago?) - my life is structured slightly different. I am always busy trying to pick up new clients, and apease the current ones. Figuring out new and additional ways to generate a source of income from my SEO knowledge is a good hour a day. I also allow an hour a day to play in a morning Texas Hold 'em tournament (hey, I'm the boss). But the constant checking of multiple email address, multiple forums, checking serps, caches, reading blogs, etc - pretty similar there. Lots and lots of reading.

And I hate coffee - but drink the Mountain Dew like there is no tomorrow. Only watch tv if NASCAR is on.

[Robert Paulson]

My days recently sound like DazzlinDonna's. My concern is there seems to be a good deal of time in sort of free-form, unstructured surfing. I'll see something just before I head off to bed that piques my interest, and before I know it, it's 2 am....may as well just sleep on the couch in my office...wife would kill me if I climbed into bed now....

My bricknmortar allows me winters to pursue other interests, and this is what I've kinda fallen into. Though I'm not looking to be an SEO'er - I want to run some websites that I own, with content I create.

My concern is with the lack of structure, and wondering if there are things I'm missing or things I should be doing. In the last two months I've found a whole load of things I should have been doing for SEO's sake...thinking there are lots more, and don;t want to establish a routine that pigeon-holes me into never discovering these other things until it's too late.

Dazzlin - other than just being 'connected' all day, do you have some regimented stuff - 1 hour here, 2 hours to this, 90 minutes to that, etc. Sounds like eitemiller might have a schedule worked out...

[eitemiller]

The biggest issue I used to run into is that I would spend too much time "visiting" at the forums, and not doing anything I was learning, ya know? I try to limit myself to 90 minutes of forum time. That doesn't mean I sit in forums for 90 minutes straight, but on the other hand, I dont necessarily drop everything to read what someone just replied to, ya know?

It's kinda like running any business - structure can be a good thing. Spend too much time on any one aspect, and you're hosed.

[wlh]

Im almost to the point where I will soon be working for myself. I think the hardest part will be discipline myself to stay on track. But im pretty good at getting routines going and keeping them. Though I do get side tracked if I find something cool.

[Robert Paulson]

And I'm thinking that the guys who really do well at this are like smash-and-grab surfers. They know exactly what they need to do, get in, do it, then get out. I mean hey, I'm spending like 15 hours online per day for these last few weeks. A couple hours ago I just saw the outside of my house for the first time since Monday....