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Free Time Tracking Online - Case Study

December 3rd, 2007 by Monika

Last month I was blogging about free time tracking tools that can help you to measure your time and analyze where you are wasting time particularly. Since installing the free software in the first few days of November I have meticulously used it to track my own time while online. Regardless of task, I tracked and am now in the position to analyze.

When I look at the chart below, I can clearly see that the biggest chunk of time is spent on email, blog administration (comments, admin related) and visiting and commenting on other blogs.

Some might say this is mad, but in reality those activities look different when broken down into daily bite sized activities:

Tasks Time Spent November 2007
Article writing for clients 26.0 hours
Blog reading/commenting
and social book marking		 45.0 hours
Blogging for clients 20.0 hours
Blogging on The Writers Manifesto 15.5 hours
Blogging on Blogging Web 2.0 5.5 hours
Check blog comments/Admin 27.0 hours
Check email/stats 25.5 hours
Niche research 5.0 hours
Social Media Network 8.5 hours (1 week only)
Technical Stuff 4.0 hours
Total Hours/Month 182 hours

Email = 51 minutes/day (2 accounts)

Blog Admin = 54 minutes/day (editor of 4 blogs)

Blog reading/commenting/social bookmarking = 90 minutes/day

Blog Posts on Blogging Web 2.0 = 30 minutes/per post

Blog Post on The Writers Manifesto = 51 minutes/per post

Niche research = 10 minutes/day

Social Media Network = 72 minutes/day (based on 1 week participation)

Technical Stuff = 8 minutes/day

Looking at the broken down stats, I’m actually quite happy with the outcome. Probably one place where I would change is minimizing the time spent on email. But this becomes tricky since I have had quite a few fellow bloggers contacting me lately and asking for advice. This is great and I wouldn’t want to reduce my time spent on replying with a decent answer.

I could probably increase my time spent on writing better articles on this blog too. My focus is on writing more feature posts rather than just posting a quickie and that is one reason why some days I don’t post.

But having said this, I can still improve on the quality of this as well.

I also want to spend more time on niche research since one of my current targets is to get into affiliate marketing.

Conclusion:

Considering this was my first month of tracking my time, I am very satisfied with the overall picture. The best news however is paid work related.

When I added up all the time spent on client work and then divided the pay through this, I came out with an hourly pay of around $23/hour (give and take some where I might have forgotten to count).

This just goes to show, that we need to track our time in order to see whether we are on track or not. Doing this gives me a great overview of where I can improve further and helps me to stay organized with my targets in the future.

Implementation:

Even though my figures look pretty good for a start, I’m planning to streamline my time online even better. I admit that I’m still wasting time on occasions and this is where I need to look out for. With the total amount of hours spent online this breaks down to around 9 hours/day based on a 5 day week.

Naturally I’m online pretty much every day so those figures will spread out a little.

If you need any help in tracking your time online, then please let us know in the comments section.

Monika Mundell

Blogging Web 2.0

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6 Responses to “Free Time Tracking Online - Case Study”

  1. Make Money Online - Trent Brownrigg (7 comments.) Says:
    December 3rd, 2007 at 5:51 pm

    That is a great idea. I really should do this for myself. I know I waste a LOT of time each day on very unproductive activities and I need to stop. It would probably help to get me going if I saw exactly how much time I am wasting.

    Looks like you are actually quite productive. Much more so than I am.

  2. The Writers Manifesto Stats For November 2007 | TheWritersManifestoBlog Says:
    December 4th, 2007 at 8:19 am

    [...] One of my major achievements however was the fact that I managed to track my time very efficiently to see how I fare in terms of leaking valuable time or not. I blogged about this on my JV blog Blogging Web 2.0 and you can read the article Free Time Tracking Online - Case Study. [...]

  3. Tom Colvin (12 comments.) Says:
    December 6th, 2007 at 6:19 pm

    Thanks for sharing your monthly total time tracking stats. Following your lead, I’ve installed Slim Timer, and I’m also evaluating an offline program, VeriTime Time Tracker. I haven’t been as diligent as you have, but exprapolations suggest our time is spent somewhat in similar time. The areas you are tracking are very similar to mine [tho I'm my own client for writing projects, with a book underway]. Anyway, I can see that I’ve got to get thru email and its distractions more efficiently. In fact, I’m considering taking my laptop offline for most of the day to kill the online temptations — but then I won’t be able to use the online timers.

    Back to early topics from comments above: I’ve installed Easy Gravatars, which has worked beautifully for me. Still have trouble with MyBlogRoll, which is prompting me to upgrade from WordPress 2.0 to 2.2 this weekend, in hopes that will help — also some new plug-ins awaiting installation as well.

  4. MoneyTalks (8 comments.) Says:
    December 12th, 2007 at 11:30 am

    Thanks for sharing this stat Monika. with that number i can see how hard people are working to succeed. i don’t know why lately i admire people who is working hard. maybe i just love their guts. not many people around.

    Wherever i go most people need the easy way around things. they want success but they want to do it the quickest as possible. but in the end they never know how success feel.

  5. Monika (79 comments.) Says:
    December 13th, 2007 at 1:56 am

    Tom: It’s great to hear that time tracking tools seem to work for you as well. Don’t worry, it took me about 1 week to get used to mine and it is easy to forget to click. But with a bit of “want’ it will become a habit before you know.:-)

    Also, looks like you are getting the hang of these plugins. With MyBlogLog it could be the upgrade and you will know soon enough. A great way to upgrade is the automatic WP upgrade plugin. It takes virtually 5 minutes max!

    BTW, I shall look forward to your book. What is it about? Looks like you are certainly a very busy man. :-)

    MoneyTalks: you are very welcome. The whole reason I’m sharing my stats is to help others who might struggle. It gives them some form of validation and maybe keeps them going.

    It is also to show that things are not always as easy as they are made out to be or seem. I’m glad you picked up on this.

  6. Tom Colvin (12 comments.) Says:
    December 13th, 2007 at 9:04 am

    Monika, you are right. Now that I’m getting into the habit of clicking on SlimTimer, I’m following my work more closely. What is most amazing to me is HOW LONG I work every day, well over 8 hours. Darn, maybe I should schedule more time off!

    I upgraded from WP 2.0 to 2.2.2 over the weekend. Some issues along the way, but I have a webmaster who helps me through some of the technical problems as needed and we’ve got it running. Spent last couple of days searching out and installing more plugins — slowly I’m whipping WP into the shape I like. Still, MyBlogRoll doesn’et work — have sent request for help to their support team. With luck, I’ll soon have an “Under The Hood” article on my blog explaining all of its inner workings [just need to figure out how to make an essential plugin tracker work].

    Ah, my book… A really substantial historical tale from early 1800’s. Been working on it for 5 years now, with time in national archives in several countries. Major problem organizing all the stuff I’ve gathered and have tried countless software solutions. Now it looks like WhizFolders Pro will save the day.

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