This post was going to be in response to a post I read on problogger in which the guest poster talked about increasing his Alexa ranking by 2,000,000 places in two months. This site went from being ranked 8,500,000 just over 11 weeks ago to now a 3 month average of 93,000 and a 1 month average of 54,000, with a US ranking of 35,000. Now I’m not too bothered about Alexa ranking as it’s not entirely accurate, but it’s something I do loosely follow.

I decided to change the title and format of the post in reply to Eleanor’s recent comment. I hold down a 12hr day job, in which I do shifts so I’m not always on the net at the same times every day. For the purpose of this post though I will take my day shift which is 7am-7pm (including my travel time) and detail hour to hour what I am doing. I’ll also list my priorities too, please excuse the military style timings, old habits die hard;

0600- Wake up and wash.

o610- Dressed and downstairs.

0620-Switch laptop on and while that is starting up, I’ll make my breakfast and a coffee.

0625- Read and reply to comments on site, emails and if time @ tweets.

0700- Travel to work, If I get the train (which I sometimes do, I’ll continue to catch up on twitter via my phone, or think about post ideas and bit’s for my book.

0800-1200- Work.

1200-1245- Break, more work on post ideas and work on the book, time on twitter, while eating.

1245-1600- Work.

1600-1620- Break,  Inspiration by reading random sites, not related to this site or twitter.

1620-1800- Work.

1800-1900- Travel home and start to write that days posts. Either into my phone or on paper in bullet points.

1900-2200- Write posts, reply to the comments, emails, @ tweets and general work on the site. Responding to the emails is the most time consuming.

2200-2330- Read other sites and leave comments (if I can add value). I do a combination of visiting every person’s site who comments and related forums etc.

2330-0100-Run over time to either promote the site more or reply to emails etc. At the moment I’m finding this time usefull to write my book I plan to release in the coming months.

0100-0600- Bed, ready for another awesome day!

Priorities;

  • Site

My absolute priority is creating daily fresh content for the site. If I have to sacrifice promoting because of time I will. The biggest mistake most people make is they spend too much time promoting, but all that promotion is useless if the reader doesn’t have great content to read.

  • Replies

This is really a very close second. Replying to everything is vital. I’m human so sometimes I will miss the odd @ reply amongst all the Follow Friday tweets etc, but I would happily say I reply to 90-95% of everything I get. Make sure you keep replying to everything you get towards the top of your list, remember who put you there in the first place!

  • Promotion

You have to promote your work, writing great content or producing an amazing product and waiting for people to come to you, just won’t cut it these days. Get out there and promote the hell out of your site, BUT only if you have completed your site work and replied to everything first.

  • Future

After all this is done, then you can work on the future of your business or website, whether that be writing posts to schedule or a pitch for a new product or even a book like me, make sure you do think about the future, but only after you have completed everything else.

I like to reply to the comments in bulk probably twice or three times a day, same with @ tweets and emails. If you keep stopping to reply to everything as soon as it comes in, it’s going to take you an age to do anything.

Hopefully this will go some way to helping you plan your day a bit better and show you how many hours it really does take to have a full time job and get a website to where you want it.

What does everyone think?

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